Catherine (PS3/360)

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Well, after months of seeing seeing anime cutscenes, pervy pre-order pillows, covers and still screenshots that don't offer much gameplay details, Atlus and the Persona team have finally released a trailer for their sexy game, Catherine.

Usually, we've just been treated to the hype, sexually suggestive stuff like this:

NSFW, just in case, its boxart we probably won't get

But anyone knows from playing Persona games that the team behind the game tends to handle sexual themes with a touch of class to supersede the crass. More or less the story seem to revolve around Vincent, his after-work relationships with friends, his girlfriend (and nerdy cute) Katherine and the tempting blonde Catherine he's having a fling with.

After hooking up with Catherine, Vincent has a lot of bad dreams, usually filled with strange sheep men and deathtraps. Oh and giant monsters that want to squash him. Its hard to tell which is scarier for him - dealing with the two women as they become aware of each other or the dreams



Judging from the video, its actually looking like a puzzle platformer with a dash of survival horror, though I'd say the horror is more of the can't fight back/must-run-like-hell variety. Our promiscuous protagonist, Vincent, is having lots of bad dreams and much of the gameplay action in Catherine seems land on the Nightmare Mode of the game. Not surprising considering its from the Persona team.

Here's the video.

Oh and, NSFW, by the way. Also not safe for you if your wife/husband or children are in the room.

This video contains blood, sheep men, babes, a sex scene, platforming, crazy monsters, survival horror, texting, drinking, and lots of other things - none of that in any particular order, either.

[Raydeus]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

Only slightly more than a month left. Can't wait, I'm getting Vanquish and a few other awesome games along with it.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

K, fixed it.

Silly forum code, just when you think you know it all.

I'm just waiting to get it on PS3 later. I was planning to get a PS3 soon, but with the 3DS launch looming and my drive to want other things is somewhat lower. When Catherine, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Ico/SotC collection and Last Guardian get release dates, then I'll worry about a PS3 again.

I really wanted to have a PS3 by the time MvC3 is out, but 3DS is too close and I like my fighters arcade-proven anyway. I'm gonna wait and see on MvC3. Its not like people will have stopped playing it by the time I get around to it anyway.

Still, nice to see PS3 and 360 get another game more in the vein of platforming via Catherine. PS3 can always use more platform gaems and 360 hardly ever has any. Seems Nintendo just dominates that corner of the market, though Super Meat Boy is awesome.

[Takelli]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

Seems interesting actually.... I may be tempted to get it....

[Absentia]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

Beware the office worker sheep.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

The JP PSN demo hit today, D-Toid put up some impressions and their resident import-types gave it a spin, walked away intrigued. Like many demos, it only gave you a starting point on the puzzle/platforming element and it seems certain dialog choices - which re done by inserting particular words into response - do affect the flow of story and events.

Katherine (the nerdy looking one) calls Vincent and wants to see him - he's already feeling the pressure from her recently suggesting she wants to "settle down" - and the various words you choose can either reflect a polite reply or Vincent just barks at her for pulling him away from his drinking buddies and being so clingy.

So it looks like they're taking the relationship aspect of the game more seriously than most games do. I have always been kind of annoyed that games like Persona and Mass Effect let you have relationships, but there aren't any realistic consequences for your character's infidelity. The girl gets mad, but she's still loyal to your cause, even if you're a jerk.

So this might be the first game outside of The Sims to actually look into approaching this in a more realistic way. Well, except for the nightmares with sheeple part.

[Feba]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

After hooking up with Catherine, Vincent has a lot of bad dreams, usually filled with strange sheep me

I blame Murakami.

The girl gets mad, but she's still loyal to your cause, even if you're a jerk.

This isn't realistic?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

This isn't realistic?

Only if she follows you into the Dark Hour, a TV World or a suicide mission, I guess.

In real life, I would hope the smart ones would leave you for cheating on them.

[Feba]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

In real life, I would hope the smart ones would leave you for cheating on them.

Oh, BBQ, you're positively adorable.

[Balfree]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

Downloaded the demo and took a shot at it. Didn't understand jacksquat of any of the dialog but the puzzle levels were proper. Hope there is some variety to the levels later on though.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

Oh, BBQ, you're positively adorable.

I've seen the worst case scenario of the fallout of infidelity and how weak it made someone rather close to me. I don't think I need the worldview of some know-it-all college kid suggesting I'm somehow naive about how emotionally weak some women can be.

I said I would hope/expect better. Having seen the worst and knowing the dark side of obsessive hatred when it happened to me with one of my girlfriends being a cheat, I still would prefer to see some backbone in other people when cheating happens because when you go through it once, you will not take that shit again.

Hope there is some variety to the levels later on though.

The translation of the demo stated there would be more variety in the full game, you were just given the basic tutorial.

[Malacite]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

wtf...

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

So there's been some fuss over a comment made by an Atlus employee that issued a comment to a gaming site I've never heard off, one called "Beefjack."

And like any good game news blog (hell, news in general) site would do: they took a comment out-of-context in the headline and turned it into news:

Atlus: “No plans” for Catherine in North America BeefJack - The Gamer's Sauce

Of course the full quote is as follows:

“Catherine is a Japan-only game and there are no plans for a NA release at this time. Sorry about that!”

This "bad news" has given Beefjack a lot of webhits this week over the popular Japanese release Catherine, which has managed to outsell MvC3 during its second week out on the market. Not bad for an Atlus game, really.

As this "news" hit other blogs mass hysteria ensued thanks to people with a complete inability to decipher PR-speak. If you asked half of gamers right now, they'd tell you its never coming to America.

Then, because the Atlus USA likes to make fun of people, this was emailed out and posted somewhere on their main site?



And this is why I love Atlus, no other company has a staff willing to troll the gaming community just to get them worked up over a game that's most likely coming to the states.


EDIT: As of Monday March 1st, its confirmed for US release this summer.

Now to laugh at people worrying about censorship.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

US demos are up on PSN and XBLA now.

Pretty much what I was expecting it to be, the puzzle elements were fairly fan, with a slight survival element to them (limited continues). You collect pillows to collect continues, more or less.

The best way to describe the gameplay is actually Ice Climbers meets Q-Bert meets Jenga. Death is coming from below, so Vincent must scramble to the top of jumbled tower of blocks (wouldn't be an Atlus game without a tower) to escape whatever manner of monster is manifesting his real-life problems within the nightmare. Vincent manipulates the blocks and so long as corners are still touching, they'll somehow support themselves, but if you manipulate them so they don't do that, they plummet downward.

The easy mode lets you mulligan these mistakes, so if you're just there for the story no problem, but on other difficulties its not going to be as forgiving. Easy is the default for the US demo.

In the other side of the game, Vincent will be making his morality choices in how he responds to text-messages on his phone. There's a selection of two to four different lines.

More or less, Vincent and his girl Katherine are in their early 30s and all Kathy's friends are married and have kids and she fells like the odd one out, so she's nudging Vincent to pop the question and he's totally not ready, not confident he and be a family man and then later that evening Vincent has drowned himself in booze and meets Cathering and OOPS, sleeps with her.

Funny thing is the game takes place in America, but I think the Persona team didn't quite do their location research. Vincent's room is straight out of Japan and the town just happens to have a little ramen shop.

Oh well, at least the pizzeria looks right.

[Kailea]

Re: Catherine (PS3/360)

still find it funny that this game was hinted at in Persona 3 ;p shows how long they had been working on it.