That Awkward Moment When...

Jay says to me one day, "Heather, I think I made a mistake..." I immediately knew what this meant. My friend Jay (real name hidden), has had a stalker come into our store for quite some time now. She's a bit of an airhead to say the least and when I met her, the only thing I could think was that she was a total space cadet. I gave Jay a look and said, "you didn't..."

"Yeah, I did." Long story short, I said, "So you're now dating... what's her name again?" A blank stare followed resulting in me staring back. "Jay, what is your girlfriend's name?" "Uh... Kate... Katherine.. Kathy? Kathy, I think." I never got an actual answer to what her name was, but bro, we feel your pain. It's stories like this that makes a great videogame and Atlus took that and ran with it. So what do we have? We have Catherine.

The game is a bit more than 8 months old, yet Catherine continues to be a top game for gamers. Even the box art draws guys and chicks alike - very suggestive, very minxy, very sexy - nothing more than the usual J-RPG. So what we have here is an instant hook, but thankfully Catherine delivers a lot more than a teasing blonde girl and a Tenchi Muyo-frantic male character featured on its cover.

The poor sod's name is Vincent who finds himself in an awful predicament after an oh-so-familiar scenario of getting drunk and waking up to some weird hot girl named Catherine. The fun doesn't stop there. Not only does Vincent have a serious girlfriend already, but he finds out that she's pregnant. And to make it more fun, her name is Katherine. Yup. Catherine and Katherine. At least he doesn't have to worry about saying the wrong name in bed, right? Talk about an awkward situation!

Since the first night he sleeps with Catherine, he starts to have terrible and freakish nightmares involving a complex puzzle to climb to the top of a block tower while something is usually chasing you the whole while. If you fall, you die, but if you make it to the top, you'll find yourself in a cathedral-style purgatory where you slowly figure out what's really going on.

And just when you thought that things weren't bad enough, you find out that it's not just happening to Vincent - it's happening to countless other young men around his age, but something different is happening to the other guys than what's happening to Vincent. This game is every bit fun, challenging, irritating, entertaining, sexy, immersive and interactive.

You can hang out with your friends at the local bar, The Stray Sheep, order drinks, and drink the night away while talking to your friends. You can talk to the locals and find out what's going on around town as well. You can also recieve texts on your phone (this is also where you'll save) and choose if you want to answer the phone or ignore it as well as choosing how to reply to texts, if you so choose to respond at all.

Your actions will determine how the rest of the game will play out - there are 8 endings, so choose wisely! I give this game two really huge thumbs-up. I suggest you add this on the Games-To-Play list, just in case you happen to run out of titles to choose from.