Catherine Review

PROS

• Great story
• Many endings
• Good social interaction
• Interesting art style
• Not limited to a "good" or "bad" side

CONS

• Repetitive and hard puzzles
• Not much replay value

Catherine is a story based puzzle game with an anime art style which would appeal most to people with cube fetishes.  At least, that’s the general gist of the game, but believe it or not there is much more to it than you may first think.  The story centers around a guy named Vincent who is a good definition of normal, he has a job, a small group of friends, and his girlfriend Katherine who he has been with for over a year, but because he doesn’t want “change” he doesn’t like the idea of marriage.

Though it seems change shall be forced upon him, for good or bad, as one night he may have had a little too much to drink, and wakes up with a sexier Catherine in bed with him, and that is where the story begins, you must then lead him through the game, with your choices affecting a meter, much like the one in Infamous, which then determines the outcome of the game.  One thing I really liked was how you don’t have to try and stick to one side or the other, as being in the middle is also a perfectly find choice with its own endings.

Now you must be thinking “Hey Love!  Wow, your internet alias can be abbreviated love, that sorta sounds sexual…how bout assassin?  Yea that works….Hey Assassin, so far this game sounds like a dating sim!” Well, you’re absolutely wrong!  The game actually centers around cube based puzzles in which you need to get to the top of a cube pyramid, before falling hundreds of feet you your death!  The closest thing I can compare this to is Super Meat Boy, because these puzzles are hard, really hard, and you’ll probably find yourself cussing out some invisible force as you die over, and over, and over…

The mechanics for the puzzles are actually pretty straight forward, you need to move the blocks forwards, backwards, left, and right to create pathways to advance higher and higher up.  Though the puzzles get mixed up a bit because every new set of levels has new challenges, including Ice Blocks which you slide across, Spike Blocks which send giant pointed spikes your way if you walk on top of one, and Monster Bocks which move on their own, it does add some variety, but overall the puzzles start getting really repetitive after a while and ultimately become tedious as you stop caring about the puzzles and focusing on the story.

The boss levels bring little twists, because each boss plays on some part of Vincent’s subconscious and fears, though overall it is still the same puzzle, there just might be a monster shooting some fireballs at you while you climb, though I do like how it at least mixes up the atmosphere, because being chased by a baby with a chainsaw is a little bit different than calmly climbing up some blocks, but it doesn’t’ help the repetitive feel of the puzzles.

The way the puzzles are actually implemented into the story, is that every night Vincent has these nightmares in which he needs to climb higher and higher, and if he falls, he dies in real life.  This surprisingly works because as you play you uncover a conspiracy behind the dreams, though there is still a feeling in the back of my mind that this is just a gameplay aspect thrown into the game to make it more than a dating sim.

The other part of the dreams is a “resting spot” between levels in which you can talk with random sheep, and then before going onto the next level you must answer a simple two answer question, which not only affects your meter, but you also get to see how everyone else answers, and these questions are pretty random, covering topics such as cheating, dating, and the lot of it.  I was pretty surprised to find that around 75% of people who have played the game thought of themselves as perverts….

Outside of your messed up dreams, you simply play Vincent as he goes through ~10 days of his life, in which he slowly turns crazy.  There are two main aspects in the real world you see; cut scenes with Katherine and Catherine in which he needs to try and hide the fact that he is cheating instead of becoming a man and breaking it off with one of them immediately, while having that meter with one side focusing on Catherine, and the other on Katherine (confused yet?) change some dialog options.  Though the main aspect is controlling Vincent in a bar as he hangs with friends, chat with other people at the bar, and use his phone.  The way social interaction is done in this game is actually very good, at the bar you can send and receive text messages with Katherine and Catherine (the one with the “K” is the girl he has been going out with for over a year, in case you forgot) while sending custom replies in which you change each line, and once sent affects the Catherine-Meter as I call it. 

Outside of that you can get drunk, talk with your friends, talk with other people about their problems (which does affect the game by the way), watching the news, playing a game which is similar to your nightmares, and sit on the toilet while looking at dirty pictures Catherine sent you while making some very perverted laughing noises.

So just to recap, Catherine is a story based game with an anime style with some very challenging puzzles thrown in that reminds me of Super Meat Boy.  There are multiple endings as well as a pretty unexpected conspiracy, and overall the story is great.  The puzzle gameplay on the other hand is hard, repetitive, and seemingly unnecessary, and you will probably need to use YouTube guides as I did.  This game is a great rent, but due to the lack of replay value, not worth $60.

