Catherine Review

If you’re weary of playing as chisel-jawed, gun-toting psychotics whose only concern is how many explosions they can cause in the process of saving the world, then perhaps you’re the kind of gamer who might have a good time with Catherine.

Here you’re playing as the mop-headed, strung out systems engineer named Vincent Brooks, who’s facing something of a dilemma. Should he stay with Katherine, his responsible, ambitious and marriage-ready girlfriend of five years, or should he give himself over to Catherine, the carefree, blonde-haired sylph that he’s accidentally entered into an affair with? Does he go for stability and commitment, or sex and hedonism? Love or lust?

Vincent’s drama plays out during the daytime in creatively animated anime cut-scenes and sections of gameplay in the Stray Sheep, a bar where you can chat with patrons, play arcade machines, and send text messages to both Catherine and Katherine, carefully crafting your responses from several set phrases and sometimes receiving naughty photographs in response.

The second half of the game takes place in Vincent’s nightmares. Each time he sleeps he’s drawn into a frightening underworld populated by anthropomorphic sheep, where he’s forced to climb huge towers constructed of precarious blocks.

This is the game’s core gameplay; a mixture of puzzling and platforming, with the player required to pull and push the blocks while avoiding traps, enemies and errors in their own logic in order to get to the top before they fall.

These plateaus act as mid-stage resting points where you can interact with NPCs.

Catherine is a deviously crafty game; as soon as you think you’ve got the hang of its puzzling, it will throw another element into the mix that throws you off balance.

It’s tremendously challenging, demanding both quick thinking and reflexes. Expect to die a lot, and spend a lot of time replaying the same sections over and over in a frantic process of trial and error.

But despite what often feels like an overbearing and unfair level of difficulty, Catherine remains compelling, both in terms of its narrative – with eight possible endings depending on responses and choices you make throughout the game – and the fact that you won’t want to give up on each tower until you’ve somehow made it to the top.

Catherine demands a lot from its players, but, like any good relationship, it gives a lot in return, too.