Catherine (PS3)
Dec. 13th, 2016 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroCatherine has appeared. It's the killer! Do not die.
Vincent is having the worst week of his life, as his longtime girlfriend wants their relationship to get serious just as a mysterious new girl falls into his lap…and at the same time a nightmare curse stalks cheating men, killing them in their dreams. In his dreams and in reality, Vincent races to outrun his own terrible choices which have manifested as supernatural menace.
This is half visual novel, half action-puzzler, and clearly aiming for “freaky”. In theory it’s a spinoff from the Shin Megami Tensai series, but really it’s a special kind of weird. It’s about infidelity and climbing nightmare towers full of sheep.
I’m not entirely sure why they felt the need to do half the cutscenes in traditional animation and half as polygon-rendered system. Possibly so they could have a full variety of really weird stupid faces for Vincent to make when he gets upset.
Vincent is clearly a useless manchild from the start, who doesn’t seem interested in taking any initiative in his own life. He’s upset that Katherine (his girlfriend) is trying to actually prod him towards marriage but says nothing. Catherine (the woman he has an affair with—not confusing at all) basically throws herself at him and he “helplessly” goes along with it. And the main plot is so on-rails that even when his inner monologue manages to come up with a good plan, his mouth produces useless mumbles.
This game is insanely steeped in toxic heteronormative culture—the plot is basically that of a ‘50s Archie comic that decided to amp up the “freakiness” and “sexiness” without actually examining anything. Katherine is the long-suffering adult who’s taking on the responsibility of being “mom” to Vincent; Catherine is an irrational monster seductress; and Vincent is apparently an utter slave to his sexual urges and completely incapable of coherently expressing his feelings. “Cheating” on someone is the only thing that really matters (with no discussion of monogamy, just the implicit expectation by all characters that any instance of non-monogamy is the ultimate sin). The idea that his goal in all of the nightmares is just to escape makes perfect sense as something he could honestly accomplish. The man is so insanely conflict-avoidant it’s maddening.
Whoever did the monster designs for the nightmare stages knows their shit, because those things are freaky. The reversed human body with the face on the ass and giant fanged maw instead of genitalia is an excellent representation of the game’s idea for invoking fear: Beware the inhuman vagina-monster, it’s trying to eat you.
The texting system annoys me, because there are several choices for each message, but you need to effectively “write” and “delete” them all to see what they are, and often there is no “good” choice—replying to Catherine at all has a tendency to screw you. (As per standard Atlus rules, the choices are less “good and evil” so much as “law and chaos,” and neither really has the protagonist’s best interests at heart.) Though there aren’t any alternate events in the game, only alternate endings; your choices only matter when you beat the game, not during it. (To be fair, though, the branch endings are radically different: The “true” Law path ends in a happy wedding scene, the Chaos path in Vincent becoming a lord of Hell, and the Neutral path has him joining a space colony.)
By the halfway point, the puzzle stages get very nasty. Playing on Easy mode doesn’t really make them easier, it just gets you a ton of retries (1-ups become 3-ups, and several spawn right after checkpoints, so dying a lot just increases your retry count). I found that retrying stages quickly went from “I’m going to figure this out!” to “Seriously, this is insane, WTF?” I eventually gave up and watched a Let’s Play of the second half.
So, the big twist is that Catherine isn’t a real woman, she’s a succubus summoned by “Boss” (who is some sort of ancient demon and the consort of fertility goddess Ishtar), and it’s him who sends these nightmares to “weed out” young men who are “wasting women’s fertile years.” That’s…very, very Japanese. And neatly removes Catherine’s autonomy, in case you were worried she might have any. Also, it reduces Katherine to a walking womb, as supernatural forces are arrayed to get her to break up with Vincent and get with someone who’ll knock her up. Anyone got a Feminism 101 class they need to write a term paper for?
(A totally odd aside is its own chapter: Erica, the waitress, mentions also having the dreams, which the characters take to mean that gender isn’t a factor. But in the ending, Erica is revealed to be a transwoman who went by “Eric” in college (which Toby recoils from, upsettingly predictably). So…it’s nice that the characters all happily accepted her transition and see her as female; but the “powers that be” apparently don’t? (Toby had sex with her and didn’t suspect anything, which means she’s neither a fertile female nor preventing one from having babies. Why would she have nightmares?)
Overall: I rather like the puzzle system and actual gameplay, except…Atlus. And the character development / visual novel sections have a lot of potential, except…Atlus. This game is for people who actively enjoy the insane parts of the Persona franchise and can tolerate more misogyny than usual.
