Catherine Review (18+)

There are plenty of movies or novels named after someone's name like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Peter Pan,  or even song names such as Billie Jean and Hey Jude. For me, usually things named after the main character name whom I am not familiar with or not famous will not attract my attention. I was watching Pewdiepie's gaming video one day (it has become a daily routine since he uploads at least one video every day, hahaha) and watched this video where he and a couple of other gamers playing Plants vs Zombies. One of them were Cryaotic, a youtube gamer quite famous of his voice. So I found that it has been some time since I last watched his videos. I scanned through his channel and saw this game called Catherine. The name was not special but I just randomly clicked on it. After I watched the first part, I decided to continue watching the whole series because there are something that really interested me (when I was writing this post I have not done watching the whole thing, unlike other gaming reviews which I have done after I finished everthing, I just can't wait to share this!)

My first impression towards this game after I finished watching the first part of the gameplay by Cry, there were a few key terms in my mind about this game: sheep, church, bell, light, hymn, angel, someone taking care of the sheep, and keep climbing up so that you will reached 'freedom'. It is everything sounds positive in Christianity, but actually this game illustrates Christianity in a wrong direction. It gives people a really wrong concept towards Christianity (maybe you would say, 'nah, why so serious? It's just a game.'), it's just not right to mislead people in religious things or being sarcastic of it. I do not hate this game, just want to tell you guys that, this is not real Christianity, it's a game, make it clear and it is quite a nice game that I would love to own one. Only after I watched the second part the story line became clear to me.

Spoiler Alert!!!

This game is a combination of puzzles and making choices which will lead to various endings. The main character here (the one you are controlling) is not Catherine though, he's Vincent Brooks who has a girlfriend named Katherine (yeah Katherine, no typo here). And one night he got drunk in the bar and slept with a cute girl as shown in the poster above named Catherine. Since then, he has nightmares every single night that he will be trapped in a place where all the cheating men will be thrown in (as heard in rumours)and he has to keep climbing so that he will not die in the dream, which will lead to death in reality. Here comes the puzzle. Vincent has to keep climbing up blocks by blocks by moving them around to create staircases and get onto the top before the rest of the blocks below collapse. You won't have much time to think the next move as the bottom part of the blocks will fall apart little by little. Technically you are being chased by the disaster from the bottom so that you won't fall to your death while competing with other sheep who have the same fate as yours. They need to get on top too just like you and they even might shove you down so that you won't get into their way to stay alive (of course you can do that to them too). Although that is just a puzzle game, the graphic and sound effects make the whole thing awesome and thrilling. There are a total of eight floors where a cathedral is the final destination, which is the 'freedom' towards everything men suffer there. As the stages go (each floor might has several stages), the 'trial' becomes longer with more and more traps (they call each stage of puzzle 'trial') which is really difficult as I watched the progress (many many retries he did). Back to the story, there are news where men keep dying suddenly in sleep and rumours about cheating men are cursed to death in nightmares. All the reactions done by Vincent (decided by you) will lead to his inner voice towards the complicated relationships he has. He is being torn apart from Katherine (his original girlfriend who is pregnant and wants to marry him) and Catherine (a girl who wants to be his girlfriend and already is, somehow).

Cry chose Katherine rather than Catherine in this game. So Vincent breaks up with Catherine but he loses Katherine too. It is a very complicated story because Catherine does not really exist in the reality as no one except Vincent sees her. She disappears after the break up totally. All the information about her is gone. At the end Vincent finds out that the bartender is behind all these dreams. He is the 'god' that creates the illusions in men, causing them to cheat to end their current relationship because of some ******* reasons (really does not make sense to me). Vincent wants the 'god' to take responsibility of what he has done to him. So he accepts the challenge to go for the stages beyond the cathedral, the 'heaven' (this really makes me feeling uneasy). Cry got the good ending where Vincent and Katherine planned to marry each other.

I do not want to watch the other endings played by other gamers because this game was making me feeling uneasy. At the beginning it was interesting but it is really a depressing game with all the misunderstandings between people, tragedies in relationships, deaths etc. And it gives people the wrong thinking that you have to go through all the sufferings in order to be 'baptised' and gain freedom. This is not right in Christianity. Yes we are lambs of God but we are saved through God's love towards us as His children, no climbing stuff, ok? (ah am I getting too serious on this?)

Yeah, the guy in boxers and holding a pillow, has horns on his head is Vincent. Every other sheep there are people like him but he will only see them as sheep, they will also see Vincent as sheep. (image from www.gamespot.com)

One of the bosses in the puzzles who looks like Katherine in wedding gown, trying to get your life, creepy. (image from pinoytutorial.com)

The Landing, which is the place you will reach after each stage of puzzle and you will go into the confession room behind the curtain to answer a question. The results of all the players will be compiled into a pie chart which you will view afterward to see what is the answer others chose. (image from cheatcc.com)

Ok before I end this post let us see it as a pure game, ignoring the theme. Besides the sound effects and graphics, another thumbs-ups for this game are you can receive or send texts on your cell phone and also interact with other people in the bar. It is quite dynamic that topics of conversations change every time and people come and leave. Compared to games with the same NPCs (non-player characters) with the same caption all the time, it is much more interesting as you can see the progress, and your interactions with them can decide their fates, too. This is not the first blocks-moving puzzle that I have ever seen but this definitely is a creative one especially the traps (ice blocks, spike blocks, bomb blocks and many more).

Well, my final thoughts about this game, I won't want to watch it anymore. It's like The Hunger Games, once is enough, to me. Hope that my next gameplay walkthrough review will not be a depressing one.



P/S: Catherine is only available on Playstation or Xbox (too bad, I only own a PC), and you can buy it here.