As mentioned earlier, I’ll be participating in the Global Game Jam 2012 next weekend, so I’ll be late on my updates next week. Soooooooo…since we won’t have a video next week, lets talk about Catherine, a tastefully sexy game. It’s a mature (as in, thoughtful) game about relationships, and cheating. Here’s Stray Sheep, by Shoji Meguro, Kenichi Tsuchiya, Atsushi Kitajoh, and Pablo de Sarasate.

Catherine starts with our “hero,” Vincent, converses with his girlfriend, Katherine. Despite being in relationship for five years, Vincent is in loss for words when Katherine pressures him to marry her. He drinks himself away in The Stray Sheep bar, until he meets a young and beautiful girl named Catherine in the middle of the night. Vincent then blacks out…and wakes up the following morning in his apartment, in bed, with Catherine sleeping naked against him.

Meanwhile, in the local news, there are rumors that people are having a seemingly common nightmare. Within that dream, if the said person fails to escape from the hazard presented in that nightmare, they die. It was incidentally that fateful night, when Vincent realized he made a horrible relationship sin that his life-destroying nightmare literally begins.

Catherine is a story-driven puzzle game. During the nightmare phases, Vincent — in his pants, no less — is forced to climb a tower made entirely out of blocks. Below him, the tower is falling apart, sometimes due to some unspeakable monster; and above, are the unknowns. Regardless, Vincent must pull and rearrange the blocks to create steps to climb higher and higher up the tower, until he escapes from the entire chasm and into the safety zone. At the very end of the safety zone, you’re given a difficult question in how you would deal with a certain relationship problem.

Outside of these nightmares are the story, which unfortunately isn’t related to the the choices that you make earlier, and consists of nearly half the game. The cutscenes attempt to fill in on what kind of person Vincent is, and how he attempts to resolve these issues. Once at the bar, you can control him to converse with other people, text Catherine or Katherine, and even play the arcade to practice the next puzzle.

The puzzles in Catherine requires quick-thinking, and are quite difficult. It isn’t for anyone, as it covers controversial issues in a gothic art style. This game doesn’t hide it: sexual, bloody, and religious themes are readily available in this game. Regardless, the puzzles are the highlight of the game, so that’ll probably be the determining factor in whether a person will enjoy the game or not.

Catherine was released on Xbox 360 and PS3.
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Hopefully some of you may recognize the Dutch mixer, Junkie XL. He has creating a ton of remixes of popular pop-music for SSX 3, but have also composed many original music for Sims 3 as well. Here’s one of his best works, A51 for SSX Blur.

SSX Blur is a winter sports game, where snowboarders and skiers pull off insane tricks.  As such, there isn’t much of a story behind it, other than some unimportant backgrounds about each character you play.  Regardless, style is the name of the game, and the entire SSX series have a lot of it.  All the art design, billboards, special effects, and even the character themselves gives a comical groovy/techno vibe.  To compliment the visuals is the excellent context-sensitive music.  Any dark or moody locations switches the music from an upbeat, feel-good music to a lower tone, mellow one.  Taking jumps will mute the music significantly, adding a dramatic drumbeat to make the moment count.  Sound is, of course, excellent as each character will both comment on themselves and others on their performance.

SSX Blur is, unfortunately, considered one of the lowest point in the series.  The majority of the complaints were the difficulty to pull of über tricks — elaborate tricks that requires you to draw on the screen via the wiimote — that turned out to be unsatisfying.  The lack of responsiveness in the controls were a big factor for some. Regardless, the fact that each course have many hidden shortcuts and multiple paths to take increases the replayability of the game significantly.  Added with lots of unlockables, this game will definitely keep many winter sports gamers satisfied for a long while.

SSX Blur was released for the Wii.  No other ports exist.

Extra!

Title: Song For Dot
Game: SSX Tricky
Remixer: Space Raiders
Original Composer: Fats Domino
Comments: This is a remix of Fats Domino’s There Goes My Heart Again.

Remember Christophe Héral? He’s the same French composer that written music for Beyond Good & Evil and Adventures of Tintin. It’s a fine time to revisit him today, with Rayman Origins. Here’s The Tricky Treasure, a western-style music mixed in with movie-like orchestra!

As its title implies, Rayman Origins brings the Rayman series back to its roots: 2D platforming. Our limbless hero, Rayman, and his friends are startled from their relaxing nap when a granny summons a bunch of baddies from The Land of the Livid Dead. Disgruntled, Rayman and his team must hammer the baddies and their bosses back to their home-grave. And…yeah, that’s it.

For its lack of complexity, Rayman Origins overcomes it by its sense of humor, excellent sound and music, and absolutely gorgeous artwork. It plays much like New Super Mario Bros., where up to 4 players can join on the jumping, punching, kicking and the bopping. A bit unlike the Mario series, however, this game has a heavier emphasis on speed and rhythm. As such, many hardcore speed-runners are going to have an absolute blast with this this game!

Rayman Origins was released for the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360.