Why do we punish ourselves? I’m not here to debate that. Instead, let me offer up two titles: Catherine and Dark Souls. Both are unique and deceptively simple video games. Both will challenge you beyond the point of frustration. Both come quickly and easily with my heartfelt recommendation…. but then again I don’t know your personality or skills well enough to distinguish between “passing along great games” and “wishing them upon you”. Why would you want to subject yourself to redundant and teeth-grinding difficulty? For the accomplishment and bragging rights, of course. Not to mention the total gaming experience that you will not find anywhere else.

“Catherine” is just your average Nightmare-Puzzle-Block-Challenge-Adult-Dating-Sim with Text Messaging action and Strategy Arcade features. Well actually this isn’t your average game at all. You’re in for a strange amalgamation of Japanese anime and a cerebral thriller that uses a timed “Tower Climbing” puzzle as the fulcrum to both the story and the prime amusement for the player. Vincent can’t commit in his relationship to brunette Katherine. He spends his time drinking and complaining to a likable bunch of guys down at the local dive. Along comes blonde Catherine (with a “C”) who turns his life upside down, a curious event that arrives just before Vincent starts having nightmares…. deeply troubling nightmares where he dons Sheep Horns and scales a massive block tower as it crumbles below, pursued by none other than giant patchwork babies, the girl from The Ring, and what can only be described as an “Ass Monster”.

Thus begins a long steady decline into Vincent’s madness, his inability to decide and his penchant for drinking himself into oblivion becoming the tools of his destruction. Your job as player is to navigate him around the bar, learn trivia about the various forms of international drinks, manage your time speaking with and encouraging the local denizens (before its too late), dictating text message responses to both Katherine and Catherine, and of course, to keep him from falling to his bloody doom on the nail-biting climbs of his dreams. The game mechanics are simple.

Choosing to speak with others plays an impact on both their lives and yours. The text messages are pre-generated chunks of text that you can mix and match; you’re allowed three trials on the arcade machine per night, and you have a Chaos/Order meter that rises and falls based on your decisions throughout the game. This meter is affected by how you respond to the female love interests, but also how you answer dating/morality questions that provide intermission between the main gaming elements. These questions are a mixture of fluff and heavy, evenly divided between things like “Do you wish to live your entire life in calming Peace or exciting Chaos?” and “Would you give everything to reclaim a past lover?” This brings an unquantifiable quality to the game, serving both to guide Vincent to one of several endings but to also help you assess your own views (your responses are cross-referenced with online polls).

The towers, themselves, are timed since you can’t tarry too long before you’re crushed/squashed/minced/eviscerated. This means you have to think quickly in order to push, pull, and climb the cascading blocks that slide your way. This starts off easy, but ramps in difficulty extremely fast. With slippery, immobile, spiketrap, moving, bouncing, heavy, and other block types to contend with, you’ll have to adapt on the fly to whatever new configurations and elements the game throws at you. Luckily, your fellow sheep offer useful strategic tidbits during intermissions…. The arcade machine at the bar is also a helpful tool for getting acquainted with the mechanics, since you have unlimited time to plan out your route in 64+ pixelated puzzles in surplus of the main game. (There’s also a multiplayer component.)

I'm too sophisticated for obvious "in Soviet Russia" memes.

The graphics are a mid-level anime caliber with cell-shaded gameplay. The styles don’t sync up exactly, but close enough. You may also be initially impressed with the orchestral tracks and sound effects since they give a great first impression, but if you don’t tune them out you’ll tire of the looping and repetitive nature. Indeed the game is simplistic and formulaic, almost to a fault, but the presentation still grabs you. It’s the cheap-shot bosses and near misses that cause this thing to be so frustrating (unless you count the inability to control SPECIFICALLY what Vincent says instead of merely being able to influence his relationships).

Many times, I was killed in ways that illicited tv-rage, though I’ll swear before a judge that I had the right controls inputted or was nowhere close to the danger zone that flashes red before being obliterated beneath a massive fist. (Vincent’s control is loose and slow enough that he can’t dodge certain attacks.) Additionally, like I inferred, the main character is just a weak pain-in-the-ass (which is why he’s in this situation in the first place) and all you hear throughout the game is his monotonous groaning about his fate of being stuck between two attractive women. Parts of this game have all of the awkwardness of getting sidled by a self-pitying “sad drunk” at a party combined with the infuriating forcefulness of being in simultaneously oppressive relationships. Needless to say, I wasn’t putting up with Vincent’s pleas nor his girlfriend duo’s berating, but I can see other players fawning over the characters.

All considered, it is a fun and unique game, one that blends puzzles with romance in a creative cocktail of alcohol-fueled infidelity and controller-pounding fury. I was satisfied with a single playthrough, but it’s obvious that the game is intended and equipped for much more.