If you loved Super Meat Boy, you should check this game out. Will you love it as much? Probably not. TBP is all about a little girl who picks up some mysterious cursed book that turns her into a demon in her dreams. The game has a Lovecraftian style but the same 8-bit graphics as Super Meat Boy. The game features twitch reflex platforming and combat.
The platforming is simple enough, with abilities to double jump and cling to walls, but the game requires mastering the controls to maneuver through nigh-impossible paths that require pixel-perfect timing. The combat is actually what brings this game down so much. The developers tried to make it too complicated. Hitting the attack button doesn’t really do much damage to enemies, which is stupid. You also don’t get a multiplier if you use a standard attack. They want you to be “creative” and use the dash attack, knock them into obstacles, and use the high kick. I know these kinds of moves don’t belong in this kind of game. The combat system is convoluted and requires too much thinking for a game that relies on instinct and muscle memory responses. After a platforming section, I start wailing on an enemy and realize I have to think about this combat system. It hurts my brain and really messes with the momentum of the otherwise solid platforming and controls.
There is a neat checkpoint system that allows you to put it wherever you want. If you get enough purple orbs, you can fill up your checkpoint meter and stay still for a while. This will place a checkpoint at that spot, allowing you to save them for complicated platforming sections. This alleviates the frustrating combat that leads to some cheap deaths. If you do well enough on a level, you can unlock special stages that are from the iOS version and user-created.
With all of this combined, They Bleed Pixels would be great if it weren’t for that combat system. You just can’t stop and think about fighting when you are on a good platforming run. The custom checkpoint system helps remove some of that frustration, but in the end, I just want to hit an enemy a few times and be done. Even having to do the complicated moves just to flip switches is pretty annoying. If you can look past this, you will enjoy this game, but most people will just stick with Super Meat Boy.
Sleeping Dogs is actually a True Crime in Hong Kong, for most people who didn’t know. Does anyone care? No, because the True Crime series had two previous games that were mediocre to poor, and there was little hope for this game. Square Enix picked up the project, seeing the potential in the game, and released it as Sleeping Dogs because they did not buy the name from the previous company. What we have here is probably the best GTA clone since Saints Row, and that’s saying a lot. There have been many GTA clones, but very few are any good or do anything different. Sleeping Dogs features a fluid martial arts system, a huge open world, a gripping story and characters, and a few side missions.
The story is actually very gripping and entertaining. You play an ex-triad member turned cop named Wei Shen. You are working undercover to bring down the Son On Yee triad gang and bring in their chairman. Your rival gang is the 18K, which is relentlessly making hits on your turf. This isn’t just your typical gang war story. You actually get to really like the characters and feel for all of them in different ways. While you were working for the triad, you could do cop missions on the side as well as bust drug deals throughout the city. This story is pretty epic and has a satisfying ending. I never once felt bored or detached from the story.
If that isn’t enough, then the combat system should help bring you in. The combat system is simple but deep and requires some skill to stay alive. You can counter when enemies turn red, but you must use the attack button and hold the button in combination to bring them down. The animations are fluid, and you can really feel the punches. This isn’t just some wailing and kicking combat system that feels half-baked and broken. Some enemies may have weapons that you can take and use, but they are pretty rare because they do so much damage. If you are doing really well, you will go into an adrenaline-type state and start to heal, while enemies may flee from you. The other half of this combat is the gunplay, which is really smooth and well designed. The cover system works great because, as you leave cover, you can go into slow motion and shoot out enemies who might be an immediate threat. This also goes for jumping from ledges. Once you actually start completing missions, you will earn Cop, Triad, and Face experience, which allows you to upgrade to better moves. Each one can be upgraded to level 10, but I reached this level way before I finished the game, so I felt all that experience, later on, was wasted. There just aren’t enough upgrades in the game.
Another main feature of the game is a parkour system similar to Assassin’s Creed. Chase sequences play out often, but instead of climbing up walls, you can climb ledges and jump gaps. The trick here is to hit the sprint button just before each obstacle so you can smoothly go over them. Keep fumbling over everything, and you will lose your target. This is something that has never really been incorporated into a GTA clone, and Sleeping Dogs nails it perfectly.
