Catherine Q*bert-All

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
strangederby wrote:

Is it weird that I find this game far far more frustraing than Dark Souls?

What difficulty are you playing it on? As far as the meter thing goes, I enjoyed just answering with my gut and not worrying about it. I would just use a walkthrough if you wanted to get the true endings. In my case, I just watched them on YouTube.

Normal difficulty. I'm just not very good at puzzles. It's taken me an age to get as far as I have, (middle of clock tower I think), and all I'm doing now is constantly falling and restarting from the check point. I can get as far as hearing the bell chime but can't seem to spot the solution.

strangederby wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:
strangederby wrote:

Is it weird that I find this game far far more frustraing than Dark Souls?

What difficulty are you playing it on? As far as the meter thing goes, I enjoyed just answering with my gut and not worrying about it. I would just use a walkthrough if you wanted to get the true endings. In my case, I just watched them on YouTube.

Normal difficulty. I'm just not very good at puzzles. It's taken me an age to get as far as I have, (middle of clock tower I think), and all I'm doing now is constantly falling and restarting from the check point. I can get as far as hearing the bell chime but can't seem to spot the solution.

There are some tough ones. The surest way to win is to start memorizing your route and keep with that route. It might take many more tries, but you'll end up being far less frustrated.

Looks like I'm going to have to admit defeat and switch to easy difficulty otherwise I'll never see the end of the game.

I had no problem switching down to Easy. Then again, I also took the hit from my man card and did the same for Ninja Gaiden 2.

If I recall correctly, Normal and Easy are the same except for that you get way more continues. I played it on easy and always had all my continues, so I probably should have just played it on normal. Hard actually ramps up the difficulty significantly. So, don't get discouraged if easy isn't much easier.

I've always felt like Catherine's puzzle system is the kind of thing that an indie dev would conceive, prototype for a while, and then abandon because all the weird corner cases end up making the system too complicated and in some ways inelegant; it lacks the mechanical purity of something like VVVVVVV or even Braid. I'm happy they chose to push the thing through though, corner cases and all, as the resultant game is fascinating if more than a little arcane.

I personally found it to be an impressive and thoroughly-thought out puzzle system. I wound up beating it on hard and beating all the randomly-generated Babel levels. There is a beautiful logic to it, but it does take some time to wrap your head around. You have to start seeing patterns, as opposed to blocks.

Minarchist wrote:

I personally found it to be an impressive and thoroughly-thought out puzzle system. I wound up beating it on hard and beating all the randomly-generated Babel levels. There is a beautiful logic to it, but it does take some time to wrap your head around. You have to start seeing patterns, as opposed to blocks.

I thought it was great as well. There were multiple solutions to every situation, and it actually took a lot of effort to end up in a completely no-win situation. Anticipation rather than reaction is the key to this game. That means I could actually get decent at this game, as my forethought outweighs my reaction time significantly these days.

Forget the puzzle I don't have the reaction time needed to avoid the mini chain saws.

It's interesting that as much as I like this game I find the "game" part to be completly impenetrable. People are

Spoiler:

dying

despite all the

Spoiler:

talking and encouragement

I've been giving everyone. Now I've dropped the difficulty to easy for me this game has stopped being a game and become an interesting mood piece that I have zero control over.

Finally got this after the recent newegg sale. Anything I should know?

Figure I'll start on Normal but even from the last few comments I see stuff about Easy. Is it that bad?

Normal is the new Legendary.

Easy is pretty good. And if that turns out to be a wall, try Super Easy.

I had no problems on Normal, for what it's worth. I think difficulty is very subjective in this game. Since the mechanics are unique you pretty much have to experience them for yourself to see if they click or not.

Well made it through day 1 and 2 puzzles without much trouble until the

Spoiler:

day 2 boss stage.

Proceeded to waste like 6 pillows retrying that one. Finally quit and loaded my save to start fresh. Only used 2 pillows that time. Not sure what wasn't clicking there the first time.

Got silver on the first 2 days puzzles, so I must not suck terribly at this on Normal right?

I started replaying the game recently, and while I was doing fantastic, that boss was a pain in the ass for me as well. I had to start the map over in order to have a chance, and I still don't know what did it.

Stele wrote:

Finally got this after the recent newegg sale. Anything I should know?

Figure I'll start on Normal but even from the last few comments I see stuff about Easy. Is it that bad? :?

The only difference between normal and easy is that you get one less life per pillow (2 vs. 3) and normal's blocks fall slightly faster. The puzzles are the same. Stick with Normal unless you start actively running out of lives.

And enjoy the ride.

Minarchist wrote:
Stele wrote:

Finally got this after the recent newegg sale. Anything I should know?

Figure I'll start on Normal but even from the last few comments I see stuff about Easy. Is it that bad? :?

The only difference between normal and easy is that you get one less life per pillow (2 vs. 3) and normal's blocks fall slightly faster. The puzzles are the same. Stick with Normal unless you start actively running out of lives.

