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| Catherine--you're pretty much her bitch. Source |
As any good stand up comedian can tell you, marriage is the end of everything--ever! With this I present Atlus's Catherine. You play as Vincent Brooks, a lovable loser just trying to get by in modern society. You know this guy, unmotivated with a messy bachelor pad, and yet friendly and harmless enough to hang out with on a Friday night. Plus it's impossible to say Vincent's dreams are completely crushed--a poster of a Space Tourism company is on his wall; fantasies of travel and true freedom persist.
Catherine is self-described as a romance-horror and like Portal is a puzzle game with a heavy sense of narrative. The story is about Vincent's relationship with two women. The first is Katherine, his long time girlfriend who wants the 32 year-old slacker to settle down and marry her. At a lunch date with Katherine, Vincent watches half-awake as she taps her ice-blue nails against the table. "Snap out of it! Were you even listening?" she demands. It's clear from the start that this is a far from perfect relationship. Regardless, she wants to pin her man down.
The second woman in Vincent's life is the title character Catherine (that's right this one's with a C). Vincent finds her in his bed one morning, the result of an affair--one that he has no memory of whatsoever. What's worse is it keeps happening night after night and not once can Vincent recall how she got there. Catherine is an enigma.
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| Katherine with a K. The K is for kontrol-freak. |
Gameplay in Catherine is split between hanging out in a bar with Vincent and his friends and The Nightmare puzzle stages. Time spent at The Stray Sheep bar is mostly mundane. The player can talk with fellow patrons, check out dirty pics on Vincent's phone sent from Catherine, and order drinks--which provides trivia on the beverage and will lead the player to learn waaaay more about alcohol than they ever imagined possible.
Then there are The Nightmare stages. Ever worthy of their name not only for the creepy backgrounds with rusty chains and sharp objects reminiscent of a Saw movie, but the frenetic block pushing puzzle gameplay. As you push blocks to climb up a tower, the ground collapses beneath the player. It's a gameplay style that says, "Be careful and cautions and...HURRY UP!" all at once.
What's worse is the end of each Nightmare segment contains a boss chasing poor Vincent up the tower. Each boss, referred to as "the killer", is a dark reflection of something in Vincent's personal life that he is unwilling to confront in the real world.
According to psychologist Carl Jung, dreams are a playground for universal symbols--ones that all minds can understand. "Jung believed the human psyche exists in three parts: the ego (the conscious mind), the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious."
Vincent isn't alone in the nightmare phase. Others appear in this dreamers' realm, all male, taking on the appearance of bipedal sheep. Not to give too much away but let's just say all these men have something in common--these sheep are being "led astray" from the women in their lives. None see themselves as a sheep, yet they see all the other men as so. A gathering of the collective unconscious of unfaithful men. Each being chased night after night by what Jung would call The Shadow. If the sheep-men fail the climb in the dream....the die in real life.
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| Ah! I feel Jung again! Source |
For Vincent The Shadow has many forms. One level's boss/killer has a large pair of hands, one of which is holding a giant fork. The fingers sport the cold, blue, painted nails of Katherine. In another he is pursued by a monster clearly inspired by the other Catherine. Called the Immoral Beast, the creature threatens to eat the protagonist with a gaping dentata that would make Jung's wannabe mentor, Sigmund Freud, a proud father indeed.
Also worth noting Catherine has a unique morality system that goes beyond the typical good and evil choices of most video games. The arrow tilts between blue and red but it's not a choice of good or bad--it's a life of freedom vs. a life of control. Which Catherine/Katherine will you choose?