Of course, you can travel around the huge, open city of Hong Kong, but there isn’t much to do. There are the drug-busting side missions, favors, races, and random events, as well as finding hidden boxes for money and clothes. That’s about it. I wound up doing all the favors and most drug-busting side missions, but I didn’t care for the others. There are some hacking mini-games thrown in here, as well as lock picking, bug planting, and other mini-games that are fun. There’s a lot of detail put into the gameplay of Sleeping Dogs, but I just wish I could do more in this huge city.
After you finish the main story, there’s no reason to really go back unless you want to collect all the boxes (which can all be shown on your map, thankfully), but after you finish this, you will probably have had enough. The driving works great; there are lots of different cars; taking taxis is convenient; and there are other things you will be familiar with within this kind of genre, but Sleeping Dogs masters the story, characters, and combat system very well. My biggest complaint is only the lack of variety in side missions and the large number of bugs and glitches in the PC version.
The PC versions do give us some nice DirectX 11 visuals with a free high-resolution texture pack for people who have 1GB video cards or better. There is a huge difference with the game maxed out on the consoles. The anti-aliasing and FXAA make the game look smooth and flawless, plus the ambient occlusion adds a little extra that consoles can’t do. The PC version is by far the superior version, and most of the bugs have been ironed out by now since there have been 5 patches released thus far, but a large number of crashes and bugs were unacceptable at launch.
Sleeping Dogs is a beautiful game, both in execution and spirit. The game really captures the Chinese culture, atmosphere, and triad feel of Hong Kong. This is a must-buy for any fan of the genre, and if you have a high-end PC, make sure to pick that version up.
Diablo III is one of the most long-awaited games in history. StarCraft II and Duke Nukem Forever are in the same boat, but Diablo III is something else. Everyone who played the last two games was either in high school or college at the time and is now in their 30s and 40s. 12 years in the making with so much turmoil and history to write a novel about. Now that the game is finally out, is it any good? Blizzard surprised us with StarCraft II and how good that game is, but can they do it twice in a row? The answer is yes. The game has its fair share of problems, but they were mainly during launch with a plethora of glitches, balancing, and server issues. Most of the major problems have been patched now, so I won’t spend time complaining about that because I didn’t experience any issues apart from the occasional server error.
The story in Diablo III is fairly good, but only people who played the last two will truly appreciate it. I found the middle of the game to be pretty uneventful, but the ending was great, with a few plot twists. You play as one of many hero classes who are trying to stop the Prime Evils from taking over the world. Not just Diablo, but Azmodan, Mephisto, Belial, and many others. One of the best things about the game is the many different locales, from indoors to outdoors. The art style is absolutely beautiful, leaving you with plenty of great scenery to look at.
Of course, a dungeon crawler isn’t one without a lot of loot, and Diablo III has an endless amount. The best loot is at higher levels (60 is the cap) and on Nightmare difficulty. This is really a game for people who want loot. You can blow through the story and reach around level 30, but it will take another play-through to get the best loot. Why do you want this loot so bad? To sell in the auction house for in-game gold or real-world cash. That’s right. Cash. People can bid on it or buy it outright, but don’t expect anyone to bid on the crappy stuff. Only level 60 loot is really being fought for. I tried selling dozens of rare items throughout my playthrough and only sold one for $1.25. Really sad.
The best loot comes from bosses, which are highlighted in gold. Main bosses give you the best stuff, but they can be tough as nails. Some bosses were pretty easy, such as mid-level bosses or blue sub-bosses. There were a few that just kept killing me, but I didn’t die all that often. The penalty isn’t very severe, with just 10% durability of all your equipped items taken away, but you can always repair it at a town center. One thing I didn’t do at all was buy items. I always found the best ones as drops rather than at shops. I didn’t even craft any items, which is a shame. I found this to be sorely wasted. I did like the new gem ability, which will raise the stats of items significantly. Weaker gems can be crafted into more powerful ones as well.
Of course, you can take a buddy with you, but you really don’t have to. This is only recommended for Nightmare difficulty, but most people will probably want to take a long break from the game and come back a few months later when the game feels a little fresher. After I finished the game, I felt I needed a long break because you are just clicking around madly while using 1-4 keys for your attacks. I sure wasn’t disappointed here because there are plenty of abilities to learn; I just wish you could hotkey more of them instead of just four. I even wish there were some better AoE attacks because the last two acts throw a ton of tough enemies at you, and you are constantly boxed in. I managed, but it would have been nice.
