Literary pretensions, or, How many novels I've read from the Guardian's 100 Best Novels of All Time

I'm one-quarter educated.

Before we get started let me say that I have no particular love for the Guardian. I'm a big lefty in my own idiosyncratic way, so of course if I had to choose between reading that and anything from the Murdoch press obviously I'd go the Guardian, but then again I'd probably rather run headfirst into a wall than deliberately expose myself to the eye-rollingly transparent editorial position of Uncle Rupert's fish and chip wrappers. On the other hand whenever I see Guardian headlines it's a struggle not to think "c'mon guys, you're playing your hand a bit openly here too." But all that notwithstanding, a friend told me that the paper in question had just released its list of "The 100 best novels of all time" (as chosen by amalgamating the votes of a swathe of authors and critics and other learned people), so because I'm very secure in my own intelligence I immediately scoured the list to see which ones I'd read myself. Here they are with their corresponding spot in the rank, as of the 20th of May 2026.

3. Ulysses 

Hey, I got one in the top three. Nice.

Reading Ulysses as a twenty year old undergraduate who wanted to do anything but study was not the best time to read Joyce's modernist masterpiece, and I basically struggled through it over a semester just so that I could say that I'd done it, but in retrospect I respect this one a lot and ought to reread it one day.

4. To the Lighthouse

Another one in the top five. Go me.

The first Woolf I ever read, I think, except maybe for a short story or two. The "free indirect discourse" technique is incredibly effective at conveying a scene, and the transition of time between the two parts of the novel is done to great effect.

9. Pride and Prejudice

The first Austen I read. Great stuff. Darcy's completely insulting declaration of love to Elizabeth has always stuck with me.

11. The Great Gatbsy

It's really about Nick, isn't it? Liked it when I was forced to read it at high school, liked it when I re read it voluntarily years later.

14. Mrs Dalloway

Another hit from Woolf. I can picture that plane flying over the park now.

15. Moby-Dick

Genius. And even though I swear I've read the whole thing, the bit I think of the most is Ishmael and Queequeg early on tucking into their dinners "with great expedition". Lovely.

16. Nineteen Eighty-Four

One of my favourite novels of all time. It's not really about the Soviet Union, though, you know? It's about Britain during and just after the war. And The Managerial Revolution by James Burnham. And a whole host of other things.

17. One Hundred Years of Solitude

The only Marquez I've read thus far. It's beautiful, the ending is breathtaking, and the bit where it rains non stop for nearly five years gets into my head every time we have a mildly extended wet spell in Sydney.

20. Wuthering Heights

I'm amused that this has this perception in popular culture by people who haven't read it as this spellbinding romance when really it's about a guy ruining everyone else's life out of revenge because he didn't get to marry his stepsister.

24. The Remains of the Day

Not my favourite Ishiguro; that would be The Unconsoled. But its protagonit is all too relatable and the ending is intensely bittersweet.

29. Pale Fire

The second Nabokov I've read. This novel is incredible. The poem on its own is great and delving into the mind of the deranged Kinbote is disturbingly compelling.

30. Frankenstein

It's great but I haven't read it in so long. It's curious how unlike it is to almost all of its adaptations.

35. Great Expectations

The first Dickens I read. Pip's another relatable protagonist. Not sure which ending I prefer.

41. Heart of Darkness

As I always say, I didn't enjoy actually reading this during high school but when I finished it I thought "oh wait, that was really good." I need to re read it one of these days.

48. The Metamorphosis

Embarrassingly the only Kafka I've read in full. Need to read more of his stuff.

59. Never Let Me Go

To be honest I didn't really rate this, but I also read it in one night to prepare for a job interview at which I thought I was going to need to know it (don't ask).

69. Crime and Punishment

Another one where I feel like all I can say is "it's great". Svidrigailov's dream and the moment in which Porfiry reveals that he basically knew it was Raskolnikov the whole time both really stand out.

76. Dracula

Maybe the only piece of borderline popular fiction on the list?

80. Rebecca

So good.

