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dkirschner's The Cat Lady (PC)
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| [July 1, 2017 09:30:01 AM]
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Interesting adventure horror game with great aesthetic. They accomplished a lot with the visuals and stock sound effects, and the score fits really well (even if the music doesn't fit my personal tastes). I didn't quite know what to expect when I began, but was pleased by how dark and depressing the game is. It tackles themes like suicide, murder, cancer, sexual violence, perversion, etc. You play as Susan Ashworth, a middle-aged single lady who commits suicide, after which she goes to some sort of purgatory where an old woman called the Queen of Maggots, who represents her depression, demands that she kill five "parasites" in exchange for immortality. Why she wants to be immortal I'm not sure, but I don't think she really had a choice in the matter. The immortality is necessary for her to kill the parasites because these are terrible people, all of whom commit some disturbing violence against her and/or other characters.
When she wakes up from her purgatory, she's in a mental hospital and is told that her daughter saved her life, which is curious because she has no daughter. Enter Mitzi, who becomes her tenant and friend. Mitzi is part of a sort of overarching narrative of this guy called the Eye of Adam (also the final parasite) who is living in their apartment building. The Eye of Adam is like an online troll who encourages people to kill themselves on suicide forums. I just read the story a couple weeks ago of the woman being tried for causing her boyfriend's suicide by urging him on, and this reminded me of her. Disturbing for real.
So that's the gist of the plot. Gameplay is super simple. You play with the four arrow keys and enter, so it's not a point-and-click style adventure game. They easily could have incorporated a mouse so you could navigate your inventory quicker, but the slower use of arrows to scroll actually fits the game's slow pace. When you're in front of an interactable object, it'll prompt you to push up, and give you options to examine, take, read, or whatever. If you push down, then it will scroll through items in your inventory. It's really simple. Out of either of those up/down modes, left and right walks. The puzzles make sense and follow normal human logic instead of convoluted adventure game logic. I only used a walkthrough one time, of which I am proud!
As I said, the game is slow, and expect a good deal of dialogue, sometimes dialogue that goes on for way, way too long. Most of the voice acting is fine, some is downright bad, and the audio quality varies. It sucks listening to Susan and Mitzi because Mitzi's recordings are more tinny and clearly sound worse than Susan's. Whenever a character raises their voice, it's totally unconvincing, almost like they were trying to record this in a place where they weren't allowed to be loud. Anyway, the dialogue itself is usually pretty good, ranging from poignant to a bit silly.
All in all, if you have the patience for a slow burning, macabre tale, this is a pretty good option.
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dkirschner's The Cat Lady (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Saturday 17 June, 2017
GameLog closed on: Saturday 1 July, 2017 |
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