Backlog Beatdown: Catherine. The game to play if you want to spend long portions of your evening going 'What was that all about?'

This is one of the weirdest, yet most enjoyable full-price games I’ve played on the Xbox 360 so far. Given that I own a LOT of games, that’s saying something.

I was inspired to pick up this game from Youtube’s The Completionist. I’d been aware of the game before now on the Xbox Live marketplace, but even though I thought it looked interesting, it was priced at a higher mark than I wanted to spend on a blind buy. Watching Jirard review the game changed that as I had a much better idea of what I was getting myself into, and when I could find a cheap-enough copy on Amazon (it’s not for sale in any of the game shops I usually attend,) I bought it quickly before anybody else did. Finding a physical copy of this game is not easy!

I actually had to click 'gameplay' to get an image off
Google that wasn't fan-art, Cosplay girls, or various
other people called Catherine including Zeta Jones.

The gameplay is divided into two sections, the main one being the Nightmare levels where you have to guide the lead character Vincent through a set of block-shifting wall puzzles to beat the level. It sounds simple, but the genius of this game kicks in when it starts adding variety to the blocks. Regular blocks can be moved and stood on. It’s when the game starts adding blocks that can’t be moved, or trapped blocks that will kill you if you don’t get off them straight away, or ice blocks that you can’t stop on, that things get really interesting. You have to plan your moves or you will box yourself in – but as the floor is always collapsing from underneath you, you can’t take too long about this or you will lose the level by falling off the wall.

I say this a lot but there’s something satisfyingly ‘old-school’ about games like this. Puzzle-action games[1] aren’t common in the triple-A market and you’d only buy a game like this if you knew what you were looking for; as such they’ve had something of a decline in popularity over the last decade. But it is a rare time with the Xbox 360 that I’ve had a genuine sense of satisfaction from finishing a level, as it is down to your skill as a player that you manage it. The game is hard, but not insurmountably so and while you’re essentially doing the same thing all the way through it, there’s always new mechanics to the blocks being introduced.

The other section of the game takes place in a bar, where Vincent hangs out with his friends. This, along with cut-scenes that would give Metal Gear Solid a run for its money in terms of length, is where the story unfolds: Unsure of whether to commit to his long-term girlfriend Katherine, Vincent accidentally cheats on her with a young sexy woman called Catherine. This is a part of the cause of the nightmares, where everybody appears to each other as sheep, and if they fall from the blocks they die in real life. Vincent’s anguish over having cheated on his girlfriend, his deteriorating mental state as he repeatedly gets drunk and loses sleep, and his gradual realisation that some of the people he speaks to in the bar are also having the strange dreams[2] is played out remarkably well. How you speak to and respond to people in the bar, and also text you keep getting from both girls, affects the ending of the game, of which there are a total of nine.

Yes... an Arse monster. Funnily enough not the
freakiest thing in the game...

In all cases, the game does not outstay its welcome. Even with the added block mechanics, solving wall puzzles does get old – but the game ends before that happens. The conversations in the bar happen on a timed basis, so you can’t talk to everyone because at some point, some of them will leave, forcing you to continue with the game. The cut-scenes do an excellent job of moving the story forward; the whole game is paced really well.

I’d more than recommend giving this one a go. I’ve got a lot more to unlock than anyone will manage on one play-through, but like most games, now that I’ve completed it I’m going to put it to bed until I feel like coming back to it.

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[1] The game is often referred to as a Puzzle Platformer, but as that kind of game almost always includes a jump function and Catherine doesn’t, I’ll call it what I want.

[2] Oh it’s not a spoiler, you’d have figured it out straight away.

Backlog Beatdown: Oh, oh, oh, Oh Borderlands we rruuunnn!!! (Sing to A Sort of Homecoming by U2)

If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard from me for a while, it’s because I’ve been playing Borderlands and it took me absolutely ages to complete…

I bought Borderlands in late 2013, before I started No Game New Year. I can’t remember why, most likely because I’d heard it was good and I needed a game to make up a special offer of buy two get one free. Borderlands is a first-person shooter action game with role-playing-game elements. The latter only applies in the woolliest sense; you have quests, variable weapons and armour, and you level up. The obvious comparison is with Fallout 3, but while Fallout prides itself on being gritty and realistic, Borderlands is very much high adventure and silly. And it took me a while to get in to it. I started the game several times and would get as far as the Pisswash Hurdle before I’d start wishing I was playing XCOM. But this time, after watching The Completionist get through the game, I thought I’d give it another go.

This time, I was better equipped to deal with it: Borderlands is a game best enjoyed in short bursts. You can have fun shooting up Skags, Bandits and Spiderants (your main variety of enemy for the first three quarters of the game) and doing fetch quests, and I was enjoying myself. But the pacing is rubbish. For every quest that advances the plot, there are several more side quests that make you feel like you’re jumping through hoops.

I chose Lilith for my playthrough. Her Phasewalk
ability got me out of a lot of tight situations!

