This is an extremely long post, so incoming wall of text.
TLDR Version: I enjoyed Catherine immensely because I felt like it did a lot of things that video games should do right with it's gameplay and story. The gameplay was a good break from the bar sections and I did enjoy the puzzles. The gameplay was given a good incentive to move forward and continue trying to instead of demanding to make the next checkpoint. The story was believable and had reasons for the setup and the responses from the characters. The characters all felt like they were well developed and given real personalities instead of suffering from the stereotypes that some of them were modeled after. They had reasons to be how they were, and the narrative allowed to explore them by showing you the way the acted to Vincent and how they acted towards themselves in the dream sections, and I thoroughly enjoyed how the game made the narrative feel player bound. That it presents choices with weight and showed how those player made choices changed the way the narrative played out. It made the player feel connected to the narrative instead of simply showing them hey this happened.
My personal favorite game released in 2011 was Catherine, though I'll admit the reason being so is probably a bit more biased due to my current situation, but more on that.
Personally, I found the puzzle sections, excluding the end, to be extremely fun, and the right amount of hard. I felt rewarded for completing them because the game did something that goes incredibly well to it's credit. I looked forward to the intermission platforms to see how the other sheep were doing; I cared whether or not they died. It made me enjoy the cutscenes, and bar sections, hell even the question asked by the dude in the confession booth was a reason for me to keep going. I loved the story and the conflict in it, it was something that hadn't been done to death and was something that I could see the depth in and it was relatable to real life. I was enthralled with what would happen next and the hijinks that would Vincent would cause. That is the reason I liked Vincent's character so much; he was a game character that had obvious flaws. Flaws, at least to me, that were extremely relatable to. I was intrigued with Vincent, not because I wanted to see how this hero character would get out of the situation with brilliant light and triumphant music; I wanted to see how an average man would try to work his way out of the situation by lying, stalling and conniving. I could really see part of myself in Vincent because he had flaws to his character.
The second reason I probably loved about the game was because of the relatable part. I was having my own relationship problems that reminded me a lot of Vincent's push to go to Catherine. My girlfriend at the time was already stressing settling down etc, and it was even more of a shock to me than Vincent because I'm 19 and we had been dating 3 months. Throughout the game I felt torn between C or K because both had their obvious pros and cons, and I felt an actual feeling for K because she reminded me of my current girlfriend, and I felt a yearning to break free and do my own thing because of K's/girlfriend's constricting feelings.
The confession booth questions and bar actions had me at 50/50 until very late in the story. At the very end I chose to go for K because, while their relationship had obvious flaws, but it felt more real because of it and obviously pregnancy, while C seems to be more of a representation of what guys imagine being single and living free would be like. C's appeal wasn't a deep relationship between her and Vincent, it was the idea of it being a guy's "paradise/dream girl."
The choices were a good opposite, without feeling like there was a "good or bad" choice and often while I knew which choice would result in which side of the meter gaining ground, because I approached each question honestly it felt like I was making a real choice in the game, as opposed to how to respond to a question. The choices were perfect, because even in the end, choosing either side or no side at all didn't leave me with a feeling that it was a choice that I wouldn't have done (well ignoring the later spoiler about C).
The third is the conflict. The conflict, at least what it seemed to me, was a mature and new topic to try and explore in the confides of a game, and the conflict wasn't exploited by just trying to throw some meat in front of the player and saying she's hot, it gave you a reason to want to go for C because of K's pushing for marriage, and it made you also want to go to K out of commitment and actual returned love.
The fourth is the way the story is presented. While the story doesn't change until really day 7, I liked the way to evolved the first time through based on your actions because Vincent's dialogue you don't control changes accordingly. I find it worth mentioning that I enjoyed the way the game seemed realize it was a video game, and not try to be a movie or novel and wanted to involve the player in how the narrative moved forward. It wasn't gameplay - cutscne - gameplay. It enjoyed the bar sections and dialogue because it felt like every scene was not only important, that some of the scenes were important because of my choices. It seemed to pull me into the story through player made choices instead of simply presenting me a story.
Lastly, I would say the characters helped complete the entire game. While I already went over Vincent's character I liked all the characters and thought they were all given good dialogue and a good personality. I loved Vincent's friends, because they played on obvious guy friend stereotypes, especially best friend Orlando, but it didn't stay and they didn't let that be the end of the character. I felt like that the characters weren't this troph or that because the writers wrote them that way, but because of what had happened in their lives previously. They were all given sufficient backstories to make their actions seem logical. I never found K's personality jarring because, what others say, she seemed to treat Vincent not so much as a boyfriend as a guy that needed her help to survive. To me, it felt like the actions, like simply putting the sugar in the coffee for him, showed their connection, and showed their relationship off fairly well. I loved it because the relationship felt like it had reason and depth, instead of the writers saying it simply did.