At the end of the day, you are just clicking around furiously at everything that moves and trying to find the best loot in the game to sell in the auction house. This is a game for people who are dedicated. Sure, you can enjoy the single-player mode, but if you really want to experience the way Diablo was built to be played, you must continue on with a second playthrough on a harder difficulty. Sure, the game has good voice acting, some of the most beautiful pre-rendered cutscenes I have ever seen, lots of abilities, and tons of loot, but in the end, this is all this game is about. Looting, clicking, and selling. If you don’t like that, then you will hate this game.
My biggest complaint would have to be that the layout of each level is nearly the same. There is a fog of war on the map, and you have to discover where everything is. There may be some side quests, hidden chests, and sub-bosses, but I found this tiring and kind of boring. What’s here is great; I just wish there was a little more variety. Another thing I will complain about is the game’s DRM. You need to be online at all times, or it will boot you and you will lose your progress. I hated this more than anything, but Blizzard has successfully sidestepped pirates, and I applaud them for that. It’s probably the only video game ever made that isn’t pirateable. Other than this, the game is great and well worth a purchase.
Survival games without the horror are hard to come by, and I Am Alive has a lot of potential. Being stranded after a natural disaster that pretty much wipes out the planet, you are trying to find your wife and daughter after getting injured and trekking across the country back to your apartment. You stumble upon a little girl that you end up helping, along with her current caretaker. The story has some interesting points but ultimately isn’t all that interesting. The plot doesn’t thicken very much, and right when it should, the game ends. What we are left with is a disappointing cliffhanger.
There are two main elements in the game: exploration and combat. Each has a huge flaw that makes the game a tad frustrating, but not so bad that you can’t look past it. The exploration is based on a stamina meter that slowly depletes while you climb, combat, run, jump, and pretty much anything else you do. This is fine and all, except when you are down on the ground in the ash. The meter slowly depletes until you are dead or climb up high out of the ash. This is the most frustrating thing in the game and makes you not want to explore and help people. Climbing is just fine because it makes you think quickly and decide whether or not risking your stamina capacity is worth getting a bullet or healing item. If you start to deplete too much while climbing, you can use pistons to recharge or items that give you stamina and stamina capacity. If you run out of stamina, you will go into an effort mode where you quickly tap a button and your capacity starts depleting. If you deplete this, you’re dead. Not once did I completely deplete my capacity, so don’t worry about that being hard.
Secondly, comes the combat. Bullets are extremely rare, but you have to intimidate enemies by pointing your gun at them. They will put their hands up, but enemies with guns will not. You need to use strategy and decide who to kill first. Sometimes an enemy will get cocky and speak up. If you kill him first, the others may surrender. If not, you can order them to back up and knock them into fire or off high ledges. If you put your gun down, they will start charging. If you are out of bullets, you need to be careful and not pull the trigger, or they will know you’re empty. This isn’t as clever as it sounds because, in execution, there are problems. If you are completely out of bullets, you are pretty much screwed if there is more than one enemy with a gun. You can walk up to him and surprise kill him, take his bullet, and shoot another gun wielder, but then you’re out of bullets again. You may have two more guys to kill with knives, so what do you do? That’s the flaw. Each scenario is set up with really only one outcome. Later on, the combat gets really frustrating, despite having a bow with retrievable arrows. These arrows are so rare that I only found three in the whole game. The combat is great on paper but slightly flawed in execution.
When you help people, you will get extra retries, but there are items you need to find to help them. Some want rarer items than others, but in the end, the ash issue kept me from exploring everywhere and helping anyone. They abused this stamina meter and should have held back a bit. That’s pretty much all there is to the game. You rotate around exploration and combat, but in the end, the game could have been a lot more. I love the idea of the combat, but it really needs work in the next game.
Despite those two major flaws, I Am Alive is entertaining, and when you aren’t freely exploring, the game is quite fun. The atmosphere is foreboding, but the story isn’t as interesting as it could have been. At least the PC gets some enhanced visuals with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, so the game doesn’t look as ugly. For the small price, I Am Alive is worth this purchase, but most people may want to download a demo first before buying.
