The Cat Lady

The Cat Lady tells the story of Susan Ashworth, a suicidal woman with a dark past. After swallowing sleeping pills, she wakes up in a strange place which is neither heaven nor hell. There she meets an elderly woman, who offers her a second chance in life eventhough all she wants is to die. Thus, her strange journey through life and death began.

I spent an entire day today just playing The Cat Lady. The game reminded me so much of the old school horror games I used to play, like Silent Hill. It looked like a survival horror, but it was not truly that as well. The game relied heavily on the main protagonist and story, revealing Susan's tragedies bits by bits through her encounters with the Parasites she was supposed to deal with in order to truly die. I loved how the game works, and I love the substories for each "villains" she had to face, even if we were just given clues by studying the environment.

Oh yes, the environment. They were absolutely fantastic. In a morbid way. This was a very atmospheric games; each emotions successfully presented in every scenes. It was depressing yet not too pretentious. Whoever did the art deserve cookies. Other aspect that I love about the game was the characters. Even the small characters felt like they had a thousand personalities. Susan Ashworth was strangely appealing, as well as her arch-nemesis Bryan who appeared for only about 5 minutes throughout the game.

The "villains" in this game were all very unique and weird. They may had so little screentime, but they felt very alive and threatening all the same. I was glad none of them were stereotypical murdering maniacs. Well, they were all loonies of course, but not cliched. They even convinced me that they were really bad people and they deserve whatever they got from Susan.

Apart from that, this game got great voice acting and awesome music. And you can go through it over and over again to get different endings as well as different outcomes. I highly recommend this to those who value stories as well as good gameplay.