83. A Farewell to Arms

One of the most depressing endings to a novel I've ever read. Loved it.

84. The Talented Mr Ripley

I guess this is also borderline popular fiction. It is gripping. Ripley reminds me a little too much of people I've actually known in real life.

86. The Turn of the Screw

Really good, but Henry James's style sure takes some getting used to.

93. Invisible Cities

Barely a novel, but I was pleased to see some Calvino on there. I love this book.

98. The Road

Considered one of the best novels of the twenty-first century very deservedly.

99. The Go-Between

A teacher got a group of us to read this at school for some reason. I think I found it basically just as distressing as its narrator.

25 out of 100's not too bad, eh? Here are the ones I've partly read:

1. Middlemarch

Does reading the first page count? I thought "I want to read this but I don't think I'm up for it right now." Must get back to it one of these days.

5. In Search of Lost Time

I would be astonished if the majority of voters for Á la recherche du temps perdu have read all seven volumes. I have a sneaking suspicion that Du côté de chez Swann is the real number 5. I've read most of that first volume but don't think I actually read it all; it was for a university course. Again, would like to get back one day.

7. War and Peace

As of time of writing, this is the novel I'm currently reading.

19. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

One I stalled out on early on for some reason. Another I want to get back to one day.

26. Don Quixote

I'm being very strict on myself by not including this in the first list because I've only read volume one, i.e. the original 1605 publication, and not the 1615 second volume. It's on the agenda but I needed a break in between.

27. The Trial

I don't know why I haven't finished this. Yet another I must get back to.

33. David Copperfield

A great novel, but also a long novel. I think I got about halfway through and got distracted by something else. Might get back to it at some point.

66. The Master and Margarita

Couldn't get into it for some reason. Need to give it another go.

67. The Man Without Qualities

Really fascinating insight into prewar Austria from a postwar perspective, but I was trying to rush through it for a uni course. Need to go back. 

95. The Return of the Native

Read some of it on a plane to the UK because I was for whatever reason going to Thomas Hardy's house and seeing the landscape which the opening describes immediately after landing. That at least helped my appreciation of that experience. Should give it another shot one day.

96. Pedro Páramo

Apparently I got more than half way through this so I don't know why I didn't finish it. I'll have to start it again from scratch.

97. Catch-22

Tried to read this too soon after reading Gravity's Rainbow. Another one I really ought to have read.

Speaking of Gravity's Rainbow, that's probably the one thing I'd probably swap in there ahead of some of the ones I've read. I'm glad to see Infinite Jest didn't make it. And I really ought to read Jane Eyre, Emma, Lolita, The Brothers Karamazov, The Sound and the Fury and Blood Meridian. At the very least I can be driven by the sweet motivation of getting to tell people I've read them. 

Further thoughts before "Life is Strange: Reunion"

In the unlikely event that you're a regular visitor to this blog, I apologise that so much of what I've posted about over the last couple of years has just been about Life is Strange. I really care about the original game and its characters, so it seems to be one of the only things I feel passionate enough about to write about much regularly. 

So now that Life is Strange: Reunion has been properly announced, what do I think? I find myself sorting elements of the announcement into three categories.

Things I liked:

• I mostly like Chloe's design. While I think they played it a bit safe with her hairstyle, at least they gave her the green hair from the Life is Strange 2 photo rather than doing something incredibly safe like keeping it blue. I also think the structure of her face largely resembles that from the first game.
• I like that you play as both Max and Chloe. This makes sense to me; if you're going to bring both characters back, have them both be playable. This is new for the series and provides the opportunity for interactions you wouldn't get if you were restricted to just controlling Max.