Oni was a very hyped anime-style game back in the day. This game was made by Rockstar before getting into 3D Grand Theft Autos and other games. This game has a lot of potential but is flawed in a lot of ways that make the game more boring and frustrating than bad. With that said, the only redeeming quality is the good-looking combat animations and challenges.
Right out of the gate, you will notice that the controls are complete, both upside and backward. All the combat moves are on the shoulder buttons. Why in the world they thought of this is beyond me. You actually don’t really use the face buttons all that much. This makes jumping, fighting, and shooting clumsy and cumbersome, and you can’t change the controls to something more natural. These are just some of the worst action and adventure controls I have ever used. The actual combat is fine, but executing these moves is a pain. I felt like I was stumbling over myself because I had to think about the controls. These just aren’t natural! Jumping with R1, L2, and L1 is kick and punch, and you pick up items with R3. What?! I felt like I was trying to solve a Rubix cube, not play a game.
Secondly, there is the exploration factor. The levels are boring. They all look pretty much the same, with flat, boring textures, and the design is confusing and labyrinthine on some levels. There’s no direction, and your compass is useless. The bar gets smaller as you get near an objective, but if you are two flights down, it will act like you’re standing right next to it. Enemies are stupid and clumsy, boss fights are frustrating, and the game just can’t compensate for its own design with the clumsy controls. I can’t tell you how tired I got after just three levels of finding this colored console to open the same colored door over and over again.
The story isn’t really worth sticking around the 14 levels either. The anime cutscenes are nice, but you probably won’t even get through this slog of a game. I tried really hard to keep going, but there was never a change of pace. It didn’t help that there is no mid-level saving and the checkpoint placement is unfair. If you quit in the middle of a level, you have to start all over. There are just a lot of annoying things with this game, but even if it were flawless, you still have the fact that the game is just boring and not very fun.
When it is all said and done, only the hardest core of anime fans will stick around until the end. You really had to have played this when it first came out, then come back for nostalgic purposes. The game is just clumsy and boring, but it has so much potential if only the developers spent more time on it. As it stands, I really can’t recommend this to anyone.
90s kids remember Oregon Trail at school on those old, colorful iMacs, right? If you didn’t, then you had a terrible childhood! For those who did, you must play this game. Organ Trail is a zombie take on the Oregon Trail gameplay, but it is much better with a great atmosphere.
You start off by shooting some zombies, but you run out of ammo. Someone comes to help, but he ends up getting bitten, so you put him down. Yes, you can put down people in this game! After you name your characters with names that aren’t real names (you all did it!) You set off in your station wagon to the first town. This is where you decide what kind of supplies you are going to start off with. Ammo, money, tires, batteries, gas, food, and mufflers. Your station wagon is your life. If it breaks down, you aren’t getting to the west coast. In between landmarks, random events will display that will affect your character or car in some way. Sometimes harsh weather may make you drive slower; you might find interesting things on the road, lose things on the road, get ambushed by biker gangs, have to drive through a horde of zombies, etc.
Not all of this is as simple as flipping through menus. When a gang attacks, you have to ram them off the road with your car, or their bullets will cause precious damage to your car. When you see a horde, you have to decide how to approach them. Is the horde docile? Then sneak through at a slow speed. You can blast your way through or hire mercenaries to protect you, but they are very expensive. There are events that you run into where you have to decide whether to help the person, leave, or kill them. This is a game about surviving a zombie apocalypse, and it is very dark and moody. These events make the game feel like a true adventure. Even scavenging at any time can be a risky move due to how many bullets you have and your health. If you don’t survive, you could possibly die by taking too much damage!
Of course, you can rest and heal your group, but this costs food. Using medkits should only be kept for yourself so you can quickly heal after scavenging. When you reach a town, you can either buy upgrades for your car and pay to repair it, or you can use the scrap you find to do it yourself. This costs lots of food and may not be successful if you don’t have enough scrap. Sometimes you can take jobs for people or trade with them for items you desperately need. I have never played a game like this where I had to think about every single decision so much.
