Catherine: Love is Over.

Catherine is the terrifically fresh mysterious relationship-testing horror puzzler by ATLUS, a company that’s infamous for their Persona video game series. Our hero(?), Vincent is contemplating (while drinking at the bar Stray Sheep) whether or not to marry his long-time girlfriend Katherine. He meets the voluptuous Catherine there. She sits next to him, they talk, she’s his type too and uh, er, a one night stand occurs, yeah. After this rendezvous with Catherine, Vincent begins to have nightmares. In these dreams, Vincent (in his boxers and clutching onto a pillow) along with other “sheep” have to keep climbing or perish; the so-called climbing echoes the retro Q-Bert arcade game and a soaring Jenga-ish tower, except that it is way more arduous and deadly to scale. Can’t slow down either. The tower is collapsing!

Furthermore, depending on how Vincent answers particular texts and queries throughout Catherine, his meter may (or may not) strongly fluctuate between a mystifying blue side and red side. Also, the core narrative of the game is grandly told. The rearrangements and remixes of well-known classical music totally accentuate the intensity and the horror aspect of Catherine. For some the game’s difficulty might be a bit nightmarish sometimes, but don’t ever give up, keep on climbing!

Haven’t had enough yet? Babel mode features randomized bonus stages, crafted specifically for one player or two players to ascend. Challenging Babel can unlock more songs for Jukebox and the online Time Attack mode. To boot, don’t forget about Rapunzel, an old school game inside the Stray Sheep bar during story mode that has an impressive sixty-four levels of puzzle-solving madness to undertake. There’s no tricks, no enemies, merely blocks, but it is ultimately a deceiving task to surmount.

In Colosseum mode, two players can be tormented and endure variations of stages Vincent had to cautiously and quickly climb up in the game’s story mode: The Golden Playhouse. All forms of the “blocks” that the Catherine video game tortured Vincent with appear in this head-to-head climbing competition

In a nutshell, ATLUS’s Catherine is an unequaled experience that deservedly warrants umpteen replays so poor Vincent can suffer again and again and again. And with multiple endings and other various goodies to achieve, Catherine will continue ravaging Vincent’s life for a long time.

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