Things I didn't like:

• Rewind being back. I feel like Rewind had a very specific purpose in the original game, namely to function as a metaphor for Max's struggle with indecision. It also functioned as an interrogation of the whole notion of "choice based gaming". As I've mentioned in an earlier post, there's an interpretation of the powers in these games as representing unhealthy coping mechanisms, and if Rewind just becomes something Max uses to solve mysteries or whatever it feels less like it means something about human experience and more just like a gimmick.
• Backtalk being back. Likewise, while I don't hate the Backtalk mechanic from Before the Storm, and I understand it was inspired by the dialogue tree puzzles in traditional adventure games (I think insult sword fighting from The Secret of Monkey Island was cited back then as a specific influence), I don't know that a mechanic born of Chloe being an argumentative teenager needs to be reprised now that she's in her early thirties. I've always liked the somewhat generous view of Backtalk in Before the Storm that it didn't really persuade anyone and that characters mostly just let Chloe have her way because they get sick of arguing with her, but again that makes more sense when she's a rebellious teenager. I'd honestly prefer if in this game neither of them had powers or special abilities.

Things I'm nonplussed about:

• I find that I just don't care about Caledon or the returning characters from Double Exposure except maybe Amanda. As a whole, however, none of them were that strong in my opinion and if the game asks me to choose between them or Chloe it's not going to be a very difficult choice. I'm kind of interested to see the university in a different season but that's about it. We spent way too much time in the Snapping Turtle bar in the previous game so seeing it in this footage again did the opposite to exciting me. Likewise, some of the "cute" references to other things from the series, like Chloe being the manager of Steph's old band from True Colors, I find kind of naff and make the Life is Strange world feel small.
• As expected, Rihanna DeVries is playing Chloe. I completely expected this and I'm fine with it. Nonetheless, there were rumours that Hannah Telle and Rihanna DeVries didn't have much onset "chemistry" with each other and it's hard not to wonder about that watching the somewhat stilted, autocue-driven presentation they had to give to promote the game. Like I said before, this can't really be a true reunion without the original writers and without Ashly Burch. I'm sure what the game does depict will be fine, but I think it'll just be fine. I don't think it's going to get that spark we might have had if, in some vastly different series of events, we'd gotten another game with both of the original actors. I also found a bit of unfortunate humour in the fact that, unlike the Double Exposure presentation, which heavily involved that game's development staff, so many people who actually worked on this game at Deck Nine have left or been let go at this point that the cast were the only ones who were available to deliver the big marketing spiel about the new game.

Like I said with my previous post, while I'm curious about this I just can't get too excited. It simply feels too much like fanfiction and not an authentic continuation of Max and Chloe's story. It might be fun and I'm interested to see how it plays out, but Deck Nine's games just feel too distant from Dontnod's. It's the presentation, the way the characters and story are written, everything. I feel like the thing I'm going to be comparing it to the most isn't Dontnod's games but rather the comics, which a few years ago felt like the thing you "had" to buy if you wanted more Max and Chloe, because the idea of them ever having another game together seemed absurd. Those also brought back the storm, separated Max and Chloe only to reunite them later, and had Max moving between parallel timelines, as well as having her only using Rewind years after swearing off it under desperate circumstances. It seems really odd (or strange, if you will) that no one seems to be able to come up with a continuation of the original game that does something different, not that it ever needed one. I'd be more curious than anything else to know what Dontnod would have done if for some reason they'd made a direct sequel, but that was probably never going to happen and will certainly never happen now. I don't know. I think in my head there's this half dream of "the perfect sequel to Life is Strange" that never came to be. Reunion isn't going to be it. I just hope it makes me feel something.

Thoughts before "Life is Strange: Reunion"

Back in 2024, a very wise person (i.e. me) stated regarding the Life is Strange series that "the only thing I can think that could possibly salvage Life is Strange at this point would be to bring back Chloe; I just can't see what else would get jaded fans to return to the series at this point." Well, lo and behold, it's 2026 and to the surprise of no one who had been paying much attention throughout 2025 a new Life is Strange game, Reunion, has been announced and it is indeed bringing back Chloe. Now, in all seriousness, I can't claim to be alone in having predicted this, nor was I anywhere near the first, and it's obvious even from within Life is Strange: Double Exposure itself the writers had left themselves room to bring Chloe back. However, given the strength of the backlash to the previous game, coupled with its (as far as we know) disappointing sales figures, it's difficult not to see this as anything other than a cynical and calculated move, which of course it is.

