Catherine

Recently a Japanese friend of mine bought a copy of 'Catherine', he gave an apt, in depth and well thought out description "horror, puzzle and hentai lol".

Now set to grace the shores of the US I doubt it will be long before Catherine comes to Europe and no doubt confuses our stoic British minds with it's overt sexuality and odd-ball horror.

The first game in history ever to reward players points based solely on the intensity of their erection Catherine tells the story of the young salaryman Vincent who I should now refer to solely as "that guy that something bad is going to happen to". In a state of purgatory between finding a path in life and finding love Vincent meets, you guessed it, Catherine, the outlandish and mysterious blonde who acts as the starting point for Vincent's descent into a world of death, demons and highly inappropriate moments of sexual tension in bars.

With his new found love interest comes a plethora of bad things and thus Vincent transforms from "that guy something bad is going to happen to" into "that guy who has nightmares of murderous sheep and has to platform his way through levels in order to survive". The natural progression, as you are well aware. By day Vincent must court Catherine and go about his normal daily routine of scrolling through static animation conversations, being badly dubbed and saving. By Night however, Vincent's nightmares become the playground for a whole host of weird platformer puzzles which he must traverse in order to continue his most frequent of hobbies, breathing.

Japanese reviews of the game have surfaced revealing 'Catherine' to have an intricate story which can take many different turns based on the players actions (a la sexy heavy rain). Difficulty has been cited a major issue in the Japanese version of the game but by the time it reaches western shores this is sure to be tweaked, though no one ever said being harassed in an ethereal realm between consciousnesses by demonic sheep-people would ever be easy, did they?