Duke Nukem Forever And Catherine Surprisingly Successful. Yes, Both Of Them.
This has been a strange summer for video game numbers. You might have already read this, but Duke Nukem Forever
Let's forget about schaudenfreude and instead look at the facts: this is great news. Yes, both games' successes are great news. Duke might have sucked, but it was made by Gearbox, which made a great little game called Borderlands. Duke Nukem Forever might have made money and maybe 2K Games will want to make a sequel in the future, but for now Borderlands 2 is being made, and that's good news. As for Catherine, it's a surprising victory for Atlus, a company which has focused mostly on niche Japanese games (including the excellent Shin Megami Tensei games), and to see a particularly weird and Japanese game like Catherine become a hit means the company might be more open to putting out even more surreal, unique games.
Catherine: A Strange Brew of Puzzles, Nightmares, and Sex
Catherine has been a surprise since it was first announced. I was impressed first to find out that it was coming stateside, but also with the relatively high profile marketing and buzz of curiosity it got. With its M rating and suggestively disrobing anime chicks with come-hither eyes on its posters and cover art, it's the sort of title that usually gets relegated to Japan. There, in Catherine's native land, sexual repression collides with WTF fetish hard enough for there to be a whole market for weird games about sex. Here in the U.S., on the other hand, it represents something different, new, and ballsy: a simple action-puzzle game dropped into the context of a very adult, very Japanese, creepy, sexy thriller story.
This game is not for anyone who quickly grows impatient with non-interactive dialogue and slow-moving plot, or easily gives up when stuck on a time-sensitive puzzle that might require many attempts to complete. Hell, I'm actually not really sure it's for me. But that's the weird thing about Catherine. Like the titular character, it's a new and refreshing seductress that keeps you coming back, if only for what a unique experience it is.
Radiant Historia: A Classically Trained RPG
Do you remember games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6? Did you love the hell out of them? Have you been wondering for the last 15 years why RPGs went hardcore next-gen and have been unable to really capture the simple magic of sprite-based storytelling and turn-based combat? Then Radiant Historia
Atlus has really sealed itself in as the king of JRPGs, after Square-Enix abdicated the throne a year or two ago. Radiant Historia on the DS is a great RPG filled with classic aesthetics and mechanics, that manage to stand the nostalgia test that all "retro" games must take and that few pass.
Atlus’ “Adult Thriller” Catherine Officially Coming to the U.S.
Every now and then, something comes along that makes even a mega-geek like me clench my fists and snarl "NEERRRRRDDDS!" Atlus's Catherine is one such item. The game's announcement made a splash at TGS last year for its weird, erotic trailers and out-of-left-field action/puzzle gameplay. The collective "WTF?" was quickly followed by excitement and then disappointment as Americans saw no planned release for North America. No surprise there, this weirdness is the kind that rarely ventures outside of its native Japan.
Yankees, Canucks...commence salivating like I know you do for anime babes. Atlus has confirmed a U.S. release for Catherine in Summer '11 (via The Escapist), for PS3 and Xbox 360. Honestly, I applaud Atlus for the potentially-risky move of bringing an unconventional sort of title stateside, and I'm interested to see if it delivers on its mind-trip thriller promise. The U.S. of A. unfortunately has a reputation of being a poor market for goofy/sexy games.
JRPG Win! Here Comes Persona 2: Innocent Sin!
Thank you, gods of JRPGs! Shin Megami Tensei fans are well aware that much like many RPG's in past years, there is one chapter of the Persona series that never made it out of Japan. Persona 2 was actually two games: Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. Unfortunately, only the second game came out in America, which made the game maddening to play due to the direct references back to the previous game in the series. To make things worse, Atlus remade Persona and Persona 3 on the PSP, completely skipping Persona 2.
I had given up hope of ever legally playing though Persona 2, but Atlus just came though! Siliconera just broke news that Persona 2 is not only coming back, it's going to be a full on remake with new content! With Atlus's track record, it's almost certain this is westward bound.
TGS 2010: Catherine
TGS has brought us the second trailer for upcoming Atlus game, Catherine. In it, we get more details of the delightfully confusing plot of our protagonist Vincent, his girlfriend Katherine with a K, and the mysterious Catherine with a C, who he’s sleeping with. The game’s plot follows our misfortunate hero who, after meeting with the beautiful Catherine, ends up having nightmares about climbing an endless staircase. The random cuts and lack of understanding of Japanese makes it difficult to understand all of what’s happening, but I can share that girlfriend Katherine is making a transition to baby momma Katherine. I somehow think Katherine won't be too happy when she finds out that Vincent has been sleeping with Catherine, though from the look on his face, he seems to be shocked as well. Catherine has been described as having “shockingly adult [sexual] scenes,” something the Shin Megami Tensei games have avoided despite their maturity.
Besides the love triangle and mature situations, Catherine will have its fair share of Persona-style weirdness. Dream demons, blood everywhere, lots of screaming, the works. Besides the strange imagery, Atlus has kept relatively quiet on the gameplay mechanics and supernatural plot aspects of the game. Catherine is the first High Definition game from the Persona team and is coming out this Winter in Japan.
Quick Review: Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 Portable
We're adding a new feature to Aggrogate. Many games are very time-consuming to completely play through, and it's not fair to offer a concrete verdict on a game without giving it the full run-through. Unfortunately, we're a bit short-handed and there are only so many hours in the day. If we waited to finish every single game before offering an opinion, we'd never get a review done.
Because of that, we're going to start offering Quick Reviews. Quick Reviews aren't full playthrough-and-write-up evaluations of games, but instead shorter reviews of whatever part of the game we can get through in a reasonable time. Any Quick Review will get at least five hours' worth of gameplay before even starting the write-up, and we'll be sure to note exactly where we stand in the game and how much we played by the time we publish the piece here.
Don't consider Quick Reviews to be full, comprehensive reviews, because they're not based on the full and total experience of the game. Instead, look at them as a general evaluation of what you can expect from a game from putting enough time into it to get a feel for the mechanics, design, and overall quality.
[At the time of publication, I played over 22 hours of the game and beat the fifth full moon event. Yeah, this game is long.]
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 is the RPG that just won't die. After great success on the PS2, it got re-released with extra content as Persona 3: FES. Now Atlus has ported the original game to the PSP as Persona 3 Portable
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