Information about forthcoming Life is Strange games has been leaking like a sieve from developer Deck Nine since before True Colors came out, and the tide has not remotely been stemmed after those concerning Double Exposure and the return of Max were proven to be true. It was subsequently stated that a followup game was part and parcel with that one, that it was always going to happen, and that it had almost certainly been in development at the same time as Double Exposure. People had also been keeping an eye on Deck Nine's projects and hirings, the resume of Chloe's actor since Before the Storm and of course the numerous surveys and focus group sessions that were conducted in the aftermath of Double Exposure's release. I myself managed to get my hands on one of those survey links and tried to give as constructive a piece of feedback as I could, not stating anything I hadn't really said in my posts about the game: that it was great to have Max and Hannah Telle back, and that the game looked nice and had nice music, but that the story felt messy, the new characters were a bit thinly written, and that from a marketing and PR perspective the developer and publisher had handled Chloe's absence in a manner contrary to their own interests in producing a financially successful product.

I'm sure they received a lot more feedback to this effect, much of which was probably expressed in stronger and less reasonable terms. Thus I've no doubt that Square Enix's big takeaway from all this was "we have to bring Chloe back", perhaps regardless of how or why. As a result, when a listing for the new game was accidentally released on various official classification websites early in 2026, I was not remotely surprised by the synopsis's revelation that Chloe was back and its focus on her return. There's been a huge amount of back and forth on Double Exposure since its release, but Chloe's absence and how that game handled her and Max's relationship has, rightly or wrongly, always dominated that conversation. For my part, as I said in previous posts, I mostly see the handling of Chloe in that game as a misfire from a business perspective. Don't get me wrong; I'm a "Sacrifice Arcadia Bay" guy: I love the Max and Chloe team or relationship or however one chooses to play it in the first game, but I didn't need Chloe to be in Double Exposure, nor did it upset me that much that they took the route of her and Max having broken up. It was sad, but I don't think the concept in itself was implausible, even if the way it was handled in the actual game was very clunky. Of course part of me secretly hoped that there would be a way for them to still be together, but that was obviously unlikely from the beginning of the marketing push for the game, and I'm at the age and place in my life where I no longer get so irrationally attached to the lives and stories of fictional characters that I can't handle this kind of narrative choice. That doesn't change the fact, however, that Square Enix and Deck Nine didn't "read the room" concerning Chloe during the development of Double Exposure or during its marketing, and managed to just upset a lot of people and hurt their own bottom line when it came to producing a sequel to a beloved game with an extremely passionate and devoted fanbase.

I think the leaked premise of the new game, that Max and Chloe reunite because of "nightmares and impossible memories" (or something to that effect) that Chloe is having, doesn't sound terrible. I'm guessing they'll go with the approach that the timeline merge that happened at the end of Double Exposure also merged Chloe being alive and being dead, such that the Chloe, while alive, has memories of being murdered by Nathan during the events of the first game. [Actually it looks like it's going to be that "Sacrifice Chloe" Chloe is alive but remembers dying, while "Sacrifice Arcadia Bay" Chloe remembers the town being destroyed and her mother dying, but the town's still there and her mother is still alive.] The other side of the story, that Max has three days to try to prevent Caledon University being destroyed by a fire, sounds less interesting and like another unimaginative rehash of the first game with a looming disaster, but whatever; I never exactly had a massive amount of hope that another instalment from Deck Nine was going to be anything particularly groundbreaking. At the same time, it's for this reason that it's difficult to become too excited. This is another Deck Nine game, and none of their instalments in the series have been that good. Sure, they've looked nice and had nice performance capture, graphics and music, but all of them have fairly mediocre stories and few particularly memorable new characters. Now I should qualify this by admitting that I've likewise never replayed original developer Dontnod's Life is Strange 2, but that's not because I think it's a bad game, simply because I found it so gruelling and Sean and Daniel's story so depressing that I've never really wanted to repeat it. Nonetheless, Deck Nine are not the creators of Max and Chloe, and it's hard to feel like this is a "real" Max and Chloe story without writing by the original developers. It's sort of like the comics, which I don't mind, but they feel more like licensed fan fiction than a particularly authentic continuation.

