Catherine Updates: Adventuring, with a Side of Boobs

If you’re like me, then you’re a huge fan of Atlus’ Persona series, and are eagerly awaiting Persona 5.  Unfortunately, the wait for Persona 5 is going to be a long one, seeing as it was only confirmed a month ago.  Luckily, Atlus is releasing another game this summer, and it looks like it’s at least somewhat similar to the Persona series.  The game, Catherine appears to be a kind of trippy, sexed-up, mindfuck of a survival-horror game, with some puzzle and adventure elements tossed in for good measure.  In other words, it’s gonna be some weird shit.  

Catherine follows the story of Vincent, a man in his early thirties, who is considering taking things to the next level with his long-time girlfriend, Katherine, when she hints that she may be pregnant.  However, before he actually goes through with anything, he meets Catherine.  Catherine is younger than Katherine, and is much more of a free spirit.  Also her boobs are bigger.  Vincent takes an immediate liking to Catherine (or at least her boobs), which results in the two of them gettin’ it on.  But all is not well.  After Vincent has his one-night stand with Catherine, he starts having recurring nightmares in which he must survive, seeing as dying a dream will result in dying in reality.  Oh, and he starts turning into a sheep.  Like I said, it’s some weird shit.

Katherine vs. Catherine.  And yes, those are sheep crawling all over them.

The gameplay will have two main parts to it.  During the Daytime, players will control Vincent as he socializes, juggles his relationships with the two different women, and gets drunk (whoo!).  Then, during the Nightmare stages, players must navigate Vincent through his hella-creepy dreams by surviving action sequences and solving puzzles.  The game will also require to make choices which will affect the ending (yay, multiple endings!).

Catherine has been described as containing “adult-orientated scenes that will shock you”, and I can’t help but wonder exactly what is meant by that.  I’m sure there’ll be at least one sex scene, but that’s not exactly shocking in and of its own.  So what should we be expecting?  Exactly how sexy will it be?  I’m also interested to seem how American audiences will react to Catherine’s “adult” content.  Erotic video games see like they’re pretty common in Japan, but state-side they’re much less mainstream.  I have a hunch that this game will be quite unpopular with American parents, who seem to consider boobs to be the absolute worst thing that their children could ever be exposed to.

Because there's nothing sexier than pizza.

This is certainly a game to keep an eye on, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.  It will be released in North America on July 26 for both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.