I was one of the few who bought Kathy Rain back in the day and I enjoyed the point'n'click adventure enough to purchase the Director's Cut shortly after its release despite knowing those improved versions often are more likely intended to cash in. In this case though it was about an independent project in "hobby" production alongside a full time job between 2011 and 2016 that in some parts still felt rushed and showed some inconsistency.
It didn't matter that much in a surreal story highly influenced by David Lynch and his Twin Peaks, but to get this out of the lane, what I also wanted to support to pave way for a possible sequel turned out familiar but more polished, so I decided against dissecting Kathy Rain for a comparison, accepting the Director's Cut as the definitive version intended by Clifftop Games' Joel Staaf Hästö.
Hästö regrets a couple of his original decisions according to the interview linked above, but Kathy Rain sure profits from taking place in the mid-nineties. Recapturing the atmosphere of pixel art and a revival of the supernatural via shows like the X-Files goes very well with the absence of mobile phones and google that can destroy a lot of the mystery tropes.
Like I've mentioned in my recent review for Full Throttle Remastered (the playthrough actually interrupting my Kathy Rain sessions because her Corley Motors vehicle reminded me of having Schafer's game in backlog) it was also a good time slot for bratty girls to take over and protagonist Kathy, a student of journalism, appears a lot more gruff than Veronica Mars as one of the other possible inspirational sources.
It's quite possible it shows that the sarcastic and motorcycle riding Kathy Rain was written by a male, but what draws me into that game from the first minute is that both Kathy and her christian roommate could have totally been part of our clique back then. If you grew up watching Roseanne rather with a crush on Darlene than Becky you might instantly like her as well.
With Kathy Rain returning to her hometown for the funeral of her grandfather we get an insight to her shattered family structure leading to putting clues together for what might have happened in the past. Though this builds up in proportion, in a way it's the opposite of another retro Twin Peaks adventure from the same era, Thimbleweed Park, that geeks out on Plato's cave allegory to have us look to the outside, whilst Kathy Rain is rather pushing us to look for the insides.
That makes sense though, as Kathy Rain's hard shell as so often is put up as protection with her being actually vulnerable. What connects the inheritance of trauma to the incorporation of environmental abnormalities into a religious narrative and its misinterpretation sums up the absurdity of how human beings seek for a truth in their own selective perception to legitimize their actions quite nicely. With an ambivalent internal logic set up in the best surreal sense, this graphic adventure has all the potential to speak to you depending on your individual point of view either.
In that vein, Kathy Rain is a lot more concerned about its plot and creating an interconnection of events than to bore you with countless red herrings and weird item combinations. For the most part, even though you might drive back and forth between a limited number of locations, it's quite rewarding to try the possibilities and only a few lock puzzles might distract you from the atmospheric flow. It only happened on one occasion I got stuck, because I didn't combine two inventory items to trigger an obvious conclusion. It's possible to fail in some situations, but the game will reset to a convenient point.
Having spent my teenage years in the nineties, I can't deny Kathy Rain feels somewhat natural to me. It doesn't depend on obvious reference as much as a lot of the recent retro games and with the detailed pixel graphics and voice acting directed by Wadjet Eye's Dave Gilbert, it might as well have been released as one of the earlier CD-ROM exclusive adventures of the time.
Even though the Director's Cut improves on the controls and drops the dial for a perfectly functional cursor, Kathy Rain is an almost perfect in-between of when point'n'clicks have been quite laborious and when they got streamlined into graphic novels reducing interaction to a better page flip. That means the game has rather modern features without erasing the unwieldiness to a point it couldn't be authentic anymore.
See, I understand young folks being bothered by having to climb the Katmobile for any change of scenery in Kathy Rain for instance, but from a perspective of having to run around on maps extensively even in the nineties, just having to click on an icon with even some of the obsolete territories being grayed out is darn tootin convenient. I wouldn't go as far as declaring it a feature, but instead of being a bug, it rather celebrates the grace of imperfection.
Depending on how you rush through the game you can finish Kathy Rain in between six and ten hours and as much as I'd love to dwell in that world forever it's probably for the better to leave me wanting more as long as there are interesting ideas to incorporate. Whilst you find clues via communication as much as hacking and lock picking, you will have to use contemporary technology as much as encourage hilarious performances, yet the game isn't overwhelmingly comical.
Sure there is room for more and as well I feel about the game, at the age of 43 I've just seen plenty enough to not have my mind completely blown by what Joel Staaf Hästö achieved with Kathy Rain. But I don't expect that these days as much as well. To me it's like the graphic adventure equivalent to a party at a random house where you join a discussion in the kitchen at four in the morning chatting about wildest theories with like-minded people you didn't even know before.
It makes me look forward to that other occasion, hoping Whispers of a Machine (check this review how it turned out), that I've had in backlog for too long now, can live up to that overall pleasurable impression I've had from Clifftop Games so far. What I hope for even more is Hästö expanding on Kathy Rain, if he's got the ideas. It sure can't be the same and it was probably for the best to straighten up the original first, but now I'd really like to hang out a couple of days more with those characters.
Would you like to read more of my backloggd adventure reviews?
Detective Gallo
Broken Age
One Night Stand
The Little Acre
The Wardrobe - Even Better Edition
It didn't matter that much in a surreal story highly influenced by David Lynch and his Twin Peaks, but to get this out of the lane, what I also wanted to support to pave way for a possible sequel turned out familiar but more polished, so I decided against dissecting Kathy Rain for a comparison, accepting the Director's Cut as the definitive version intended by Clifftop Games' Joel Staaf Hästö.
Hästö regrets a couple of his original decisions according to the interview linked above, but Kathy Rain sure profits from taking place in the mid-nineties. Recapturing the atmosphere of pixel art and a revival of the supernatural via shows like the X-Files goes very well with the absence of mobile phones and google that can destroy a lot of the mystery tropes.
Like I've mentioned in my recent review for Full Throttle Remastered (the playthrough actually interrupting my Kathy Rain sessions because her Corley Motors vehicle reminded me of having Schafer's game in backlog) it was also a good time slot for bratty girls to take over and protagonist Kathy, a student of journalism, appears a lot more gruff than Veronica Mars as one of the other possible inspirational sources.
It's quite possible it shows that the sarcastic and motorcycle riding Kathy Rain was written by a male, but what draws me into that game from the first minute is that both Kathy and her christian roommate could have totally been part of our clique back then. If you grew up watching Roseanne rather with a crush on Darlene than Becky you might instantly like her as well.
With Kathy Rain returning to her hometown for the funeral of her grandfather we get an insight to her shattered family structure leading to putting clues together for what might have happened in the past. Though this builds up in proportion, in a way it's the opposite of another retro Twin Peaks adventure from the same era, Thimbleweed Park, that geeks out on Plato's cave allegory to have us look to the outside, whilst Kathy Rain is rather pushing us to look for the insides.
That makes sense though, as Kathy Rain's hard shell as so often is put up as protection with her being actually vulnerable. What connects the inheritance of trauma to the incorporation of environmental abnormalities into a religious narrative and its misinterpretation sums up the absurdity of how human beings seek for a truth in their own selective perception to legitimize their actions quite nicely. With an ambivalent internal logic set up in the best surreal sense, this graphic adventure has all the potential to speak to you depending on your individual point of view either.
In that vein, Kathy Rain is a lot more concerned about its plot and creating an interconnection of events than to bore you with countless red herrings and weird item combinations. For the most part, even though you might drive back and forth between a limited number of locations, it's quite rewarding to try the possibilities and only a few lock puzzles might distract you from the atmospheric flow. It only happened on one occasion I got stuck, because I didn't combine two inventory items to trigger an obvious conclusion. It's possible to fail in some situations, but the game will reset to a convenient point.
Having spent my teenage years in the nineties, I can't deny Kathy Rain feels somewhat natural to me. It doesn't depend on obvious reference as much as a lot of the recent retro games and with the detailed pixel graphics and voice acting directed by Wadjet Eye's Dave Gilbert, it might as well have been released as one of the earlier CD-ROM exclusive adventures of the time.
Even though the Director's Cut improves on the controls and drops the dial for a perfectly functional cursor, Kathy Rain is an almost perfect in-between of when point'n'clicks have been quite laborious and when they got streamlined into graphic novels reducing interaction to a better page flip. That means the game has rather modern features without erasing the unwieldiness to a point it couldn't be authentic anymore.
See, I understand young folks being bothered by having to climb the Katmobile for any change of scenery in Kathy Rain for instance, but from a perspective of having to run around on maps extensively even in the nineties, just having to click on an icon with even some of the obsolete territories being grayed out is darn tootin convenient. I wouldn't go as far as declaring it a feature, but instead of being a bug, it rather celebrates the grace of imperfection.
Depending on how you rush through the game you can finish Kathy Rain in between six and ten hours and as much as I'd love to dwell in that world forever it's probably for the better to leave me wanting more as long as there are interesting ideas to incorporate. Whilst you find clues via communication as much as hacking and lock picking, you will have to use contemporary technology as much as encourage hilarious performances, yet the game isn't overwhelmingly comical.
Sure there is room for more and as well I feel about the game, at the age of 43 I've just seen plenty enough to not have my mind completely blown by what Joel Staaf Hästö achieved with Kathy Rain. But I don't expect that these days as much as well. To me it's like the graphic adventure equivalent to a party at a random house where you join a discussion in the kitchen at four in the morning chatting about wildest theories with like-minded people you didn't even know before.
It makes me look forward to that other occasion, hoping Whispers of a Machine (check this review how it turned out), that I've had in backlog for too long now, can live up to that overall pleasurable impression I've had from Clifftop Games so far. What I hope for even more is Hästö expanding on Kathy Rain, if he's got the ideas. It sure can't be the same and it was probably for the best to straighten up the original first, but now I'd really like to hang out a couple of days more with those characters.
Would you like to read more of my backloggd adventure reviews?
Detective Gallo
Broken Age
One Night Stand
The Little Acre
The Wardrobe - Even Better Edition
6 Comments
@Ghost_Of_SAS Cheers. I'm actually 5 hours in right now and might give Whispers at least one other playthrough once it's done, to see what difference the choices make. I don't want to give away too much from a possible review, but it's definitely interesting how Kathy and Whispers co-exist with their quite similar elements in a different take. I'm actually quite happy I revisited Kathy Rain and didn't just jump into Whispers of a Machine unprepared. Not sure though if I will prefer one or the other, especially as it would be for different reasons. Whispers just doesn't have that hang around factor, but it serves my analytical urges.
@Merkur_Schroeder I want to replay Whispers at some point. Their third game has been in the pipe for a few years now, it should be revealed sooner rather than later. Should be some Blade Runner-esque thing.
[Warning, this comment is vague, but in case you haven't finished Whispers of a Machine could be seen as a spoiler]
@Ghost_Of_SAS Oh, that's gonna be interesting. I had a thought, if there might be a way for an in-between of the two, which might be possible around the point of the AI downfall before Whispers, but without having activated Hundra yet, might actually tie in after one of its possible endings. I'd actually prefer the first option, especially as it could work as a stand-alone without specifically having to to connect with any of the previous games. It could be more of a continuation of the thought process.
@Ghost_Of_SAS Oh, that's gonna be interesting. I had a thought, if there might be a way for an in-between of the two, which might be possible around the point of the AI downfall before Whispers, but without having activated Hundra yet, might actually tie in after one of its possible endings. I'd actually prefer the first option, especially as it could work as a stand-alone without specifically having to to connect with any of the previous games. It could be more of a continuation of the thought process.
@Merkur_Schroeder It's hard to predict whether or not it will be connected to Whispers. A clean break makes it much easier to write, tempting as a shared universe might be. I wouldn't blame them for choosing the path of least resistance in that regard.
@Ghost_Of_SAS Yes, sure. Or just don't declare a connection, but leave room for interpretation, just like (I think) we don't know if Kathy and Whispers share the same universe, yet there's nothing really speaking against it, or does it? On the other hand a Blade Runner story could actually involve the Conduit and/or EPOS easily.
Ghost_Of_SAS
9 months ago