Catherine - Review

A certain Irish Stout advert states "Good things come to those who wait" In the case of Catherine this claim holds just as true. European gamers, unlike our American cousins, had to wait an extra 7 months for an English language version of the Japanese Survival horror/Dating Sim/Puzzler, but the wait was definitely worthwhile.

Those of you that follow this blog as well as the Killer Keyboard site will have seen the unboxing video for Catherine: Stray Sheep Edition that i made back in February. I've been a little slow to get into it, but when i finally did make the time to sit down and work my way through the latest Atlus release i discovered an extremely deep puzzle game wrapped in a delightfully vibrant yet disturbing anime style ribbon.



Vincent Brooks is the main character in Catherine, a man who avoids commitment and growing up at all costs. His girlfriend of 5 years, Katherine, is restless with the current state of their relationship and is starting to exert pressure on our man to commit to her long term (yep, the M word people) However, his increasingly complex life takes yet another turn when the morning after a heavy night's drinking he wakes up next to his dream girl, who strangely enough is also named Catherine, but as you can see it's with a C not a K.

Katherine and Catherine

 The game is, at this point, split into 2 main parts. During Vincent's waking hours you see him eating with friends, and can take control of him when he goes to the Stray Sheep bar to drink and talk to his friends. In the bar you can talk to the patrons, check your phone for messages, drink until you drop (the drunker you are the faster you move in your dreams) use the jukebox to play music that is unlocked as you progress through the game, and play a strange game called Rapunzel which bears a striking resemblance to the Nightmares that you will have to play through in the other half of the game. Texting is an important part of your waking life, the messages you send can alter how the story plays out so think carefully about how to end your texts in-case they give the wrong impression.

This Nightmare half of Catherine is where the puzzle elements come to the fore. Every night when Vincent goes to sleep he finds himself in a weird nightmare world where everyone else looks like sheep, and he must climb giant block mountains if he is to survive the night. Because as the theory goes, if you die in your dreams you die in real life too. The puzzle portion of the game is surprisingly deep and extremely addictive, the emphasis during the nightmare is to ascend the tower as quickly as you can while the blocks below you fall away. on top of this there are some stages where you will be pursued by your worst fears, be that a demonic chainsaw wielding baby or a shadowy reflection of yourself.



At regular points during your nightmare you'll reach a base camp of sorts which more closely resemble a church than anything else. During these levels you can save progress, talk to other sheep to figure out what's going on and even exchange techniques that could better help you climb the towers still to come. If you look closely you may even recognise a few of the sheep you talk to at this base camp...

As you progress, the towers will get more and more difficult to ascend, and more varieties of blocks will be brought into play. Immovable blocks, heavy blocks, black holes, exploding blocks and spike traps are just a few of the varieties you'll have to learn to use to your advantage because, and i forgot to mention this before, you might not be the only one climbing the tower, and the other sheep won;t think twice about throwing you off the block and down to your death.

When Catherine was originally released in Japan a lot was said about how difficult the game was, and that it was prohibitively difficult for Western audiences let alone the Japanese. Luckily Atlus patched the Japanese release to lower the difficulty, and included that coding in the EU and US releases of the game. There's also a "Very Easy" mode available if you're really having a hard time of it, but for the most part i have to say that Easy is rather forgiving while still frustrating you every now and then. Rapunzel, the arcade game in the Stray Sheep Bar also offers some fantastic alternative gameplay as it focusses more on solving the puzzle rather than getting it done as quickly as possible. It really is the hidden gem inside the larger hidden gem that is Catherine.

Music, as most of you will appreciate, is a very important part of any game and in Catherine this is just as evident. The Music is excellent, there's a good mixture of songs available on the Stray Sheep's Jukebox so everybody should be able to find something listenable there, while the classical music used in the nightmare stages is unsettling and atmospheric. As a fan of Samurai Champloo it was nice to see some J-Hip-Hop used in the Game intro as well, you really get the feeling that Atlus appreciate how music can improve the game play experience.

Graphically the game looks superb, Atlus themselves have said that it serves as "an experiment for Persona 5" and there's no doubt it was a success as the engine runs superbly. The animations are smooth and natural while the cell shade style gives it a unique look that few games can match. Studio 4 degrees C have done a stand-up job with the story animations as well, they mesh perfectly with the rest of the game thanks to the cell shade colouring of the in-game engine.


Fans of Japanese games will lap this up while most gamers who enjoy a puzzle game should find plenty to enjoy about the game too. The multiple endings give Catherine decent replay value as do the nightmare levels themselves as they all have multiple solutions. Rapunzel offers something different while the additional Babel and Colosseum game modes offer something different for anyone who wants to slide some blocks around outside of the main story. 