My only main issue is that the game can be too hard sometimes, and the shooting mechanic is clumsy. You hold back the gun and let go to shoot, but the three pixels that help you aim aren’t much help. I found the aiming too sensitive and desperately needed a longer guide or larger projectiles. The shooting sections are the hardest in the game because tons of zombies will come after you, so you must constantly be on the move. I found the character’s moves too slow—just barely faster than the zombies. If this issue were fixed, this game would be perfect. A lot of people will be turned off by the Atari 2600-style graphics, but they add to the charm. The atmosphere is surprisingly well done here, despite the ancient-looking graphics.
Overall, the game requires a lot of thinking and careful strategy but throws in enough random events to make it seem almost realistic. The shooting mechanic is finicky, and the character moves too slowly, but I couldn’t put this game down. Even after dying halfway across America, I tried again because the next journey was completely different from the last. I even decided to take more of something else and try again. This is a wonderful game, but it may not be for everyone.
The Walking Dead is probably my favorite adventure series of all time. It surpasses most adventure game clichés like inventory management, tank controls, and disjointed pacing. The Walking Dead: Episode 3 is well-paced, and there are some of the toughest choices you have to make. Things get very serious this time around because the group is starting to lose its mental stability. There’s a lot of internal fighting, and you must decide how this all turns out.
The group is trying to get to Savannah, Georgia, because things at the motel didn’t work out so well. They find a train engine that takes them partway, but I won’t say any more. There are a few major areas you can explore with a few simple puzzles, but like usual, the opening is awesome, and I played through this entire episode and wanted the next one right away. There are three new characters introduced, but at the same time, a few people in the group die. Who or how is up to you, but you will be shocked at how this all turns out. I actually had to pause the game with my mouth agape due to the shocking turns and, mainly, how it actually happened.
There’s more zombie killing this time around, but not nearly as much as in the first episode. I found myself glued to my computer more than Episode 2, and I felt like the story was actually progressing better. A lot of bugs are also starting to get ironed out, such as the constant stuttering during cut scenes and some control issues. You won’t be exploring much, just in the main puzzle areas, but this is OK because of how much the story advances through dialog choices. This is about the time when a lot of your choices from the last two episodes will really start blossoming here. Some choices I made actually determined huge plot changes, and I realized either I shouldn’t have done something or wish I had done something, but that’s the excitement of this series. You feel like you are playing a movie and directing it yourself.
I just can’t wait for the fourth episode because things will really start going downhill from there. This episode is a huge turning point for the story, and every fan will want more.
Sniper Elite: V2 doesn’t stand for version 2, as some people may think. This is about trying to stop the Germans from using V2 rockets in World War II. After seeing those three words, you probably left this review already. Another WWII game? V2 has a lot of potential but is lacking in many areas due to the developers’ laziness in design. The story is nothing special, with the only satisfying thing being sniper shots.
The game is all about stealth, but right away you will notice this is broken. The enemies are laid out in such a poor manner that it is hard to figure out how to take everyone out without raising an alert. If you do so, you have to fight it out with limited ammo from your other weapons, and you die very quickly. Using sniper rifles is just fine with the ability to hold your breath to steady your aim. Slowly, a red diamond will focus on a part of an enemy, and that is where your bullet will land. Once you fire, the game uses a bullet camera, and sometimes you will see an X-ray shot of the bullet penetrating the target’s organs (the nut shot is awesome!). You will see the skull shatter, organs burst, and eyes explode. This is the most satisfying use of a sniper rifle for any shooter. The problem is, the fun stops there.
Of course, sniper rifles back then really didn’t have silencers, so once you make the shot, everyone knows you’re there. Some levels have loud noises you can mask the shot from, but this can be difficult. The enemy AI is extremely dumb; they won’t notice a dead comrade right next to them, or they will spot you from hundreds of yards away with some sort of eagle vision. On top of all that, enemies spawn strangely out of some sort of ether because you will walk a hallway with no enemies, circle around, and then somehow there’s an enemy there. This makes stealth frustrating as hell, and you will rage quit often. It doesn’t help that the forced shootouts are frustrating and hard because you die almost instantly.
You can lay traps for enemies and such, but I honestly didn’t find any reason to do this much. Even the level design is screwy because the hallways are confusing and everything looks the same. There just isn’t enough satisfaction from finishing levels and outsmarting enemies because, in reality, you’re exploiting the dumb AI to advance through the levels. After just about 3 or 4, you will probably have enough and call it quits. It is just so sad that the great sniper mechanic was wasted on such a boring and dull game. The graphics look pretty good, but other than that, you won’t stay interested. I had this game on my HDD for about 2 months, and even when I had nothing to play, I couldn’t go back to this drab game.