Shadows of the Damned Review

Shadows of the Damned is the latest mind trip from the mind of legendary game director Suda 51. A collaboration effort between Suda and Resident Evil designer Shinji Mikami, Shadows of the Damned is a third-person shooter with the distinct quality of being one of the craziest games in recent memory.

Shadows of the Damned gives you control of Garcia Hotspur, a badass demon hunter who runs around with a flaming British skull named Johnson. The duo must traverse the deepest darkest depths of hell in order to find Garcia’s girlfriend Paula, who has been kidnapped by the demon lord Fleming.

At its core SotD is a third-person shooter ala Dead Space or Gears of War. While that may seem plain it’s what makes this game work. Suda’s past games have all been creative and funny, but the gameplay has always been somewhat sloppy and repetitive. By grounding Shadows in a type of gameplay that feels familiar to anyone who’s picked up a controller it allows the rest of the game to be Suda’s regular brand of crazy.

However, that’s not to say that the game is just point-and-shoot, some subtle tweaks make it feel different. For starters light and dark play a big part in SotD; at points darkness will flood the screen and start to drain your health while at the same time spawning enemies that are covered in dark goop that can’t be damaged by your bullets. You combat this with the help of “light shots” secondary fire on your weapons that have infinite ammo. You can use light shots to light up an area or nail dark enemies with them to make them susceptible to regular bullets.

Your boney friend Johnson also acts as your weaponry throughout Shadows of the Damned, he can turn into four death dealing machines; a pistol, machine gun, shotgun, and a torch, which acts as your melee weapon. At first this seems like a very limited selection for demon slayer’s arsenal, but each weapon receives multiple upgrades as you play, adding features like charge shots, homing attacks, and a higher rates of fire. In addition you’ll also be able to upgrade each weapon’s strength, ammo capacity, and reload speed, along with Garcia’s health, run speed, and melee strength. The combat isn’t perfect though, it can be difficult for Garcia to get that precision aiming that can be necessary at time, leading to more than a few missed shots.

The real draw of SotD though is its fantastic personality. Garcia Hotspur is an entertaining character to roam around with, he is lewd, he has a very immature sense of humor, and he makes bad jokes, but in the context of this game it works. Shadows of the Damned never takes itself seriously so whenever a dick joke is made (and they are made a lot) it ends up being funny, something that another recent game Duke Nukem forever failed to do.

Hell is also a surprisingly interesting place to explore, and explore you shall. Swamps, run down cities, and libraries are just a few of the places you’ll get to slay demons in. The game also utilizes its world’s logic to great effect; baby heads guard doors and to open them you have to feed the heads brains, eyes, and strawberries. Checkpoints are dolled out by a creature known as “One-Eyed Willy” pooping right next to you, and there are even a few segments where the game completely shifts it gameplay type temporarily. The interesting world you roam around in is made even better thanks to the games fantastic soundtrack, which was created by Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka.

Shadows of the Damned is not a perfect game, there are more than a few flaws; not being able to pause or skip cutscenes, sometimes touchy controls, and the pure fact that if you don’t like immature humor you will find this game in poor taste. However in a world where we have so many serious hardened shooter franchises it’s nice to get a funny, unique take on the genre from some of the best talent the industry has to offer.

Esoterica America - Indie Game Review

PROS 

• Alright Story
• Has Voice Acting
• Fun Mini-Game

CONS 

• Bad Movement
• Repetative Gameplay
• Pointless "Meditation" Game
• No Actual Story
• Short

Esoterica America is…well I’m not exactly sure how to describe it.  I’m going to go with story based puzzle game.  The game starts out alright by simply giving you a gist of the story with voice acting and still pictures, not the best way to introduce the story, though not the worst.  Then it throws you into the game on the characters 21^st birthday.  But from the start I noticed some problems.

First, the movement is very clunky and can be a pain sometimes.  The moving animation looks bad and navigation is a pain and the angled viewpoint doesn’t help.  Now it would be okay if that was the game’s only problem, but it’s not.  The game is very, very linear.  It allows you to examine items in the world, but there are only about 4 items that you can actually examine.  Beyond that the game just plays out in a very linear way of “Talk to this person, go do that puzzle, go somewhere else, repeat”.  Honestly, the whole game plays out like that.