Anyone looking for an off the wall puzzle game with charm and personality could do a lot worse than giving Catherine a try, This is a great example of a game being different and better for it.

It's (not) in the GAME

As some of you are no doubt aware, an internal memo from GAME (transcribed below) was recently leaked which detailed the reasons as to why the beleaguered high street chain will not be stocking EA releases in March.

Dear all,
Last week we held an event for our partners in the industry and explained the challenges we are facing in the short term - and we asked for their support.
We asked them to trade with us using manageable credit terms, and for them to continue to do that whilst we work through the strategic review and refinancing of our business.
We gave the industry commitments - we committed to integrity and openness in our dealings, and working with everyone equally.
We committed to only stocking products on which we could get the right credit terms, regardless of the title or the supplier. We will not stock products if the terms are not right for our business - we will not sacrifice long-term credit requirements for short-term sales opportunities.
As a result of us taking this position - a position that we believe is critical to our long-term health as a business - we have taken the very difficult decision to not stock EA's March releases, including Mass Effect 3.
As a specialist retailer dedicated to games and gaming, it is never easy to make a decision not to stock a title, particularly one with such a strong fanbase. But it is imperative that we treat every supplier evenly, that we stick to our commitments, and that we don't sign up to payment terms that will hamper us further in the future.
It is even more critical that we manage this appropriately with our loyal customers. We know they will be disappointed regarding Mass Effect in particular and in recognition of this, we will be contacting our Mass Effect pre-order customers and as a gesture of goodwill we will be offering them £5 of reward card / elite points.
I know that many of you will have to manage customer and supplier feedback directly, and I would like to thank you in advance for your support and am happy to answer any questions you have directly - just grab me as I walk around.

While it's commendable that GAME will not back down over the issue and is trying to deal with all publishers/distributors on an even playing field, it strikes me as strange not to put off the decision so that they can stock two of the most hotly anticipated EA titles of the year, Mass Effect 3 and the SSX reboot. The timing really couldn't be any worse for GAME, as these two titles, ME3 in particular, would have made a decent profit for the group.

Perhaps the bigger concern for GAME going forward is that if this stand-off continues they may find themselves on the outside looking in when FIFA13 comes out later this year. As many readers are aware FIFA12 set the record for both the highest and quickest selling sports game of all time, so to remove yourself from the equation seems tantamount to corporate suicide to me.

GAME recently said that they would be willing to consider giving publishers a cut of their used game sales, perhaps they could bring this to the table in an attempt to get a more flexible arrangement with EA ratified? I certainly think this is a case of GAME needing EA rather than the other way round, especially with the increase in games sales on-line at places like Play.com and Amazon.

Either way, this situation needs to be sorted out, and fast. EA represents a large chunk of the gaming pie, and GAME can't afford to do without their games on their shelves.

UPDATE 

Mark Photiades, a market analyst with Singer Catalyst Markets has estimated the capital loss to GAME from not stocking Mas Effect 3 at around £2.5million. In a Post by Nick Fletcher on the Guardian website, Photiades is quoted as saying -

"Working on the assumption that a decent triple A title sells 0.8m-1m titles in the first few weeks of release in the UK and assuming Game has around 20% share, we calculate that by not stocking Mass Effect 3, Game is potentially missing out on around £6m-£7m of revenues in the UK given the title will retail for £39.99,"

 That is a massive loss for a company already forecasting losses of around £8million for this year alone. Interestingly he also states that profit margins on new titles stand at around 24%. Also of interest is the opinion of Nick Bubb in the same piece who doesn't seem to understand the market at all.

So, had you heard of this new so-called blockbuster game Mass Effect 3 that comes out next week? Well, nor had we, and despite all the tut-tutting about how ominous the EA supply problem is, we suspect that it is just a storm in a teacup in a seasonally quiet time of year, as the big game suppliers can't really afford to do without Game at Christmas, given its huge share of the market. We are more concerned about the lack of news on the overseas disposal front.

Idiot...

Catherine Unboxed

I had a lovely surprise waiting for me when I returned home from a hard day of graft today. As I walked through the door my peepers fell upon a gloriously large box emblazoned with the corporate logo of Amazon.co.uk. This could only mean one thing, Catherine had arrived.




