Catherine

Catherine offers exactly what the Videogames industry hasn’t been able to offer in a while – something fresh! Nowadays it is such a huge risk for a developer to come up with a new idea or new concept for a videogame. Developers and publishers tend to go for the safe options – new episodes of well-established franchises, or a new game based on something already proved successful. I take my hat off to Atlus, not only for taking the risk, but also for being successful at it, having created something truly unique.

In its core Catherine is a puzzle game, but as a whole, this game is an experience quite difficult to describe. The game takes place in two different dimensions – you either spend time in the dreaming dimension, in which you will come across the puzzle solving levels, or you spend time in an Anime-like world, building up your character and defining his opinions towards his love life. In the latest, it is like you are put into an Anime series. You mainly go to the bar with your friends, have some crazy dialogues about the nightmares you’re having and get drawn into the most important choice of your character’s life – which lover to pick? Will you go with the love of your life – Katherine – or this new, young and sexy crazy girl – Catherine? The choices you make during the game will directly influence the outcome of it, so it’s only normal that game has several different endings.

When it comes down to the puzzles, this game offers some of the most challenging and difficult levels I have ever played in my life. Even if you play it in the easy mode, expect some frustrating moments yelling at your TV screen. But making it difficult is also what makes it interesting and rewarding. You basically have to push around blocks in order to create a path to arrive at the top. Throughout the game you will learn several different techniques of pushing blocks and climbing, earn new items that help you climbing, and face some of the craziest boss-levels that I have ever faced.

The graphics are simply beautiful and very well polished, with a bit of a dark humorous feeling to them, the gameplay is intuitive and addictive, the characters have some serious depth to them (at least for what you expect in a game of this type), and the storyline not only is smart, but also super funny. Finally, the Anime cut scenes are extraordinary and give the perfect complement to the in-game experience.

This is by far one of the most interesting and innovative videogames I have ever played. I’d say it requires a certain level of maturity for you to make the most out of it, and also a nice amount of patience. A very pleasant and rewarding surprise that is available at a very low price in stores.

Neon Genesis Evangelion - The End of Evangelion

Ok, now we’re talking!! This is what I call an ending! If you didn’t watch the episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion, forget about this anime movie. If you watched them, and you liked the last 2 episodes, think before watching this movie as it will change the way you look at Evangelion’s ending. If you watched the episodes and you felt disappointed with the ending just like I did, than this movie is just what you’re looking for!

The movie takes off after the 24th episode, and it takes you 1 minute to realize that everything is different now. I’m not going to make the spoiler alert as I’m not going to focus on the story here. I’ll just say that instead of a bunch of recycled scenes, in this ending we get back to the action, and you’re finally able to understand some of the missing pieces that put the whole story together. The animation is of very high quality with clear improvements when compared with the TV episodes. The main character – Shinji – is still the biggest wooss ever created for an anime, but to compensate for this wimp, I finally got to understand all the fuss around Asuka – one of the other main characters. Asuka stars in one of the best action scenes I’ve ever watched in the anime world!

I’m sure that if Anno Hideaki had created this ending for the original series, he would have avoided the tons of criticism he received. Violent, psychologically intense, disturbing, and highly emotional… That’s Neon Genesis Evangelion alright!

Neon Genesis Evangelion

All together, these 26 episodes had everything to be epic, but unfortunately, in my opinion, they end up failing to do so. Some talk about budget cuts during the series, others say the director, Anno Hideaki, didn’t have the ability to perfectly channel his ideas to the screen. Well, I go with a bit of both. If at the 18th or 19th episode I was completely amazed, towards the end I started to fill a bit disappointed. Still, in 1995/96 Neon Genesis Evangelion redefined the idea of Anime and came to influence many others that were released in the following years.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a futuristic mecha-based Anime, which instead of focusing in the fantastic battles or in the aesthetics of the whole thing, tries to shift the attention to a deeper level. A great deal of importance is given to the development of the characters and how these mature and interrelate with each other during the plot. Central to the whole story is the analysis of the human psyche and subconscious, with Freudian theories of Ego and Super Ego playing a major role here. There is also a big religious connotation throughout the series, but I would say that most of the times these lack objectivity and are rather more superficial.

As I mentioned before, the characters are extraordinarily well constructed with lots of depth into every each of them, and the way they develop during the series is just amazing. The whole story is also very interesting. In the 21st century Earth is being threatened by these alien creatures - the “Angels” – which can only be stopped by an organization known as NERV. This organization created these giant robots known as Evas, which can only be piloted by few chosen children. The plot than evolves into discovering some secret, mind-twisted and greedy projects of NERV that attempt to defy God’s power by creating an ultimate form human android, capable of thinking and acting by itself – the previously mentioned Evas. So far, so good. The first half of the series let us know a bit of the daily life of the chosen children and let us meet all the different characters of the series and know all about their personal dilemmas. Meanwhile, we get to watch some cool and intense action scenes between the Evas and the “Angels”.

The second half of the series starts off well. You start getting more involved with the characters and their emotions, and you finally start asking questions to solve the big puzzle that is being presented to you. This is where Anno Hideaki gets too ambitious, and I would say, a bit pretentious. This was also the time when the budget for Evangelion was cut. It is said that because episode 19 was way too graphic and brutal, even for the Japanese TV, the sponsor decided to bail out. The original ending just leaves a lot of stuff unanswered as if we were missing some pieces of a puzzle, being controversial enough for Hideaki to create an alternative one released afterwards in DVD. Anyways, towards the end you get the feeling that you’re going repeatedly and excessively deep into the same old characters problems. The central characters are broken into pieces in a huge sequence of introspective recycled scenes that are just too much to arrive at the ending climax.

All in all, this is definitely a must-see anime, which unfortunately gets stained by a sequence of final episodes that leave you with the feeling that the director was promising you too much.