Category Archives: Catherine

Fans Are Intense

I attended the Call of Duty XP event out in Los Angeles a bit over a week ago, and it was really elaborate. My summary of the event itself is here. The main draw was ostensibly the opportunity for core fans to spend an entire weekend playing and competing at Modern Warfare 3, but it was also their first look at Activision’s Elite premium content service and social networking platform for the franchise.

The company had been rolling out information on Elite in careful bits and pieces, but it wasn’t until XP that it announced the price. The company’s digital VP, Jamie Berger, feels deeper social features will create a more positive community, and Beachhead, the Activision studio in charge of developing Elite, talked to me about working closely with the other studios, plus some important lessons from the beta.

I imagine that most of the SVGL readers aren’t that into Call of Duty, given that the longtime crew usually tells me that you found my work or my blog because of my writing on weird JRPGs, or on survival horror games, or  hentai games or something. Those of you in the latter crew might be happy to learn that I’m back on the pervy games with a new monthly at The Escapist.

This month I start out fairly tame with the sexuality of Catherine, but I’m the kind of person who gets a little bored and rebellious writing the same kinds of articles for too long, and then I write things that are weird. Speaking of Catherine, I also wrote about it in my Kotaku feature and reviewed it at Paste. Catherine, Catherine, Catherine. It’s a good thing I like that game a lot.

And speaking of weird RPGs, things I like, intense fans, and me writing things that are weird when I get bored, my latest editorial at Gamasutra is about “Persona_ebooks,” the Persona-themed Twitter tribute to both that series and internet sensation “Horse_ebooks.” Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about, but trust me, you want to. Give it a read.

I’ve started Persona 2: Innocent Sin on the PSP. It’s so weird. I don’t even… like, I need to spend several more hours on it before I know what to tell you. But I’m looking forward to those hours, so take that bit for what it’s worth.



[Today’s Good Song: Broken Water, ‘Kamilche House’]

Bites

We’re continuing Gamasutra’s end-of-year retrospectives, and today I kick in the top five controversies of 2010. Do the thing where you try to guess em before you click on them and go see how many you got right. Because, you know, if you picked something different from me, you’re wrong, naturally.

I stick up for a friend in this Bitmob piece, and I also have some things to say about Twilight, of all things. Such a fundamentally useless and vulnerable heroine appeals to so many people for a reason — when sexism is escapism for the modern feminist? I dunno, man.

Please accept my apologies: I haven’t done Today’s Good Song on here for a while. To make up for it, have an entire music mix from me, my second Fall-season mix, download here.

Finally, here’s actual gameplay for Catherine.

Cathy

If you don’t recognize SVGL’s new banner, get up to date! I’m more excited about Catherine than I’ve been about any other “well, I don’t know too much about it but this seems awesome” title in some time, so I’m very psyched at the Catherine banner made for me by Cristopher Boyer.

Nice work, eh? Cristopher is Detroit’s IGDA coordinator, and is CEO and co-founder of media development company Variant. His work involves helping nurture and support new game development, web and tech businesses in Michigan — “It’s all about the new economies here right now,” he tells me. Good lookin’ out, Cristopher, and thanks so much for the banner.

As always, past banners by me and by wonderful generous gift artists can be seen at the official Sexy Videogameland banner gallery!

A little while back, fellow Atlus fan Colette Bennett wrote at Gamasutra about why she’s looking forward to the game so much and the kinds of themes and interactions she thinks have the potential to emerge. Check it out.

What I’ve done regarding Catherine is, uh. Despite having an embarrassment of riches in my “to play” pile, I have been diligently aiming to finish Persona 3 Portable, and when I encountered Vincent’s little cameo in the game…

Okay. I don’t know what’s lamer. That I made a YTMND, that I am showing everyone, or that I keep loading it up so that I can laugh at the thing. That I made. Yeah. Well, here you go.

Catherine

If you follow me on Twitter or are the sort to read my work, you probably already heard about this. But in the event you haven’t, apparently Atlus probes my brain while I’m asleep, has crawled into my head and decided to make the exact game I have been wanting all my life. It’s like Murakami had a baby with Persona and yeah please let this come out here.