Okay, so I admit to being slightly disappointed with the lack of soundtrack. Honestly I have no clue why I thought there would be one, other than perhaps seeing the coasters and making the assumption that they were actually the game disc and therefore the OST too. No matter, as you can see from the video the special edition of Catherine is a nicely packaged piece of kit with a super large T-shirt, Poster, Coasters and Pizza box style container to keep it all in. The box art is superb and as for the game... Well I'll let you know when I have the chance to play it.

In the mean time, you know when I said on last weeks show that I wouldn't be getting a PS Vita any time soon...

Amazon orders for Catherine hit with 7 day delay

 I should be writing this after having been up all night playing my newly acquired copy of Catherine: Stray Sheep Edition, but as you sharp eyed readers will have gathered from the title of this entry i'm not. Instead I'm rather more bright eyed and bushy tailed and writing about the delays which have hit the Japanese puzzle/dating sim game. According to Amazon, as well as a source at Game (if you can call a local branch manager a source) there have been problems at the suppliers end which has delayed delivery of the Game to UK suppliers


Amazon.co.uk yesterday sent out emails apologising for the delay saying "Our supplier has notified us that there is a delay obtaining stock", the aforementioned source at game confirmed this when i enquired about Catherine the same day saying "we haven't got any Catherine stock at all, it's a problem at the suppliers end".

If this is as a result of the biting cold weather that has battered the UK and mainland Europe for the past week then it is, i would venture to say, just about an acceptable delay. However if, as others have theorised, it is because the game is still not localised properly for EU release, then it's absolutely unacceptable that we were told this late that the game was going to be delayed. Certainly, it would make more sense that it's a delay at the manufacturing stage since Amazon claim that their supplier has yet to obtain their stock, but it's strange that this should affect the UK release since the US has had an English language version of the game since July 26th 2011. I hasten to add that it hasn't been confirmed, as yet, what the reason for the delay actually is.

Amazon has already reached out to its customers in a second email, with February 17th now the revised release date.

As soon as any more news regarding these delays surfaces, we'll have it right here. And keep checking back for the first ever Game For A Laugh/KillerKeyboard.com Video Blog where I'll be doing an unboxing of Catherine: Stray Sheep Edition.

EDIT: It would appear that some GAME stores do in fact have copies of Catherine on the shelves, although the one that i've managed to contact directly only had one in stock and no special editions at all. It seems that the supply chain issue primarily affects Amazon.co.uk while other retailers have, at least, a limited supply of the game. This certainly doesn't help anyone who pre ordered it on Amazon though.

Why games can't vanish from the high street

On episode 24 of the Killer Keyboard podcast Nick and i talked about the financial difficulties that GAME currently find themselves in. The reports, which detail plans to close as many as 60 shop fronts by 2013, make for depressing reading for employees and gamers alike. 

Since May of 2007, when Gamestation was purchased by GAME for approximately £74 million, there has been no other dedicated games retailer in the UK, nowhere else where you can get the same dedicated advice and assistance. Shops such as HMV and WH Smith, along with Supermarket chains like Sainsbury's and Tesco all sell video games, but unlike GAME they don't have dedicated staff with knowledge specific to the field, and certainly don't have the floorspace to stock the same variety of software.

Without a dedicated Video Games retailer out there on the street we would see a massive reduction in the one thing that is the life blood of Video games. Choice.

If there was no GAME on the high street would we even see new and interesting games like Catherine or the niche Ace Combat series on the shelves? or would the big supermarkets and retailers stock the things they knew would sell? There would be a whole shelf full of CoD and FIFA, while lesser games would be buried on the bottom shelf, unseen and unloved.

Go into your local supermarket and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. With little room to spare you'll see every PS3 or Xbox game they have to offer on a rack that measures, at best, 6ft x 10ft. You won't see Catherine, you won't see Ace Combat, but you'll see a shed load of games that the managers think will sell the best. You can't blame them for doing it, but it would kill smaller game developers if these were the only places you could buy your games.

While i applaud HMV's efforts in the expansion of their games business, both in range and the addition of a pre-owned section, their financial position is even worse than GAME's is purported to be. The only other retailer that could possibly do justice to games may be about to vanish down the plug hole.

You could, of course buy your games online through a website such as Play or Amazon, but some of my fondest memories of games growing up come from seeing a random game on the shelf and buying it on a whim. Loaded and its sequel Re-loaded were two games that i had for the original Playstation, but I only played them because i had seen the first game sitting on a shelf in GAME. If I'd seen it on a list of games on Amazon, i would very likely have skimmed straight past it. Would I have played the hilarious and completely addictive Football game " All-Star Soccer" if I hadn't have picked it up in GAME? probably not, since it was neither FIFA or ISS (Pro Evolution Soccer's predecessor) very few played it, but it had a charm that made me want to play it, and i never regretted buying it.