There is, of course, also Chloe's performance. Now it's almost certain that Chloe will be portrayed by Rihanna DeVries, who played her in Before the Storm and provided Chloe's voice for the True Colors DLC and for Double Exposure. I think they're one of the highlights of Before the Storm and have no doubt that in this new game they'll give a fine performance. Nonetheless, I think for many die hard fans of the original game Chloe, and especially "Chloe with Max", is Ashly Burch. Now there's almost no way she's coming back: she's too big of a name these days and she's a union actor and Square Enix hasn't hired union actors for these games since the first one. This doesn't change the fact, however, that assuming this game really is a "Reunion", it's not really a reunion unless it reunites not just Max and Chloe but Hannah Telle and Ashly Burch. For all the issues I have with its contrivances, this was one of the things that made the "Farewell" DLC of Before the Storm so special; not only were we playing as Max again, but both characters were portrayed by their original actors even though Chloe had been played by a different actor in the main episodes. Again, don't get me wrong; I think Rihanna DeVries is really good in Before the Storm, but for me the "Max and Chloe team" is Telle and Burch.

I think it's very likely that this new game will end up being a game that was already in development with a bunch of new Chloe stuff jammed in to try to placate fans, and that, like Double Exposure, it's going to feel messy. I think Square Enix thought, very naively, that they were going to be able to have their cake and eat it too with that game, that they'd be able to bring in existing fans via Max but also soft reboot the series for new players, get them on board with a bunch of new characters like Safi and Amanda, and move the series on from the first game, but that obviously completely backfired. But in that regard they probably also completely screwed themselves by, as it seems, constantly interfering in the creative process at Deck Nine, and that's not even factoring in Deck Nine's own reported internal problems. Thus, it's impossible not to see this as anything other than the cynical course correction it obviously is.

Now all that being said, do I plan to play Reunion? Yeah, of course. Square Enix doesn't deserve my money but I can't help but be curious to see what they do. I'm sure there'll be some money-grubbing ultimate edition and goodness knows what else, but as of time of writing that remains to be seen. I want the game to be good. It almost certainly won't be, but I want to see what they do. If nothing else it might be interesting to talk about.

Hindsight: A 2024 Cinematic Retrospective

Placeholder for whenever I get around to watching some or all of the following films from 2024 that I meant to watch but instead I watched loads of films from the 70s etc.:

Kinds of Kindness

The Substance

Megalopolis

Anora

The Brutalist

And various others I won't list now. 

Three Games I Didn't Finish in 2025

I played more games than just Kathy Rain 2 (and Kathy Rain 1 again) in 2025, but I didn't finish most of them for one reason or another. Here are three games I was interested in that I didn't or couldn't finish in 2025. 

Tavern Talk 

I've written here before about my love for Coffee Talk by Toge Productions, and appreciation for its sequel. There's also a third game in the works I'm curious to play. Tavern Talk was a European production heavily inspired by Coffee Talk but taking place in a more straightforward fantasy setting evocative of running an inn in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign

I gave Tavern Talk a more than fair go, but it's just too long. That statement needs to be qualified. I often feel sad when games I'm really enjoying end earlier than I would like; I think most of us know the feeling of enjoying a piece of entertainment to the extent that we want it to just keep going. Tavern Talk had the opposite problem. There were, for me, simply too many characters and their stories weren't engaging enough to keep me interested. On the one hand, I can appreciate why a game trying to give you the experience of being an innkeeper would want to have lots of different customers showing up, but the issue is that there are just so many and each has their own storyline that seemed to go on and on and on, and few if any of them were engaging enough for me to really care about them. Every time I felt that the game was surely reaching a natural conclusion it seemed to simply continue for even longer, and I started to get fed up. It all came to a head for me when my player character, over whose dialogue you have little control, had what seemed like a contrived falling out with one of the regulars, and at that point I just lost interest and stopped playing. I can't see myself going back to it any time soon; if I want to read something lengthy, I'll read real literature, not an overextended visual novel. I replayed the original Coffee Talk as well this year and loved it just as much, but its brevity and relatively tight core cast are major factors in why it's such a standout.

Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken (aka Deep Sleep 4) 

I was really keen for Deep Sleep 4 to come out. I'm quite a fan of the original trilogy of short Deep Sleep flash games and their companion trilogy of Don't Escape games. I'm a particularly big fan of Don't Escape 4, the full length point and click game from a few years ago that marked developer Scriptwelder's transition from short flash games to full blown indie adventure game development. Initially, I really enjoyed Deep Sleep for the roguelike approach to adventure gaming, with semi-randomised environments and a degree of character customisation and experience. I've often felt that point and click adventure gaming hasn't delved enough into hybridity with this kind of genre, so I was at first feeling like this was a real step forward.

What I struggled with is the combat. Deep Sleep 4's turn-based combat is meant to be part of the puzzle, involving resource management and how best to maximise damage and debuff your enemies, sort of like, say, Into the Breach (another game I couldn't get into). I understand this, but I feel like Deep Sleep 4 doesn't do a great job of tutorialising its combat; it feels very trial-and-error-y to figure out how it's meant to work, and for a good portion of the first third of the game or so I thought that you were actually supposed to avoid combat and find alternative solutions to it until I realised that it was actually a major part of the game and that to progress there were several big boss battles that needed to be played through. Scriptwelder has discussed online that there's no need to grind and that there are certain effective tactics to make combat manageable, but I feel like if the combat is meant to be like another puzzle there should be more "clues" to help the player work out the challenge of each battle scenario.

I know that due to many people's frustrated responses to the combat Scriptwelder has implemented a "story mode" that either eliminates combat or makes it much simpler, but I feel like this isn't really the experience of the game that he intended and that it's not really the "correct" way to play. I'll probably go back to Deep Sleep 4 at some point, but it really wasn't what I expected.

 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants 

I really liked the main game of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, but I found the DLC to be a bit of a disappointment. Essentially an add-on to the Vatican portion of the game in which Indy explores other parts of Rome, what I played of it felt a bit samey. I was also put off by a puzzle involving water valves that I felt didn't make it very clear what you were supposed to do; it's a two step puzzle but I didn't realise after completing the first step that there was more to accomplish. I also became annoyed by some weird environmental choices in that part of the game that made a piece of decoration look like a ledge you were meant to be able to jump to.

Mismatched expectations come up here as well, as I think I was initially hoping that The Order of Giants, if not a fully-fledged new environment like the main exploration sections of the main game, would at least be equivalent to a sort of mini version of one of those set in a unique environment in another part of the world, not just an add-on to an existing area, but that was probably hoping for too much. I will probably also go back to the DLC at some point, but at this point I'd probably be more interested in a larger expansion or a fully-fledged sequel to The Great Circle.

One Game I Did Finish: Dredge

I don't have much to say about Dredge except that I thought that for a horror game it was quite relaxing and had nice atmosphere. So, I guess, I recommend that one. 

"Kathy Rain: Director's Cut"

Spoilers for Kathy Rain and Kathy Rain 2 below.

Playing Kathy Rain 2 got me to go back and replay the first game, and it was interesting retrospectively to compare the two. Like I mentioned in my Kathy Rain 2 review, the first game came out in 2016 and was re-released as a "Director's Cut" in 2021. There doesn't seem to be a comprehensive account of what was changed between the 2016 release and the Director's Cut, but from what I understand and have seen online the interface was streamlined and a character was cut from the game's ending sequence. Supposedly new locations were also added and additional dialogue recorded. Regardless, I know that Clifftop Games considers the Director's Cut to be the definitive experience, so that's the one I've played, although I may go back at some point and play the original release as it is still available.