The game tries to mix it up by adding this meditation mini game which is just flying around and hitting the right controller button color to match any flying objects around you, yes, it is as boring as it sounds.  Frankly it is pretty pointless, I’m assuming they either wanted to try and mix things up (if so, they failed) or try to make their very short game seem slightly longer.  Also, did I mention the game is about 30 minutes or less of “Talk to this person, do that puzzle, etc. etc. etc.” and apparently that was just episode 1.  It probably would have worked much more in their favor to take more time to make the whole story one game, and make the game better in aspects of presentation, gameplay, and polish.

As far as “fun” is concerned, you probably won’t have any.  I was so bored I played through the game while surfing the internet, there is pretty much no actual gameplay, and it is a pretty boring game.  I had more fun playing their mini-game in which you are a stoned hippy shooting at planes and helicopters with dual pistols.

Now, I have to give the game credit, it does have voice acting which I wouldn’t say is good, but it’s not bad, which is usually hard to find in Indie Games.  But, only certain parts of the game are voiced, and it seems completely random which conversations are actually voiced, which is an annoyance.  Also, another annoyance I found was that when watching a voiced conversation/cut scene, you can’t skip that line of dialog, if you, say, read the subtitles, you can only skip the whole conversation.  As far as the story goes, it holds up but the game just doesn’t do a good job of explaining it, ultimately, stay away from this game.

Tacticolor - Indie Game Review

PROS

• Stylish graphics
• Fast paced
• Fun gameplay
• Multiplayer

CONS

• Lack of variety
• Controls aren't the smoothest

The easiest way to describe Tacticolor is that it’s a faster paced version of Risk.  Though it isn’t a Risk copy either; the game is played on a white plain with polygons being the territories you try to capture.  Each territory also only holds a limited amount of troops, so holding a lot of small territories isn’t always best.  The game boasts two modes, a landrush where everyone starts with one territory, and filled in which everyone starts with an equal numbers of territories throughout the map.

The main difference between Risk and Tacticolor is that the game isn’t turn based, and in turn is much faster paced and the games don’t take nearly as long.  You simply gain a troop every 5-10 seconds and can place it on whichever territory you wish.  The strategy comes from the 5-10 second spawn time for each troop after you place it, so you can’t actually use it until it spawns.  Couple that with being able to hold a lot of troops at once and you can choose to either go all out, or wait and then deploy all your troops and go on a rampage.

The gameplay itself is solid and most games take between 5-10 minutes.  The AI difficulty is alright, easy is easy, normal is….still pretty easy, and hard is actually a challenge.  The gameplay itself is a simple as moving pieces and placing down new ones, though despite its simplicity, it is still fun.  Strategy comes into play as far as choosing either to build up or charge your enemies, though you don’t need to actually use a lot of strategy to win.  The real fun comes from the multiplayer though; playing this game with 3 of my friends didn’t only work well, but was also fun.  So if you are looking for a good multiplayer game to play with friends for cheap, definitely check this one out.

The game boasts a nice 2 track soundtrack, they are pretty basic techno tracks but it works well.  As far as graphics go, they are stylish, yet simple, as they are mainly just colored squares.  Besides the two modes and multiplayer, the game also boasts an achievement system, but I don’t really care about achievements so it seems pointless in my opinion, besides those that’s all the gameplay the game offers so it can get boring fast depending on your attention spawn.  The only problem I have seen is navigating between territories doesn’t work all that well, mainly because selection is based on up, down, left, and right and the territories are diagonal, and with a fast paced game like this, simple and smooth navigation is necessary.  Besides that small flaw it is a solid indie game which I recommend for people wanting a cheap thrill.

inFamous 2 Review

PROS

• New Marais is a lively vibrant area
• A ton of new powers to unlock and use
• Morality choices affect a lot in the game world
• Interesting and engaging story

CONS

• Lack of sound effects
• Very little enemy variety in look or tactics

Just over two years ago the original inFamous bolted onto the PlayStation 3, creating one of the first games that made buying a PS3 a worthwhile investment. inFamous was the total package; it looked gorgeous, introduced a new poster child in the form of Cole MacGrath, the electrically fueled superhero (or villain) of Empire City, let players scale the side of buildings with ease, and gave gamers the feeling of controlling a superhero. Now we find ourselves with inFamous 2, and for the most part it’s a solid improvement.

inFamous 2 picks up a month after the events of the first game, you are once again put into the shoes of Cole as he heads off to the city of New Marais. Empire City has been destroyed by the gigantic monster known simply as “The Beast,” whose arrival was foretold in the first game. In order to stop the monstrosity Cole must seek the help of Dr. Sebastion Wolfe in New Marais, he unfortunately meets huge resistance in the form of southern political tycoon known as Joseph Bertrand III. Bertrand has more or less enslaved New Marais, putting his own specialized authoritative force known as the Militia in charge. Cole must put an end to the Militia, Bertrand, and a sudden uprising of Mutants who dwell in nearby swamps, all while having to power himself up enough to defeat “The Beast.” A pretty tall order, one that you’ll not face alone, your buddy Zeke from the first game returns to help you as well as a colorful cast of new characters.

