Developer: Clifftop Games
Publisher: Raw Fury
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Kathy Rain – Review
Detective series have been, and still are, a well appreciated pastime for many of us. It’s fun to sit back in your chair and try to figure out who did it, along with the famous detective on screen. This time though, were’ taking it up a notch. No sitting back in your chair, you’ll have to solve the case yourself. Off you go!
Story
The story is set in the 1990s,when Kathy Rain is a journalism student who lives in a dorm with her roommate Eileen. When she was young, Kathy lost contact with her family, but when she finds out that her grandfather died, she goes to the funeral and gets back in touch with her grandmother. She finds out that her grandfather has been tied to a wheelchair for the last couple of years, not able to speak, after suffering from a seizure. Nonetheless, the story isn’t quite convincing, and she goes to investigate it. She finds out that he went to visit the mother of a sixteen year old girl who drowned in the lake, assumed to be suicide, right before he had this seizure. The cases might be connected, and when Kathy finds some documents and a tape recorder in the attic at her grandparents’ house, things get even more complicated.
In the beginning, the story doesn’t progress that fast, as you are limited in the places you can visit and the people you can interview. Nonetheless, the further you get, the faster it goes, as there are more and more places to discover and people to meet. The story also gets more and more intriguing, and lots of additional questions are raised, that do get answered every once in a while.
Kathy’s approach is rather head-on, and she isn’t a very likeable character. She might mean well, but it’s just the way she says things, as well as her never ending sarcasm. You might love it or hate it, but we weren’t particularly impressed with her personality.
Graphics
The different locations in Kathy Rain have quite a pixilated look to them, while the close ups in the dialogues are quite a lot more detailed. That way you can get a better idea of what the characters look like, and also their facial expressions during the dialogues. Even though the overall look is pixilated, it is still quite detailed, as if it consists out of a regular picture with pixels added to it.
Sound
The music always stays quite to the background, but does have an ominous sound to it every now and then. The different locations have a different tune, yet it’s hardly noticeable since it’s so subtle. It might have been fun if the music stepped out a bit more every now and then, but overall, it suits the game just fine.
Voice acting is quite ok, but nothing out of the ordinary. What is more bothersome is the fact that dialogues or phrases often get repeated, which makes the game quite dull after some time.
Gameplay
Kathy Rain is a puzzle game, where you will have to play detective in order to find out what happened to your grandfather, right before he ended up in a wheelchair, without being able to speak another word. You’ll have to interview people and search places and as you proceed, more places will be accessible to you, which raise new questions that need to be answered.
In the beginning, there is only your grandmother who you can ask questions, and her house to snoop around in. You can click quite a few things all over the different locations. Most of the time, Kathy will just plainly state what the object is that you just clicked, or have a thought about it, which you can very well live without most of the time. With some objects though, you can interact, such as a computer. You will then have the choice between looking at it, thinking about it, or interacting with it. The latter always proves to be the most interesting one, as this is the only one that might help you gather more information. The other ones are a nice touch, but not really anything special.
When you have gathered certain information, it is automatically added to your notebook, which enables you to ask questions about it to other characters. Nonetheless, when you try to ask certain questions to certain people who you’d better not bother with it, Kathy will just say that you shouldn’t, meaning you simply can’t. It’s not a bad thing to include that, yet it makes sure you actually can’t do anything wrong, which means you can just keep on clicking everything without obstructing the story or getting punished for it.
Along the way you will also gather objects which you can show to other characters. Next to that, you can also combine them with other objects or characters, for example, you can combine a floppy disk with a computer, to gain extra data. Nonetheless, it’s not always as simple as it seems, as there are quite some obstacles along the way. When you need to have a look at the police reports behind Lenny’s desk, you’ll have to find a way to lure Lenny away, leaving you alone in the room, for example. You’ll have to be creative with the few things you have at hand, but the solutions never prove to be too difficult, even though they are quite fun and not too straightforward to find.
While every once in a while new characters and locations are introduced, you’ll often have to go to the same ones to ask some more questions or snoop around a bit more. That’s quite obvious of course, as the net is closing in, but it can become quite repetitive, even though the story is interesting enough.
Conclusion
When playing Kathy Rain, the true detective in you will have a lot of work to do. Even though the story is quite a nice one, some players might be bothered by the fact that you can literally do nothing wrong, and Kathy’s personality doesn’t really help either. Nonetheless, it is quite a fun game to play, that won’t take too long, yet will keep you busy for a few hours.
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