 

Sure, it wasn't "sexy football" but it was fun

Then of course there's downloadable titles. True, it looks as though the days of the physical game disc are numbered, certainly as the dominant delivery system, but it would be a shame for physical copies of games to disappear completely. Even if downloadable titles were cheaper, as they appear to be looking at Japan's Vita game sales on the PSN, a great number of gamers, myself among them, resist this trend and would always prefer to own the disc than have a downloadable version of the game. You don't get the same "just opened" smell from an online game manual...

No, if GAME were to cease to exist, gaming would be a worse experience for it. Limited Choice, reduced interaction with the product and the loss of a tradition are what we face if they can't turn it around. I just hope that they can.

Opinion: The Next Generation Of Consoles Shouldn't Need The Internet To Work

I recently read a very interesting article by Mitch Dyer on IGN.com entitled "12 Innovations We Want fromPS4 and XBox 720" and while I agree with a majority of what the author had to say, including a unified Video service, complete online retail and automatic updates, there was one particular point he made that made me extremely worried.

"We don't need a hard drive. Let's enter a future where all our games and all our saves live somewhere else, instantly accessible on our next-gen console as well as on associated mobile devices.

In an ideal world this would be a fantastic idea. Every console owner on the planet could access their saves wherever they were, whosoever's console they were using. Unfortunately though, we don't live in a utopian world where everyone has reliable access to the one thing that makes this all possible.

The Internet.

A friend of mine recently went two weeks without even basic access to the Web, and while this is in no way the end of the world (although you'd be pressed to find a 13 year old who would agree) he got by. The reason for that was simple, he had his game saves on his hard drive and could access them whenever he needed to.

I'm no enemy of "the cloud" in fact it's a brilliant idea so long as it's coupled with local data storage, like we currently have with this generations pre-installed hard drives. Sony have already taken the first steps toward cloud storage, any Playstation Plus member can store their game saves in the cloud, but they can also keep those save files on their hard drive. Essentially the Cloud is a back up plan in case the hard drive fails, and the reverse is also true. Extending the application of Cloud storage further is certainly where the future of gaming lies, it would be of great use to be able to back up your DLC and other purchases on the cloud, but limiting consoles entirely to using online saves is short sighted and cuts out a great many people who don't have access to the internet.

The Round-up: Good Dog!

The Last of Us has taken most people by complete surprise, I count myself as one of them. I honestly wasn't expecting to be so enthused about a "zombie" style game, especially at a time when most commentators seem to be suggesting that the craze for the brain eating monsters seemed to be all but exhausted. Maybe it's the fact that this isn't truly a Zombie game, but more akin to an open world survival experience where some of your foe's happen to be extremely aggressive and have really bad acne, but whatever the reason, Naughty Dog deserve credit for managing to put together an extremely smooth début video that told us everything we needed to know in a short amount of time.



According to the Twitter account of Naughty Dog's creative director Neil Druckmann, the game has already been in development for two years! This makes the fact that they could keep it almost completely under wraps until now even more impressive. Well played Naughty Dog.

During the latest Killer Keyboard podcast we mused over whether this games impressive début trailer could cause it similar problems to those suffered by Dead Island after its début with the reverse time trailer. I can understand the worry, but in all honesty I don't see an issue. Naughty Dog are Sony's premier development studio, they have enough manpower and development experience to ensure that, even with their second team being the primary development team behind the project, whatever they show us now will be a fair example of how the game will work.

With the game reportedly due out next year we don't have much longer to wait until we can play it for ourselves. Probably more than I can say for "I Am Alive"



This seemed to be the week for shock admissions and announcements. First, we had the aforementioned news that Naughty Dog had a second team who had been secretly working on The Last of Us for the past 2 years, and then the admission by Hideo Kojima, that Metal Gear Rising had quietly been dropped from development until Platinum Games showed interest in finishing the project.

Said Kojima: "In the summer of 2010, the team made a presentation for me...I realized the game design still wasn't there yet." He continued "As the young staff said to me, they wanted a good game that just felt good moving around, and we would never get that, so I decided to cancel the project."

"But still, we had a lot of things" [already developed] "Motion capture, a lot of good story, the view of the world inside the game, and I wanted to use that somehow. I wanted Rising to be born again, so that's when I decided to contact Platinum Games."

This is the first Metal Gear game to be developed outside of Kojima's own studio but so far on the evidence of the VGA trailer it looks like Raiden should have a decent game behind him when he next draws his sword in anger.




