I have this old Acer netbook that’s paid its dues. Now it lives by the sofa, out in the living room. I use it to see if that actress has done nudity order food, check my email during TV Time, that sort of thing. In hearty spirit of our (my) recent Game of Thrones world, the Netbook By The Sofa can be seen as my Barristan Selmy, my old knight that’s done its duty and should now be retired to a quiet pastoral life of getting me food and looking stuff up on IMDB, but serves me well and without judgment even in those rare times when I ask dishonorable things of it.
And it is tireless and fail-less in doing so. Whatever purpose Selmy once served, its job now may not be without shame, but is nonetheless so easy, I assume a retarded monkey could do it.
My Couchbook crashed when I tried to order food after playing the Catherine demo. I had to come in here to summon food. Why? Because it knew how shitty this game is, and it was punishing me for downloading its demo… an experience I wish I could say was just a bad, fractional representation of the full game, but which I sinkingly believe is an even slice of this lost opportunity’s universally crappy pie.
Catherine is a game that I was once rawther enamourcited about. I have a thing for evil-temptress tales and the promise – from Atlus, no less – of an erotic horror game whose (early) previews seemed to tit my titillate was, well, it was as delicious as the yummy wings I HAD TO ORDER IN HERE, A GOOD ELEVEN FEET FROM MY FOOD-ORDERING NET-SELMY, BECAUSE THE DEMO WAS SO BAD IT CRASHED IT.
Destructoid ominously branded the Catherine demo as “Q*Bert with tits.” As my friend [REDACTED] said, “I like tits, but I hate Q*Bert.”
Guess what? I love the idea of the story of Catherine. The actual execution of that story… I love a lot less. And the demo?
Dude, it replaces Darkspore’s as the most shit-tastic game demo in history.
There are demos that have made me buy games I never would have (see: Crackdown); but in all honesty I can’t recall ever being driven off by the demo for a game that I intended to buy no matter what.
I never intended to even contemplate buying Darkspore, but Catherine’s promise of erotic horror intrigued me. We’ve seen essentially no games that’ve done it right, and we heart Atlus here at Tap. I had what the Brontë sisters (or Dickens) might have referred to as High Hopes for this title. A blood-drenched lust story, an erotic horror nightmare, a character-powered hell of misery and terror.
Those Hopes were dashed.
Because Catherine’s demo proves that unless it ships with, like, unlimited gold and jewels in each box, it is not just Bad; it’s Disappointment’s word for disappointment. Shame on you, Whoever-Made-This-Game. And further shame on you, Atlus. There’s no horror to be found, and the rest is shitty anime with bad writing.
Q*Bert with tits is the kindest thing anyone could say about this glob.
Send an email to the author of this post at steerpike@tap-repeatedly.com.
Disappointing, but not surprising… I was also greatly intrigued by the anime and the story. I would have liked this to be a RPG (but then I want everything to be an RPG) or something along the lines of Rain, just anime’ed and horrorishly erotic… but platforming? Really, what were they thinking?
At least it wasn’t a racing game.
@!#?@!?
@Jarrod: But just think of the imagery and double entendres possible with an erotic racing game… I refer you to Led Zeppelin’s Trampled Underfoot.
“Ounheahhonhouh”, whatever that means.
OT: And there’s me wondering why all I’d seen of this game was cut-scenes, boobies and boxer shorts.
Awww…
Disappointing. I didn’t want this game to out right suck. I wanted it to be so bad it was good, like “Showgirls”.
I’ve no plans to check out the demo as I’m going to stick by my Catherine pre-order until the bitter end. I figure if I can get through Chulips, I can handle anything.
And Ajax, Showgirls was never, ever “so bad, it was good.” It was just bad. 😀
Steerpike, I haven’t stared aDwD as I’ve gone back to GoT to start the series anew.
Sounds like your laptop crashed after you played the demo, so you had to get up and, being it too much work, you got angry at the game.
I only think that the game looks really hard and the demo gives a too much small glimpse of it, but I liked the way you can answer those messages (don’t want to spoil).
Who the fuck shat in your Corn Flakes, Sakey? Goddammit, I was looking forward to Catherine quite a lot.
I’m still going to play the demo … I’ve already installed it so I’ve got to see this apparent disaster first hand.
What can I say? I’m a rage-filled man.
I will give the demo another try soon, because I really want Catherine to be good. I really do. But man, if the game is good, this demo ain’t doing it any favors.
You are looking for Audition with clicking?
No. The demo cannot be worse than the original Daggerfall demo that arrived on the PC-Gamer CD. There’s nothing that says fun like 5 seconds of drowning in a well with a black and dark gray/green dithered background before being forced to restart.
Helmut, that demo disc was my introduction to role-playing games. August 1997, I’ll ne’er forget it!
@Helmut: Not erotic torture porn, erotic horror. You know, like The Devil’s Commandment, Chloe, Diabolika, that kind of thing.
@Toger: turns out I was wrong in my guess, so disregard! Disregard!
And the gameplay really is like Q-Bert? Really? The same Q-Bert I’m thinking about?
Q-Bert?!? Whaaaa?!?
IGN just gave Catherine a 9.0 … Steerpike, you need to get hired there. Just so you can get fired in glorious fashion.
Matt.
The world see’s your scorn of Catherine. And the world says you suck ass.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/catherine/critic-reviews
I found your review of the demo to be very vague–you didn’t say much else other than that they demo sucked, without much reason as to why you felt that way. Why didn’t you like it?
Yeah, FoozleMoozle, I was being intentionally kind of a dick. I didn’t like it because it’s an anime or movie that has no business being a game, basically. Why not just tell the story? Why bother to insert these asinine puzzles between clips? I don’t mind puzzles, but they so out of place here. If you want to make a game, make a game. If you want to make an anime, which these people clearly did, make an anime and be done with it.
That said…
I may have to eat my words, since a lot of reviews are pretty positive. I’m willing to acknowledge that maybe I spoke too soon… but of course to determine that, I’d have to buy the game. I think I’ll wait for a sale or something.
I think that’s a fair opinion, really–games shouldn’t have a huge brick wall between gameplay and story-telling, and the demo definitely gave that impression.
If you do get the game eventually, I’d be interested in hearing what you have to say about it.
Stick to your guns, Matt. Don’t forget that link was from a website that says the world thinks Grand Theft Auto IV is the best game ever. That Grand Theft Auto IV is an almost perfect 98/100. You know what you think about Grand Theft Auto IV..
Pull up a chair, knock back a whiskey and say “screw you” to the world.
I think what made me angry particularly about Catherine is the wasted potential. It’s not that they made it a block-pulling puzzle game; I’m playing From Dust right now and it’s a dirt-dropping puzzle game but I’m not complaining.
It’s that with Catherine they had the chance to explore themes rarely seen in games – erotic horror, relationships, pregnancy, etc – AND show us the inside of a mind that’s fraying under the stress. If the “action” portions of the game had been clever, frightening, varied explorations of terrifying dream-places, sure. But how many blocks does a man have to pull before his next cutscene?
In any case, FoozleMoozle, welcome to the site!