Personally, I found the puzzle sections, excluding the end, to be extremely fun, and the right amount of hard. I felt rewarded for completing them because the game did something that goes incredibly well to it's credit. I looked forward to the intermission platforms to see how the other sheep were doing; I cared whether or not they died. It made me enjoy the cutscenes, and bar sections, hell even the question asked by the dude in the confession booth was a reason for me to keep going. I loved the story and the conflict in it, it was something that hadn't been done to death and was something that I could see the depth in and it was relatable to real life. I was enthralled with what would happen next and the hijinks that would Vincent would cause. That is the reason I liked Vincent's character so much; he was a game character that had obvious flaws. Flaws, at least to me, that were extremely relatable to. I was intrigued with Vincent, not because I wanted to see how this hero character would get out of the situation with brilliant light and triumphant music; I wanted to see how an average man would try to work his way out of the situation by lying, stalling and conniving. I could really see part of myself in Vincent because he had flaws to his character.
The second reason I probably loved about the game was because of the relatable part. I was having my own relationship problems that reminded me a lot of Vincent's push to go to Catherine. My girlfriend at the time was already stressing settling down etc, and it was even more of a shock to me than Vincent because I'm 19 and we had been dating 3 months. Throughout the game I felt torn between C or K because both had their obvious pros and cons, and I felt an actual feeling for K because she reminded me of my current girlfriend, and I felt a yearning to break free and do my own thing because of K's/girlfriend's constricting feelings.
The confession booth questions and bar actions had me at 50/50 until very late in the story. At the very end I chose to go for K because, while their relationship had obvious flaws, but it felt more real because of it and obviously pregnancy, while C seems to be more of a representation of what guys imagine being single and living free would be like. C's appeal wasn't a deep relationship between her and Vincent, it was the idea of it being a guy's "paradise/dream girl."
The choices were a good opposite, without feeling like there was a "good or bad" choice and often while I knew which choice would result in which side of the meter gaining ground, because I approached each question honestly it felt like I was making a real choice in the game, as opposed to how to respond to a question. The choices were perfect, because even in the end, choosing either side or no side at all didn't leave me with a feeling that it was a choice that I wouldn't have done (well ignoring the later spoiler about C).
The third is the conflict. The conflict, at least what it seemed to me, was a mature and new topic to try and explore in the confides of a game, and the conflict wasn't exploited by just trying to throw some meat in front of the player and saying she's hot, it gave you a reason to want to go for C because of K's pushing for marriage, and it made you also want to go to K out of commitment and actual returned love.
The fourth is the way the story is presented. While the story doesn't change until really day 7, I liked the way to evolved the first time through based on your actions because Vincent's dialogue you don't control changes accordingly. I find it worth mentioning that I enjoyed the way the game seemed realize it was a video game, and not try to be a movie or novel and wanted to involve the player in how the narrative moved forward. It wasn't gameplay - cutscne - gameplay. It enjoyed the bar sections and dialogue because it felt like every scene was not only important, that some of the scenes were important because of my choices. It seemed to pull me into the story through player made choices instead of simply presenting me a story.
Lastly, I would say the characters helped complete the entire game. While I already went over Vincent's character I liked all the characters and thought they were all given good dialogue and a good personality. I loved Vincent's friends, because they played on obvious guy friend stereotypes, especially best friend Orlando, but it didn't stay and they didn't let that be the end of the character. I felt like that the characters weren't this troph or that because the writers wrote them that way, but because of what had happened in their lives previously. They were all given sufficient backstories to make their actions seem logical. I never found K's personality jarring because, what others say, she seemed to treat Vincent not so much as a boyfriend as a guy that needed her help to survive. To me, it felt like the actions, like simply putting the sugar in the coffee for him, showed their connection, and showed their relationship off fairly well. I loved it because the relationship felt like it had reason and depth, instead of the writers saying it simply did.
TLDR Version: I enjoyed Catherine immensely because I felt like it did a lot of things that video games should do right with it's gameplay and story. The gameplay was a good break from the bar sections and I did enjoy the puzzles. The gameplay was given a good incentive to move forward and continue trying to instead of demanding to make the next checkpoint. The story was believable and had reasons for the setup and the responses from the characters. The characters all felt like they were well developed and given real personalities instead of suffering from the stereotypes that some of them were modeled after. They had reasons to be how they were, and the narrative allowed to explore them by showing you the way the acted to Vincent and how they acted towards themselves in the dream sections, and I thoroughly enjoyed how the game made the narrative feel player bound. That it presents choices with weight and showed how those player made choices changed the way the narrative played out. It made the player feel connected to the narrative instead of simply showing them hey this happened.