If you were thinking of using more than one account on your PSP Vita you'd better have more than one of their ridiculously overpriced memory cards to hand. SCEA's associate brand marketing manager Crystal Mackenzie has told Wired.com that "If you wanted to change different PSN users but use the same memory card, you would need to go factory reset," effectively wiping the card of all it's save data. Good news however, you can apparently spread your saves over multiple cards all tied to the same account. Although, why you would want to, and how you could afford such a thing is, frankly, beyond me...



Plenty of 3DS news this week, starting with the announcement that sales of Nintendo's handheld console had their best ever week in Japan with just over 378,000 sold. This was no doubt aided by the release of the fantastic looking Monster Hunter Tri-G branded bundle. It includes the rather snazzy looking Monster Hunter branded 3DS and a copy of the game. Fear not though because it's headed state side soon.

Kid Icarus: Uprising, a game that i had a hands on with earlier in the year, and which caused meto get a nasty cramp in my left hand, will be released on March 23rd. Mario Party 9 goes on sale a little earlier in the month, releasing as it does on March 11th. I have absolutely no idea if either of these games works with the circle pad, you know, the thing that gives you a second control stick that should have been part of the console as standard...

That little niggle not withstanding it turns out that when the circle pad is released in the States (February 7th in case you wondered) it will be a GameStop exclusive. You stupid company Nintendo, why make it an exclusive? Oh, and you'll have to pay an extra $20 for that second stick that should have been included anyway.



I bought Skyrim recently, well it would be silly not to since it was only £22.49 at Game and GameStation. One of the things i like about these games is the amount of stuff you can do which has absolutely no point, like, for example, putting buckets over NPC's heads.

Todd Howard mentioned this little peculiarity when, during an interview with Joystiq, the subject turned to bugs: "I think our favourite really is putting the buckets on the heads," he laughed. "It was like day two, and we went, what? Do we fix that? Our lead programmer is pissed and wants to fix it, and I said I'm not sure we should. That's one of those where maybe we leave it in."

Games developers have a sense of humour too!

Probably helps when you've made the most played game of 2011, that was the news that came out of game tracking service Raptr this week. Not surprisingly Modern Warfare 3 was the most played Shooter, FIFA 12 took the Sports prize while Skyrim was the most popular RPG, but the shock comes in the overall category. Despite being released 3 days after the Activision juggernaut, Skyrim still managed to squeeze more play hours out of it's fans.

That's what infinite Dragons and un-ending quest systems can do for you i guess. Congratulations Bethesda.



Remember that Sorcery game that got shown off at E3 2010? It made fantastic use of the Playstation Move controller and actually looked like it was a lot of fun. Well it's been a little quiet since then, and silence from a developer is never a good sign, but the good news is that development of the game is going as expected and the final product will be due for release in Spring 2012. I doubt i'll be buying a move controller to play it, but if you have the tech already it's well worth your checking it out.

Continuing on the Playstation theme, the next piece of news will shock none of you. Except maybe for Tarquin Jones from Northampton. SURPRISE TARQUIN! #clearlymadeupname



Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 will let players use their Vita as a PS3 control pad. To be honest this was something i expected from the PSP so it's nice to see, but unless it improves the gaming experience somehow this is surely just a waste of your handheld's battery life isn't it?



Time for some nostalgia now. Hands up who remembers playing the original Tony Hawks Pro Skater on their PSOne, N64 or Dreamcast? Well as you may have heard on the Killer Keyboard Podcast there's an HD re-make on the way, and it uses all the original skate parks. No news as to the track listing yet but fingers crossed for the original line up of Goldfinger, Primus and the Dead Kennedys.




Here's your UK Top Ten for the week ending December 10th 2011

1- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
2- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
3- Just Dance 3
4- FIFA 12
5- Assassins Creed: Revelations
6- Battlefield 3
7- Professor Layton and The Spectre's Call
8- Saints Row: The Third
9- Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
10-Mario Kart 7

Not too surprising that the best played game of 2011 is also at number one in the UK. I fully expect to see Skyrim at number one next week too, thanks to the half price Skyrim offer at Game and GameStation. CoD MW3 is at number two thanks to Skyrim's rise from mid-table while Just Dance 3 gets a surprise podium finish ahead of FIFA 12. Another week with no Zumba fitness in the top ten, I must be in Heaven!

Well, thanks for checking in once again, remember to check out the latest episode of the Killer Keyboard Podcast and feel free to contact us either by E-Mail, leaving comments in our stories, or tweeting us your views.

@Killerkeyboard
@RealDaveRoberts


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