The obvious counter-argument here is “Why don’t you skip all the side quests you don’t need to do and advance the plot?” Well, apart from looking for the achievement points, I’m in two minds about this: The game would have been better paced if there weren’t so much side questing. Yet if I skip it, I’d miss probably two thirds of the game. And I wasn’t in a hurry to get through the game. So I played for one, or two hours at a time, doing a few quests, increasing my headshot count and my skill with sniper rifles, and whenever I needed I break I’d stick the Sega Megadrive Ultimate Collection on and have a go through Streets of Rage 2. The quests in Borderlands rarely presented a massive challenge; it was only the Arena levels and the final mission that gave me any significant trouble. I think this was because I’d done all the side quests and levelled up to the point where there wasn’t much challenge left in the game, but I have no problem with that; that’s the whole point of levelling up!

The pacing issues changes once you get to the end. After you beat the missions on The Salt Flats, the game gives you entirely plot-related missions, and a sense of urgency that you didn’t have before. At this point, the game becomes difficult to put down. The principle enemies you have at this point – the Crimson Lance soldiers – are far more challenging than the other enemies in the game and there’s a sense of achievement for taking them down, rather than mindlessly killing bandits. Also, the game becomes quite linear. This is no bad thing, as instead of skirting around obstacles you have to think about how you’re going to tackle them.

The final Boss Battle with The Destroyer took a while, because I didn’t realise there was more than one place you were supposed to be shooting. Once I’d figured it out, I did it one go, and was rewarded with the ending. I know Borderlands has been criticised for having a rubbish ending. It’s true that there is much left unexplained and that you don’t get what you came for in terms of your original objective. But to be honest, I didn’t mind. It fits in with the tone of the rest of the game and leaves a lot open for the DLC and sequels. The only thing that left me unsatisfied is that I would love to have known who the Guardian Angel was, and her level of investment in it.

I have the Game of the Year edition, meaning that I have the four DLC packs as well. I haven’t touched these yet; once I’d reached the end of the game I was ready to move on to something different. I might come back to it at some point. I certainly have no immediate desire to rush out and buy Borderlands 2, which I’ve heard is much the same game with some slight differences. I’m all Borderlandsed out at the moment!

Incidentally, I bought Catherine for the Xbox 360 during my playthrough. This brings the total number of games I’ve completed vs the games I’ve bought to 4-3 to me for this year. I’m toeing the line!

Star Wars: X-Wing Tournament at Titan Games Stourbridge

I took part in my first X-Wing Tournament today; it was a day of fierce competition and tense matches! I was running a Rebel squad, and my army list was as follows:

Components	Points	Total Points	Total Army
X-Wing: Rookie Pilot	21	21	100
X-Wing: Rookie Pilot	21	21
X-Wing: Rookie Pilot	21	21
Y-Wing: “Dutch” Vander	23	37
Concussion Missiles	4
Cluster Missiles	4
Ion Cannon Turret	5
R2 Astromech	1

 

So, a lot of my strategy was centred on Dutch’s special ability, which is to allow a friendly ship within range 1 to acquire a target lock as soon as he does the same. I invariably deployed in a square formation, usually on the right corner of the board. Here’s how I got on:

My first opponent was Gareth, who was running the one thing I wasn’t expecting: Swarming rebels. Rebel fighters are usually quite expensive but when the Z-95 Headhunters were released for the Rebels, it became possible to buy ships for twelve points each, and since each has to take four hits to go down, tackling them head on is a messy business indeed. Gareth had six of them and also a Smuggler YT-1300 for some extra clout. I managed to take out one of the Z-95s, but after that they blocked anything that remotely resembled a clever move and I lost the game outright.

My second opponent was another guy called Matt, and he was running an interesting combination: two TIE fighters, a Firespray and a TIE Phantom. I recognised that there was going to be a lot of talent on the field, given that Imperial squads usually run numbers, so I decided to press my advantage by taking out the two TIE fighters first. Here the Y-Wing came into its own, as I managed to Ion Cannon the Firespray into an asteroid so that he couldn’t use his considerable firepower. After destroying that, the focus came onto the TIE Phantom and that proved to be a pain in the bum, since I just didn’t have the manoeuvrability to get a clear shot on it. I did my best with the Ion cannon, but in the end time was called and I won the game on points.

My third game was fun and extremely tense. Andy was running a peculiar set-up of Soontir Fel, Howlrunner, Backstabber, a Black Squadron and an Academy Pilot. This struck me as odd as it was the first time I’d fought a squadron with no duplicate pilots, which meant that for once it mattered which one I should take out first. Andy suffered from trying to fly the four TIE fighters in close formation; a powerful move if you can pull it off but if not you end up crashing into each other. This gave me some more time to get into position, and while my first Rookie Pilot didn’t last very long, I was fortunate enough to be able to take out Howlrunner quite quickly. Backstabber was the next to go, but the rest of the match was a deadly game of Cat and Mouse as we tried to outmanoeuvre each other. I wasn’t able to destroy anything else but neither was Andy, giving me a win on points.

My final game was against Russ, who was running two B-wings and an A-wing, rather cleverly deployed. I thought I was doing OK to begin with; I lost a Rookie but manage to take the lesser of the two B-wings with me. However, by this point I was exhausted and my concentration was slipping; I managed to make the mistake of flying my Y-wing the wrong way. I ended up off the board, which meant I had one Rookie left to take on two Named Pilots. He never had a chance, but I made Russ work for it!

So, two wins, two losses, and out of fourteen people I came ninth. I’m quite pleased with that, since as it was my first tournament I thought I was going to get absolutely destroyed. There’ll be time enough later to think about how I could improve my squad, though. I might get an A-wing next, and see where that takes me!