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This game had mysterious written all over it, and my first impression did indeed involve a rather choice word preceded by "what" & "the". The anime/puzzle combination worked eloquently together to tell a wonderfully original story of our protagonist, Vincent. The bulk of the game is spent in Vince's nightmares, climbing block upon block yo reach an ultimate destination, a pinnacle if you will. These puzzles, more or less center around speed, cognitive reasoning, and your patience to take on these endless yet addictive brain teasers. While there is little more to be done than solve puzzles and watch cutscenes, surprisingly enough this game was truly entertaining in every sense of the word. The use of the "morality meter" is done very well, unlike most games it determines more than just whether your character is good/neutral/bad and situations based on that evidence. It influences everything, from the ending, to the actual thoughts Vince has in the cutscenes.
While it's true the bulk of this game play is only in solving the nightmarish puzzles Vince goes through each night, there is more to it. As I mentioned the morality meter is very dynamic and influences so much of the game that you'll find yourself thinking long and hard about your actions beforehand. When you're not climbing blocks avoiding impending doom, you watch brilliantly corny anime-ish cutscenes, including in game graphics and hand drawn animation boards. A large portion plays out in a local bar, where Vince seems to always wind up every night. Here is where you interact with bar patrons, use your phone, drink, or sulk in the misery that is our boy's emo-tastic life. This, however, is where you will make a lot of your morality, judgement calls that eventually effect the overall gameplay.
The graphics and sound for this title are both up to par, with the only drawback being the true emotion lost somewhere in translation. Yes, the voice acting sounds a bit cheesy and off sometimes but fail to diminish the well-written story. Which was my favorite part of the entire experience. This game was indeed frustrating at first with the limited interaction, hard puzzles, and mysterious plot, but I found myself easily addicted and wanting more. This addiction became a mission, to beat the blocks and see the story all the way through. I soon became enamored with the story and cutscenes that playing only the puzzles felt right, the story seemed too good to mess with.
If your looking for an easy brainless playthrough, this will kick your butt. If you need originality, great story-telling, and a helluva challenge, ding-ding-ding-ding. This is a very dynamic and diverse story with very little interaction, but the little you do have makes very huge impacts. The puzzle portion is bar none the most frustrating and addictive part to any game. I felt like I had to...needed to "climb the s*** outta these blocks!" There are a multitude of endings, and based on the ending I received my educated guess would be that you'll have several reasons to play this game. There's even co-operative block climbing modes where you can climb with or against a buddy, an online mode to test your block climbing skills versus "the world". I'd really recommend this game as a rent to see whether or not it's your style. But nonetheless a definite try, this game is truly unique and one of a kind....so...I'll give it a good 4 crazy girls named Catherine out of 5. Maybe a perfect score had there been bewbs ;D.....I keed!