And enjoy the ride. :-)

Yeah, I vote normal for starting out too. I did it on easy because everyone seemed to be hating on the difficulty. I quickly ended up having around 99 continues stocked up on easy.

I need to get back to this game one of these days. I was on day 3 or 4 IIRC, and on a puzzle that I simply couldn't get past.

Apparently every boss level is going to be the same problem... I never use more than 2 pillows on regular levels, but burn through 6 or 8 on the boss level, restart, and then finish it with extras.

A bit frustrating, but not quitting yet. Just tough watching for the different kinds of blocks. And of course the 2nd boss surprise

Spoiler:

raindrops that reverse your controls for a few seconds

really screwed me up the first couple times.

Still, intrigued with the story and enjoying things for the most part.

Sounds like you have the right mindset going. It's easier to not get frustrated if you expect the boss levels to take some time. If you get really frustrated, start learning an exact path, it's easier than improvising. It takes awhile, but you know you'll win for sure, eventually, if you start memorizing a whole path.

Don't forget that you can hit the 'Back' button to undo up to 10 moves if you get stuck (on Normal). I used that a lot.

nel e nel wrote:

Don't forget that you can hit the 'Back' button to undo up to 10 moves if you get stuck (on Normal). I used that a lot.

Wait a second, I don't remember being able to do this. How does that work and what button is the "Back" button. Does some of the floor end up repairing itself when you go back? It's been quite awhile since I played it. I remember getting myself stuck quite often, though.

I'm wondering if I completely missed this feature.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

Don't forget that you can hit the 'Back' button to undo up to 10 moves if you get stuck (on Normal). I used that a lot.

Wait a second, I don't remember being able to do this. How does that work and what button is the "Back" button. Does some of the floor end up repairing itself when you go back? It's been quite awhile since I played it. I remember getting myself stuck quite often, though.

I'm wondering if I completely missed this feature. :)

The Back button on the 360 controller. I think the PS3 equivalent is Select.

And you literally just undo the last move you did. Vincent moves back to where he was, blocks move back into position, the bosses move back a step, etc.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

Don't forget that you can hit the 'Back' button to undo up to 10 moves if you get stuck (on Normal). I used that a lot.

Wait a second, I don't remember being able to do this. How does that work and what button is the "Back" button. Does some of the floor end up repairing itself when you go back? It's been quite awhile since I played it. I remember getting myself stuck quite often, though.

I'm wondering if I completely missed this feature. :)

The Back button on the 360 controller. I think the PS3 equivalent is Select.

And you literally just undo the last move you did. Vincent moves back to where he was, blocks move back into position, the bosses move back a step, etc.

Yep. It's the equivalent of the rewind function in the Forza games.

nel e nel wrote:

Don't forget that you can hit the 'Back' button to undo up to 10 moves if you get stuck (on Normal). I used that a lot.

Well yeah that would have helped. A couple times I accidentally pushed a block too far off a ledge, or through the back and blocks above fell that I didn't mean to... completely forgot about the back button although I do remember reading about it in the manual and even seeing it mentioned in the first map.

That should definitely help, maybe save me a few pillows.

Well, sh**, I'm pretty sure I didn't use that. Is that functionality in hard mode? I know that I started hard mode. If that functionality is there, I may have to go and do that.

It would be way easier to memorize 10 move runs than to memorize all the moves in between checkpoints as I ended up doing much of the time.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Well, sh**, I'm pretty sure I didn't use that. Is that functionality in hard mode? I know that I started hard mode. If that functionality is there, I may have to go and do that.

No. It also doesn't work if you've been turned into a pile of goo.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Well, sh**, I'm pretty sure I didn't use that. Is that functionality in hard mode? I know that I started hard mode. If that functionality is there, I may have to go and do that.

It would be way easier to memorize 10 move runs than to memorize all the moves in between checkpoints as I ended up doing much of the time.

No, the rewind function is only available up to Normal difficulty.

Ah, cool.

Finished! Took a break for a couple weeks due to family visiting and getting distracted with another game or two. Played hard the last day or two to finish. Had some real trouble with a boss fight a couple weeks back when I played... I want to say Day 6?

But anyway. the last couple days went very smoothly, 7, 8, and 9... all the way until the final boss stage. And then I proceeded to blow through about 25-30 pillows.

Not sure how much I want to replay. Sure I'm tempted to go for platinum. But the boss stages... so much random, they just drive me crazy. I can't imagine them on hard.

I am semi-tempted to try go gold the stages on Normal so that I could skip through and watch the various endings. But I think I only got gold on 2 days, and silver on 2, and bronze on the rest. So it might take some effort.

Also I'm curious, do the cutscenes where you have no control play out differently based on your meter? I know there were a lot of times where Vincent pauses and talks to himself and the meter shows, so I assume he's formulating a response based on that? Just wondering how different some scenes end up and if it's worth replaying... or I suppose watching a lot on youtube...