Some games are on your must-play radar the second they're announced. Some are slow burners. And some, like Catherine, the upcoming nightmarish action game from the team behind the Shin Megami Tensei: Personaseries, creep up slowly, and then all of a sudden bust your skull wide open with a sudden revelation of awesome.
Publisher Atlus has long been one of the most intriguing and eclectic Japanese labels around, so when they're making a hybrid character drama, sexy adventure game, and surreally horrific platformer, I'm an interested man. When it gets trailers like this, (andthese)I'm a man clammering to get my eager hands all over it.
Reactions? If you're anything like me, your brains have just oozed out of your ears and are now pooled around your feet on the floor in a quivering, vaguely perturbed fashion, while your face regardless holds a big goofy, excited grin. A highly eclectic ambivalence, but Catherine looks like the kind of game than more than earns one.
And if this is the first you've heard of the game and you're now wracking your liquified brins wondering how the hell this is all going to fit into one game, then know the following. Catherine is the story of Vincent, a man going through a relationship crisis. Pressured to marry Katherine, his partner of five years, hestarts an affair withthe similarly-named Catherine, a younger woman he's just met. His neighbourhood is also suffering a spate of horrific deaths in young men, all of whom died in their sleep with looks of abject terror on their faces. And after meeting Catherine, Vincent's dreams start to get really weird...
Adventuring during the daylight hours in order to further explore the mystery, and platforming by night to survive his increasingly hideous and surreal dreamscape, Vincent has a lot on his plate. But when it's served up like this, I'm more than happy to put in an order and get ready to gorge myself.
What do you reckon? Intrigued by Atlus' latest offering of deliciously dark madness? Or are you a little too deeply within the realm of WTF?