Much like the first game, the big draw of inFamous 2 is its open world traversal. New Marais (New Orleans) is a beautiful area to play around in, it’s colorful and has plenty of character which is a nice change from Empire City in the first game. Any building you see in inFamous 2 you can climb, and climb you do. Scaling the side of a building is still satisfying though it does boil down sometimes to just pressing the X button which is still good fun, though in the age of Assassin’s Creed which just looks and feels so fluid it’s hard not to notice a tad bit of stiffness climbing buildings. It’s not enough to break the game, but it is noticeable at first. Once you click into it however it quickly loses any sense of repetition and becomes second nature. Jumping off of the top of a building, hovering yourself to a trolley cable, and shooting along that cable at high speeds is still the most satisfying way to traverse an open world game I can think of. Your constantly gaining new ways to get around quicker; better gliding abilities, higher jumps, and faster grind speeds all get worked into your character as you progress, which makes moving around even more unique and enjoyable. The sound design is odd though; there are very few sound effects in the game. New Marais appears to be a busy city, with cars and people flooding the streets, but if you stop and listen you hear almost nothing. You don’t hear people talking often, the cars are whisper quiet, and at one point I stood right next to a trolley and it drove by without a noise. This usually wouldn’t be worth mentioning but the production quality of the game is so good in every other area the lack of ambient sound sticks out like a sore thumb.

The combat in inFamous 2 is fluid and at times absolutely stunning to witness. You get a large array of powers you use to take out the various enemies that plague New Marais. Standard powers are in full force; lighting bolts, grenades, shockwaves, and melee combat are all easier to use this time around, and you’ll be switching back and forth between these different types of moves on the fly as combat necessitates. Later on you also gain access to truly astonishing super moves such as summoning a giant electric vortex, and calling down a storm of thunder and lightning that demolishes giant areas in an instant. While the combat flow is fast-paced and fun to engage in, it also shows us the biggest problem with inFamous 2, the enemies. Enemy variety is nearly non-existent, so expect to be seeing a lot of guys in hockey masks with a large amount of them donning rocket launchers. It’s understandable that Sucker Punch didn’t want the game to be glaringly easy, but considering you’re supposed to be an all-powerful super human it does get annoying when you get hit with four rockets all at once and receive an instant death.

Morality choices were a big part of inFamous and they are back in full force in inFamous 2. The choice system and the way it works are necessary for how the game plays. Play the good guy and people will obviously revere you more and you’ll get powers that are more focused and precise so you don’t harm innocents while in combat. Play the bad guy and people fear you, your lightning will turn red, and you’ll have more AOE powers that are more powerful and take out large groups on enemies (and civilians). Down the line you also get access to special fire or ice powers which are tied to which karmic path you decide to take which adds a nice level of replayability to the game.

A big new feature for inFamous 2 is its user-generated content. All across the map you’ll see missions pop up that were created by inFamous players, these missions range from escort missions, to races, to full on bombastic combat scenarios. There are of course well-crafted user-generated missions and some that are not so hot, thankfully they can all be sorted out by a robust filtering system; sort by highest rated missions, types, newest created, etc. These missions don’t affect your karma in any large part, and you don’t gain a lot of experience, but it is easy enough to craft these missions and there are some worthwhile creations out there.

One more (possibly the most significant) point is the collection. inFamous 2 uses blast shards which creates that feeling the original Crackdown gave so many people. Blast shards are everywhere throughout the world and you can ping the map at any time to see nearby shards. There are over 200 to collect and every 20 shards give you another little boost in your energy. It’s incredibly easy to get distracted and go off for an hour just collecting shards, easily one of the best parts of this game.

inFamous 2 takes what was already a very good game, and evolves some of the problems it had. The traversal is better than ever, you have a bunch of new powers at your disposal, and there is plenty of room for exploration. It’s not perfect, the enemies are all incredibly similar and will gang up on you, and the lack of sound effects is odd given how well everything else is done. inFamous 2 is not a major leap forward in the series, but it is a fun worthwhile romp for the PlayStation 3.