Vincent is having the worst week of his life, as his longtime girlfriend wants their relationship to get serious just as a mysterious new girl falls into his lap…and at the same time a nightmare curse stalks cheating men, killing them in their dreams. In his dreams and in reality, Vincent races to outrun his own terrible choices which have manifested as supernatural menace.
This is half visual novel, half action-puzzler, and clearly aiming for “freaky”. In theory it’s a spinoff from the Shin Megami Tensai series, but really it’s a special kind of weird. It’s about infidelity and climbing nightmare towers full of sheep.
I’m not entirely sure why they felt the need to do half the cutscenes in traditional animation and half as polygon-rendered system. Possibly so they could have a full variety of really weird stupid faces for Vincent to make when he gets upset.
Vincent is clearly a useless manchild from the start, who doesn’t seem interested in taking any initiative in his own life. He’s upset that Katherine (his girlfriend) is trying to actually prod him towards marriage but says nothing. Catherine (the woman he has an affair with—not confusing at all) basically throws herself at him and he “helplessly” goes along with it. And the main plot is so on-rails that even when his inner monologue manages to come up with a good plan, his mouth produces useless mumbles.
This game is insanely steeped in toxic heteronormative culture—the plot is basically that of a ‘50s Archie comic that decided to amp up the “freakiness” and “sexiness” without actually examining anything. Katherine is the long-suffering adult who’s taking on the responsibility of being “mom” to Vincent; Catherine is an irrational monster seductress; and Vincent is apparently an utter slave to his sexual urges and completely incapable of coherently expressing his feelings. “Cheating” on someone is the only thing that really matters (with no discussion of monogamy, just the implicit expectation by all characters that any instance of non-monogamy is the ultimate sin). The idea that his goal in all of the nightmares is just to escape makes perfect sense as something he could honestly accomplish. The man is so insanely conflict-avoidant it’s maddening.
Whoever did the monster designs for the nightmare stages knows their shit, because those things are freaky. The reversed human body with the face on the ass and giant fanged maw instead of genitalia is an excellent representation of the game’s idea for invoking fear: Beware the inhuman vagina-monster, it’s trying to eat you.
The texting system annoys me, because there are several choices for each message, but you need to effectively “write” and “delete” them all to see what they are, and often there is no “good” choice—replying to Catherine at all has a tendency to screw you. (As per standard Atlus rules, the choices are less “good and evil” so much as “law and chaos,” and neither really has the protagonist’s best interests at heart.) Though there aren’t any alternate events in the game, only alternate endings; your choices only matter when you beat the game, not during it. (To be fair, though, the branch endings are radically different: The “true” Law path ends in a happy wedding scene, the Chaos path in Vincent becoming a lord of Hell, and the Neutral path has him joining a space colony.)
By the halfway point, the puzzle stages get very nasty. Playing on Easy mode doesn’t really make them easier, it just gets you a ton of retries (1-ups become 3-ups, and several spawn right after checkpoints, so dying a lot just increases your retry count). I found that retrying stages quickly went from “I’m going to figure this out!” to “Seriously, this is insane, WTF?” I eventually gave up and watched a Let’s Play of the second half.
So, the big twist is that Catherine isn’t a real woman, she’s a succubus summoned by “Boss” (who is some sort of ancient demon and the consort of fertility goddess Ishtar), and it’s him who sends these nightmares to “weed out” young men who are “wasting women’s fertile years.” That’s…very, very Japanese. And neatly removes Catherine’s autonomy, in case you were worried she might have any. Also, it reduces Katherine to a walking womb, as supernatural forces are arrayed to get her to break up with Vincent and get with someone who’ll knock her up. Anyone got a Feminism 101 class they need to write a term paper for?
(A totally odd aside is its own chapter: Erica, the waitress, mentions also having the dreams, which the characters take to mean that gender isn’t a factor. But in the ending, Erica is revealed to be a transwoman who went by “Eric” in college (which Toby recoils from, upsettingly predictably). So…it’s nice that the characters all happily accepted her transition and see her as female; but the “powers that be” apparently don’t? (Toby had sex with her and didn’t suspect anything, which means she’s neither a fertile female nor preventing one from having babies. Why would she have nightmares?)
Overall: I rather like the puzzle system and actual gameplay, except…Atlus. And the character development / visual novel sections have a lot of potential, except…Atlus. This game is for people who actively enjoy the insane parts of the Persona franchise and can tolerate more misogyny than usual.
