Let's Catch

Let's CATCH is one of the most insane things I have experienced in this fine medium. It floored me. It shook me to my core.

It is impossible to talk about Let's CATCH at this moment in time without mentioning that the game is intrinsically bound to a service (WiiWare) that is effectively dead, meaning you will be hard pressed to experience Let's CATCH without already owning it, in which case this review should only be telling you what you already know. Which is, Let's CATCH is certifiably out of its gourd.

There are several modes of play in Let's CATCH, all of which revolve around the mechanics of throwing and catching a baseball. There are subtleties to the controls that allow for more skilled throwing and catching, subtleties that only manage to feel okay. But you will learn them, because progressing through the stunning main story arc of Let's CATCH hinges upon a firm grasp of these controls. In my roughly six hours of playing Let's CATCH (more or less unbroken, because holy shit this game) I feel that I became one of the top 100 players of Let's CATCH in North America.

So, the story. Let's CATCH is the story of a fairly typical Japanese salaryman who spends his off hours seeking out partners in a public park for games of catch. This leads him to playing a great deal of catch with unaccompanied children who, over time, open up about topics ranging from love of baseball to the divorce of their parents, painful school experiences, and feelings of alienation from their overworked caregivers suffering under the plight of Japanese labor laws. There about half a dozen such characters, including their parents and a few fictitious baseball players, whose lives you gently heal through playing catch with them in a park. You make these people whole through the act of swinging a Wii Remote at them dozens and dozens of times.

And then a motherfucking alien arrives and informs you that they, along with their race, were planning on destroying all life on the planet until they witnessed you playing simple games of catch with strangers. He tells you this while engaging you in a game of catch on the motherfucking moon.

There are some minigames that don't work very well as aiming the thrown balls with the sort of precision required by the games is nearly impossible. There is also some local competitive multiplayer, but it is structured around the same minigame mechanics and isn't really worth the time.

But folks, this is a game where gentle guitar music plays while an alien-shaped Mii person threatens to murder you and everybody you know, were it not for your desire to play the role of silent life coach with complete strangers over games of catch after work every day.

Everybody deserves to play Let's CATCH.

-3 out 5 alien motherships which were en route to kill everybody you ever loved until you played catch with that one child