Overall, V2 has some awesome kill shots and great sniper rifles; everything else is a bust. Dumb AI, poor stealth mechanics, boring level design, uninteresting stories, and frustrating shootouts. The multiplayer is pretty satisfying, but you won’t be coming back for long. V2 is a huge disappointment over a prequel that was fairly decent. Even the most patient gamers won’t last here.
THQ and Vigil return with a new protagonist and tons of improvements over the first game. This time you play as Death, War’s brother, who is trying to redeem War from the Charred Council’s wrath for destroying humanity. On your adventure, you meet new and old faces, as well as a ton of puzzles, bosses, and combatants, as well as new abilities.
The first thing I have to mention is that this game isn’t nearly as confusing to play as the first game. I was always lost and had no idea what to do. Even finding hidden chests was a pain. This time around, there are lots of collectibles and chests, as well as some free-roaming, but in a more organized fashion. You wind up traveling through three different realms, each with its own secrets. The Forge Land is where you start, and you can buy armor and weapons, so Vulgrim plays a small part this time around. By finding Book of the Dead pages and Boatman coins, you can trade them in for special keys as well as random boxes with a piece of armor or weapon from Vulgrim. There are lots of different items to collect and find, so loot is abundant here.
My favorite part about the game is the platforming. It’s just so fun and fluid, as well as fast-paced. The level design is ingenious here because it seems labyrinthine at first, but I rarely had to go to a walkthrough to figure out where to go or what to do. Death even gets to acquire some abilities that are just for puzzle-solving, like the Soulsplitter, which allows him to split into two, and the Voidwalker, which makes a return from the last game. I found the puzzles to be really fun, and they were just challenging enough that you only had to think for a bit before it all clicked. The satisfaction reminded me of how I felt when solving puzzles in Portal.
Secondly, the combat is a lot better than in the last game. Death feels fast, fluid, and has a lot more moves at his disposal than War did. You can buy over 20 new moves throughout the game, as well as upgrade your skills. You will need to play the game twice to be able to upgrade all the skills, but what I did unlock was fun. Eventually, certain moves leached health from enemies, gave me more wrath (needed to do these moves), and stunned enemies. You can turn into Reaper for a while, which does a lot of damage, and you take very little damage. Overall, the combat was just fine, but the camera had issues. Every so often, when I was in a tight corner, the camera didn’t know what to do. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, you can’t really see what’s going on and will take hits. After Forge Lands, the game gets extremely difficult. I died multiple times during certain fights because they were so hard. You also get fewer health potions later on, which can lead to frustrating deaths.
The boss fights are some of the best things the game has to offer. There are plenty of them, and they are fun but challenging. You have to be quick, dodge, and learn the enemy’s moves. There isn’t a block button here, so the game can get really tough. I did find the final boss disappointing because I beat him in one try in just a few short minutes. Besides these issues, the combat is fun, solid, and well done.
I did find the game a bit repetitive after a while. It was the same thing over and over again, just in different orders. Fight these enemies, solve this puzzle, and do this platforming bit. Most action-adventure games are like that, but Darksiders II doesn’t offer much variety. Even the enemies repeat themselves constantly, to the point where you just get sick of killing them. The only time I felt excited about combat after the mid-way point was during the boss fights. Thankfully, the game is just overall fun, so even when you feel the game is getting old, you will want to press on.
The game looks pretty good, with a gorgeous art style. The textures can look a bit ugly up close, and I was disappointed that Vigil didn’t include any PC-specific features. In fact, the graphics options only allow you to change the resolution, and V-Sync doesn’t even work. The keyboard and mouse controls are clunky, so stick with the Games for Windows controller if you have it. There are plenty of collectibles in the world, so people who are dedicated to them will stay busy. This is one long game, ranging from about 15 to 20 hours if you just go through the story and most side quests. If you complete it 100%, you are looking at close to 40 hours of gameplay here. I just couldn’t find the motivation to collect everything, like in games such as the new Batman games and Assassin’s Creed. After I got to the end of the game, I just wanted to finish it and be done.
