The Weekly WTF: The Boobs, Booze and Swearing Sheep of ‘Catherine’

Now, relationship troubles aren't tackled much by video games. You want bullets flying around your ass and crazy arcade light shows, not some depressed guy whining that his wife hit him with her car again last night. Is that fun? It is not.

But still. Here in the land of the WTF, you never know when the crazy-ass is going to hit you. If Catherine wants to bring us relationship troubles with a crazy-ass twist, you can bet your balls that it's going to bring us relationship troubles with a crazy-ass twist. All we can do is watch as a sheep repeatedly drops the f-bomb.

Yes indeed. The kooky Catherine hit PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2011, an odd blend of puzzly platformer from Atlus. Our protagonist is Vincent Brooks, a dudely young dude being pressured into marriage by his girlfriend Katherine. You know how it is in that situation, you're a renegade badass from the depths of the devil's butthole and you just don't want to be tied down. You cannot and will not be tamed.

But you will be tempted into some genitalia-tennis will the sexy Catherine (not to be confused with Katherine) after a drunken encounter at the Stray Sheep bar. This may sound like just another of dodgy cousin Joe's weekend anecdotes, but this is totally a game plot as well.

Anywho, let's put the mundanity of guys who don't know when to put their dicks away aside. What you really want to know is how we get from there to barnyard creatures swearing like sailors. Well buckle up, because here it comes.

The key to Catherine's crazy-ass is its dream world. Where Vincent lives, there has been a spate of young men dying in their sleep with a look of ball-busting terror on their faces. After Catherine arrives, he begins to have recurring horrific dreams himself. Naturally, he believes them to be part of the ‘curse.'

In said dreams, you're joined by other guys (who, naturally, take the form of sheep in this freaky world). These are the puzzle stages, and see you arranging blocks to reach the top of towers while avoiding obstacles. Betwixt these levels, boss battles will ensue, against something suitably nightmarish that Satan found somewhere in his underworld u-bend.

It's all very jarring, particularly when 'daytime' plays out in relative normality in the bar. There, you're cultivating relationships with Katherine and Catherine, with a morality meter affected by the actions you take with each woman. Catherine is a quirky oddity indeed, all in all, and one of the most brilliantly unique games of recent times.