Well, I won't post the review in Spanish since I gather most of you don't speak the language. But I'll make a small review in English just in case.
I gave the game eight vodkas out of ten. It could've been more, but I picked up both Uncharted 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution the same day as Catherine, and it was quite overshadowed by those two. Catherine has a unique story, in the way that it is almost as non-linear as Heavy Rain, even though much less directly modifiable by the player. The core of the story is quite simple. It's about relationships, growing up and making choices between the freedom of the youth and the responsibility of the maturity. I found the main character, Vincent, quite forthcoming. He was easy to sympathize with, being as much an everyday man as a Japanese writer can make for a western public. His lack of balls, so typical in the Japanese romantic comedies was a little bit off-setting from time to time, but all in all he was good. The story itself was what kept me going through the initial stages of the game, to be honest. The gameplay isn't really what you'd expect from a PS3 game you pay 50 bucks for (I paid more than that, thank you customs). It's a browser puzzle flash game with the graphic power of PS3. Don't wait too much from it. I was slightly disappointed, to be honest. But at the beginning the story is very good. There're multiple NPCs you can interact with, and the more you do, the more of their respective stories you can gather (and the more chances they have to survive
), plus the whole Catherine/Katherine plot line is just very engaging. Near the end of the game, I found the climax lacking to grab me with the same intensity the build up did. It just seemed so bizarrely uninteresting that I must confess I almost skipped a scene or two. But towards the end is when the gameplay shows it's strengths. It stops being just a puzzle and instead turns to frenetic climb-off battles with all sorts of interesting bosses, all the while dodging their different attacks. I didn't try the multiplayer, mostly because it's fucking locked at the beginning of the game and you've got to get gold in a level to unlock it (pissed the Hell out of me). On the other hand, the videos are superb. They mix and match cell shading with outright anime, and you can pause or skip and video if you like. The English voices weren't very good, but it usually happens to me whenever I watch an anime that isn't subbed. And almost no voicing can compare to what they did for Uncharted and Uncharted 2 anyway. You can even skip the levels you passed with a gold when you're doing a second run of the game (and you might want to, given there're about eight endings and a lot of NPCs you won't be able to keep up with in one playthrough).
All in all, it was a good game. Not a 9, and Hell, maybe not even an 8 after an experience such as Uncharted 2, but it was well worth the fifty bucks. Perhaps the artsy ending was a bit too much for my tastes, but it wasn't even near to deal breaker. I say buy it, or at least definitely rent it if you aren't the type to work for different endings.
