Thursday, January 27, 2011

Another Crazy & Random Game from Japan... Brief Hands-On with the Catherine Demo



Every now and then, a Japanese cult classic comes around and blow people's minds whether there and here at the States. Atlus's Persona series has been a recent example of that in the past couple of years especially with Persona 4 being an amazing RPG. It took a while, but finally they are heading to the current generation of consoles with Catherine, a totally different, random, and unique game, but still shares a resemblance to Persona fans because of the graphical anime style. The demo that came out on the Japanese Playstation Store today is indeed mostly in Japanese, so you can't really understand what in the world is on with the characters and how the main dude, Vincent, is in some crazy love triangle. If I can get a sense of the story, he has some crazy haunted dreams because of one of the love interests, Katherine. He is just in his boxers and sheep horns in dream sequences where it becomes a puzzle platformer where he has to transverse vertically to a gate before a monster kills him or the blocks fall down running out of time. Once you get the hang of the core gameplay, it is simple to navigate the block puzzles moving them around in order to keep moving, but since it is a puzzler, one wrong move will likely lead to a loss life. Plus, with huge monsters chasing you before you reach the goal, the added pressure and intensity makes Catherine one crazy ride. Add along a random and anime-like story that will make players curious what the hell Vincent has got himself to, and Catherine is shaping up to be another underground Atlus classic. It is nice to see crazy Japanese games such as this still being made because of their random factor to appease fans. Catherine is out next month at Japan and who knows if Atlus plans to localize it for the States, but after playing this demo, I hope they do since there is a Persona-like fanbase still here.

Get HYPE for Rocket Punches, Drones, & Re-Flys Again... Sentinel + Hsien-ko MvC3 vids





Its no surprise by now, but Sentinel and Hisen-ko (of Darkstalkers & Puzzle Fighter fame) are now characters in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Sentinel is expected since he is one of the best characters in MvC2 as he makes the transition well here. It remains to be seen how good still he is, but pretty much of most of what made him such the beast he was can be applied to MvC3 somehow even if a little slower this time around. Hisen-ko is an odd one if u know her from Darkstalkers, but as someone who hasn't appeared in a new fighting game for quite some time, I don't mind the addition since now they're at 3 Darkstalkers characters for MvC3. The full roster is pretty much set besides DLC and we're only two weeks away, so the HYPE is getting closer to reality.