Looking back on my experience from playing Catherine, I realized that I didn't enjoy the game just because of its difficult puzzles.

I enjoyed it because it was the first game that allowed me to speak with anime characters who moved and talked like real-life people.

In most cases, this social experience might seem more like the style of a visual novel. In these types of games, players would usually engage in boring conversations with static images. However, the visual style of Catherine literally raises the dramatic expression of the characters to levels unheard of in video games.

These are grown-up, detailed polygon characters with hardly any blocky polygons to get in the way of the presentation. The main character, Vincent Brooks, has a wide range of shocking emotions that he can express through clever character designs and motion capture technology. He's obviously under a lot of pressure, balancing two relationships in a frightening soap opera story. However, the level of motion-capture and voice acting truly push the medium to the edge.

In fact, it's really hard to tell if the presentation is real or an anime-styled creation. Even though the creators set apart some anime cutscenes for the more difficult scenes, the polygons come close to the radical visual style that a person might see in the movie A Scanner Darkly.

Whatever the case, the visuals and the motion capture technology truly immerse people into the environment of an actual bar. For the first time, I actually felt like I was talking to these people in real life.

To be honest, the experience really scared me at first. I already feel really awkward talking to my friends about my own relationship problems. However, many of the NPCs were going through very similar problems with infidelity in their relationships. I actually sympathized the most with Orlando, a bearded guy wearing a Fedora. Even though he sleeps around with lots of women, he suffered through the most pain when he had to separate from his wife.

I also had more fun learning about all the other NPCs problems. Unlike a drab, boring MMORPG, I was talking to people with deep, serious issues. One of the characters, Daniel, is a rich businessman who wants to escape from an arranged marriage with someone he doesn't like. Another NPC, Justin, is a journalist who still feels haunted by the murder of someone who he had written a story about. On top of that, a depressed policeman at the bar, Morgan, still mourns the death of his wife.

These are heavy topics in a video game, but the developers of the Persona games handle the story with ease. Even though this is a Japanese game at heart, the localizers didn't flake out on the localization and the dubbing process. Most of the voice actors obviously sound like the same guys and girls from the Persona 3. However, this is the first game that truly tests their voice acting skills, because all the dialogue uses actual voice recordings.

The actors in Catherine actually execute one of the most admirable dubs in video game history. Okay, there were times when I rolled my eyes. One of the NPCs, Todd, tended to give the same annoying speech about what it takes to really be a man. The last cutscenes with the owner of the bar, The Boss, looked very silly. However, This game still delivers one of the most memorable stories that I'd ever played through in a video game.

Even if the game is more like a goofy diversion rather than an epic adventure, Catherine offers more variety than I expected from a puzzle game. It's one of the few games where I actually felt compelled to unlock many of the achievements. In fact, the achievement system is one of the most rewarding aspects of the game. I'll have to explain it to everyone in another story.

Are you willing to enter the social atmosphere of Catherine? Or is the topic of marital infidelity still too awkward for a video game to handle? What about your thoughts on the remarkably realistic motion-capture acting? Feel free to express your opinion in the comments below.