Overall, Darksiders II is a solid action-adventure game with some minor issues. There are no PC-specific graphics options, there are camera issues during combat, and the final boss fight is a disappointment. Enemies repeat often, and the same puzzle, platform, and combat formula follow throughout with not much variety, but the game is fun. There are a lot of collectibles and a few side quests, and the boss fights are a blast. If you loved the first game, you will love this even more. People who didn’t like the last one should check this out.
I usually regret playing Atlus games because they are frustrating and difficult experiences. The games are usually excellent, but the difficulty always leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I have only been able to complete a couple of Atlus games due to this. Catherine is no different, but she shouldn’t be taken lightly. RPG fans should stay away. If you just want to experience the story, go on YouTube. This is for hard-core puzzle fans only. I mean the hardest of core puzzle gamers. This game will leave you infuriated, angry, full of rage, and probably with a few smashed controllers. The game is plagued with issues, but for some reason, there’s a story that makes you want to see the end. Thankfully, the game isn’t very long. Just prepare the video walkthroughs because you will need them.
This experience is coming from someone who hates these kinds of puzzles. This game is complete to taste. I hate block-pushing puzzles, but here we are with a very deep game that includes these. The first three stages aren’t that bad. Starting at stage 4, things get frustrating, and forget about progressive difficulty. First off, the story is very engaging, and it’s a love story. A man named Vincent Brooks is in love with a girl named Katherine, and she wants him to marry her. Suddenly, a sultry seductress named Catherine comes along, and somehow Vincent wakes up with her naked next to him. The rest of the game is him trying to hide each Katherine from the other.
The story gets tense in spots, like any well-written drama. When you are in the Stray Sheep bar, you will receive text messages on your phone that you can reply to. Be careful because this will affect your morality meter, which will impact the way Vincent handles inner conflict. I had a lot of fun replying to these texts because it’s almost like you are actually doing it and in this relationship yourself. Atlus did a great job bringing you into this problem. Of course, every night when Vincent dreams, you are brought to an area where you climb an endless tower of blocks with other sheep, and that’s where you start to hate or love the game.
I can’t really explain the methods of all the block-pushing because there are over a dozen that you learn throughout the game. You can push blocks horizontally, but it’s not so simple. There are other types of blocks, like heavy ones, ice, traps, randomly changing blocks, and others, that will make your life hell. It was nigh impossible to figure most of these out without a video walkthrough, because otherwise, you will be restarting dozens of times due to trial and error. To make things harder, the stage is crumbling underneath you. To make things even tougher, you are awarded medals at the end. The only way to get gold is to keep your step multiplier up throughout the whole level and never mess up. Sure, there are checkpoints every so often, but I had such a tough time that even the video walkthroughs didn’t help sometimes.
There are items you can pick up that help create one extra block, allow you to jump two blocks, kill enemies, and turn all blocks to normal. You can pick up coins along the way to increase your score as well. At the end of each stage, there is a boss that you must run from and who tries to kill you. These changed the pace, but they just made things even more frustrating. You just can’t catch a break during these puzzle levels. Even the controls are terrible, with reversed control when crawling around behind the blocks, delays, and strange quirks that will make you die just because of control problems.
I really felt like this was a puzzle game with a love story wrapped around it. The game is tough, and I highly suggest renting it first because most people won’t even finish it. Don’t think this is something like Pushmo with a reset button. Some levels take over ten minutes to complete. There is a co-op mode you can unlock, but all you will do is lose friendships. The best parts are the story in between and the questions that you answer that even make you question the way you view romanticism and maybe even your own relationship. I even liked how you could see how other people answered. Besides these puzzles and answering text messages, there is no other gameplay apart from talking to people.
Overall, Catherine is a love-hate thing. Puzzle fans will fall in love with this, but RPG and other genre fans will hate it. I only hated the puzzle stages, but I loved the story. With the puzzle levels being 90% of the game, I can’t really give this a higher score, even if I wanted to. It is gripping, exciting, steamy, and can go any way. The anime cutscenes are beautifully done, and even the English voice acting is tolerable, but I would have preferred the Japanese voices with English subtitles. If you insist on wanting to know the story and characters, rent this and keep a video walkthrough handy, and maybe a spare controller or three.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !