Kathy Rain

Kathy Rain is an old school point and click adventure, with okay old school graphics, good sound and music (with some pretty good voice acting in there) and a decent interface. The game offers a good story and throws in a few easy puzzles along the way. The problem with the game is that it doesn't seem very interested in working as a game. The story is a set in advance, all the events you will experience is lined up and so is the order you will go through them. You part is most left to direct Kathy to the next event, after the pervious one has finished. While searching for the next location where something will happen all other locations are "empty" and characters will offer nothing except small nudges for you to go where the story will pickup again. The story is mostly presented through dialogues with the games many characters (who mostly stand around and wait for Kathy to talk to them) and the dialogues offer very little choice. You click one subject after another, until you have clicked them all, and then the game opens up the next dialogue options - possibly in a different location in the game. The story is pretty good though, and most of the time it is very easy to figure out what to do next. This, together with the strong protagonist and a plot based strongly around her and her family, makes the gane feel very movie like. You not so much play a game, as you watch a story unfold.

I'd say 3.5 stars, really. It's a solid little adventure game in many ways: it has great art and style, some decent characters and plot, and some okay puzzles. But it's also pretty short, and generally easy -- aside from a few out-of-left-field solutions. The plot gets a little zany, and the relationship between the main character and her roommate/helper never makes any sense. If there were more in the series, I'd certainly give them a try, but this isn't an amazing game on its own.

This were a fresh breath of air from the past, in a dark room lit only by the computer screen of my Amiga 1200. I really liked this one with it's dark sense of humor and sarcams like back in the days when games acctually had real humor that one could relate to. The atmosphere, locations the charactars feal like someone you might see. GFX: 4/5* SND: 3/5* CHR: 5/5 RPL: 4/5 * = I'd like a real 8bit version of this one.

The game is very atmospheric, enjoyable and not quite so old school in its execution. Sure it uses pixelated graphics, but it is very well voice-acted. It also has no loose ends I could identify – it has an answer for every question, anticipates dialogues, adds to them with each action by Kathy, respects timelines and offers subtle hints to progress the gameplay - not old school at all. The game it most reminded me of is Gabriel Knight, the first one, and that is a good thing, because I still find its atmosphere second to none. Kathy is a likeable and strong, but very human character and the story is decent, although perhaps the weakest part of the adventure. Altogether a very fine game I gladly recommend.

Kathy Rain may not be the best adventure game I have ever played. Still, it is more than decent. I really like the character design of the main character, never falling in the laziness. I also like the story, with its fog of mystery and enigmatic situations. I believe we need more games like Kathy Rain: we can feel the deep passion of writing a story that have grown inside you, and you want to share with the world even if it is not calibrated to be top selling. I hope there will be a sequel :)