As a 30-something with one foot in adulthood and another permanently fixed in adolescence, traditionally “mature” videogames are starting to seem anything but. Sure there’s a place for the hyper-violence and titillation that characterises most of the adult-rated titles, but when the shelves are groaning with shooters and 3rd-person action games trying to out-do each other, it’s not difficult to get more than a little burned-out when bouncing from one exploding head to the next.

Catherine (ignore the woefully tramped-up “sexy” marketing you may have seen), is an attempt to redress that balance with a tale of relationships, marriage, friendship and musings on the opposite sex, and praise be to Atlus for having the temerity to give it a decent release.

Vincent regretted visiting so many websites whilst drunk

The ‘hero’ of this rather bizarre tale is Vincent, an early-thirties male with a girlfriend (Katherine, with a ‘K’) looking to take their long-term relationship to the next level with responsibilities and repercussions that might not be welcome. One night after musing over those details with his buddies at a local bar, Vincent encounters Catherine (with a ‘C’); an alluring and free-spirited girl with a penchant for getting exactly what she wants. One huge mistake later and Vincent enters a strange world of recurring nightmares, horror, sleep-deprivation and confusion. Does he want to be saved? Which life should he choose? Which girl should be chosen? Perhaps most important of all, how many drinks can he consume to dull the pain?

The game is split into nine chapters, each corresponding to a day in Vincent’s life. During his waking hours, taking control of Vincent involves chatting to various characters at a local bar, gathering information on each of the patrons and shifting the story forwards. Talk of a curse against men cheating in their relationships keeps cropping up, and so each of the regulars at the bar need to be carefully manipulated so they don’t end up on the local news as the latest victim in a series of mysterious deaths. Ignore them for too long and they’ll eventually disappear, but listen to what they say and offer words of encouragement (or judgement), and their story arc will eventually become clear.

It plays much like an adventure game during those hours, with dialogue branches directly affecting relationships with each of the key characters and also Vincent’s own moral meter, eventually determining the ending you’ll receive. There are distractions in the form of an arcade machine, jukebox and the ever-present alcohol consumption, but the core of the story is explored through those conversations and texts. The degree of choice in response is well thought-out, and at no time is anything made back-and-white. There is no ‘correct’ path to take, and it’s down to your own whims as to whether you propel Vincent and his friends towards a life of marriage or joyous singledom.

If the lite-adventuring tone of those sequences are somewhat of a surprise, the night-time sections of Vincent’s tale are the polar opposite, taking shape as tower-based block-puzzlers that represent his nightmares.

Each of these stages requires Vincent to make his way to the top of a pile of blocks with various properties (normal, crumbling, ice, exploding, trapped, spring, moving, etc), often while being chased by apparitions that represent his fears and competing with Sheep that may or may not harbour the personalities of people he knows (did I mention it was a bit strange?). In-between these sequences he can interact with the Sheep and talk to them in the same way as the patrons in the bar, gently persuading them to continue on their quest or to resolve their difficulties in some other fashion, all the while learning new techniques for the climb ahead.

Which would you choose?

And boy will you ever need those hints and tips, as the puzzling in Catherine is relatively mind-bending. The basic principle of pushing and pulling blocks into a stair pattern is easy enough to grasp, but when confronted with limited amounts of space and a level design that works on all three axis, manipulating your environment with the required amount of speed (the bottom of your tower is constantly falling away) takes fast lateral thinking and the nerves to make every move count. There are power-ups that ease Vincent’s path to the top (changing block types, leaping two blocks at a time, vanquishing enemies, etc), but only one of those can be stored at any one time, and outside of the vendor located in-between stages (money is placed in hard-to-reach areas on each climb), they can be sparingly located.

Fortunately, the learning curve in Catherine’s puzzle sequences is pitched just about correctly, and a generous checkpoint system ensures that repetition is never too painful. Seemingly impossible early-level situations are rendered trivial with experience, and once you ‘get’ the way that the puzzles require you to think, the latter levels become a joyous free-form climb with only the occasional AI-controlled death that seems unfair. Completing the game unlocks various standalone game modes that allow you to explore the action further, and each of the main story levels can be replayed at any time in the pursuit of leaderboard greatness.

It’s a testament to the storytelling though that those sequences are imbued with a meaning above and beyond a nefarious level designer laying down a challenge. Vincent’s nightmare climbs represent trials and fears that will be familiar to anybody in (or having had experience of) a long-term relationship, and although there is little subtlety with which the game conveys those metaphors, it’s worth celebrating that they even exist within the medium to this degree.

Catherine isn’t a perfect game that’s recommendable to everybody though. Dialogue can be hit-and-miss, and - as with most translated Japanese titles - it’s delivered at a pace that skirts dangerously close to plodding. Without giving anything away, the story also takes a left-turn at a certain point that leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mouth when thinking about the conviction that’s shown until that moment, but even within the confines of the rest of that tale, it displays a maturity for the subject matter that’s above and beyond mainstream gaming to date.

Something she might not want to see

When summarising most videogames, it’s almost always important to thrust the mechanics out front as one of the primary metrics to be judged. Catherine, for the first time that I can recall in a very long while, demands to be reviewed on its narrative and thematic content. It simply cannot be ignored.

If you’re not, or never have been, at a crossroads in your life that represents choosing between freedom or security, then you’ll be left with a lovely little puzzle game with a load of unnecessarily slow talking sequences that might be a bit boring. If you’re on the flipside of that coin - and particularly if you’re in your late twenties or early thirties - then it’ll likely represent a lot more. It gives you most of the control as to the statements it makes about the sanctity and relevance of marriage and commitment, and it’s worth pursuing for those reasons alone.

Best Game Moment: Finally scaling a difficult tower.

Platform Played: PlayStation 3