If I were to narrow down one thing that I think Kathy Rain does better than its sequel, it's atmosphere. The locations, which I assume must have been either hand painted or altered photographs that were then downsized, ooze atmosphere via their lighting and impressionistic qualities. The music is also moody and in some cases quite haunting. Obviously there's a huge amount of Twin Peaks inspiration here, but that's not a bad thing per se. The world of Conwell Springs feels like the right blend of "real" when you're in places like the sheriff's station or the clinic, and ethereal, such as when you're at the cemetery or the lakeside cabin. The different kinds of weather that occur over the course of the story also add to this.

Speaking of the story, while not massively original, it works. Kathy, a journalism student, goes to the funeral of her grandfather from whom she has long been estranged; afterwards she discovers from her grandmother that her grandfather has spent the last fifteen years or so in a more or less vegetative state after some incident out in Conwell Woods. She decides to look into what happened and finds herself drawn into an increasingly strange conspiracy involving the local church, a drowned girl, and mysterious formations of lights that appear among the trees. Although this is, as I've said, not anything we haven't seen before, Kathy is likeable enough (in my opinion) that I want to see her story through, and the mystery itself is paced out in such a way that it sustains my interest over the game's five days. The pacing maybe only wobbles a little because Day Four is so long and involved compared to the previous three, or at least feels that way, especially since you're meant to be talking to Jimmy Cochrane in the mid afternoon in the city at the very beginning of that day's sequence.

The other big part of this is in the puzzles. The puzzles in Kathy Rain: Director's Cut aren't exactly difficult, at least in my opinion, apart from a few slightly more involved ones, but I think that this works well enough to keep the pace of the story going as well. Probably the only aspect of this in the gameplay is talking to other characters, as you usually end up asking them about everything in your notebook and everything in your inventory too. Kathy will tell you if there's no point in discussing something with someone, but you don't know for sure until you try. Further, the only time I think the game ever gets into "cryptic" territory to any extent is in the game's final day, which is intentionally surreal, and during which time you have limited inventory.

Returning to writing, arguably the game's biggest strength in addition to its visual and audio atmosphere is its characters. While Kathy has been criticised a bit for being a bit of a tomboyish "not like other girls" instance of "men writing women", a wise cracking chain smoking motorcyclist, I think the character is written as likeable. Despite initially being characterised as a bit abrasive, it doesn't take long for the game to show us her vulnerability. She seems to genuinely care about her grandparents and Eileen, while she struggles with the memory of her deadbeat dad and the pain of having had her mother committed to psychiatric care, as well as unresolved feelings about a terminated pregnancy. As would happen again in the sequel, a major factor in this in addition to the writing is the voice acting, with Arielle Siegel and Shelly Shenoy being the highlights as Kathy and Eileen, although the cast as a whole is generally fairly strong.

My only other critique would probably be the same one I had with the sequel in terms of visual shortcuts. As cool as it is to have the area select screen with Kathy on her bike, at times it's hard to get a grasp of the layout of Conwell Springs and its surrounds. For example, Kathy's grandmother's house is meant to be on a farm, but because you never see it from the outside it's hard to get a good sense of this. Similarly, you never see the town as a whole except distantly from the cemetery, and the only exterior you get on the streets is outside the clinic; you never see the sheriff's station or church from the outside. For this reason I think the cemetery, lakeside cabin, Conwell Woods and other such areas work better as locations because we get to see both exterior and interior environments in most cases. As with the sequel, I know art is time consuming and difficult to make, but I do slightly still run into the same problem here of having a little trouble imagining the landscape of Kathy's world. The same issue occurs with the university, of which we only ever see two screens, and one only in a cutscene.

Nonetheless these are pretty minor gripes and ones I can forgive in an indie adventure game which does so many other things right; I actually find it hard to find much in the way of negatives given what the game is. I do genuinely think that Kathy Rain: Director's Cut might be one of my favourite indie adventure games of the last ten years and I'd definitely recommend it to any fans of the genre. I think this and the sequel make a pretty good combo. It took me seven and a half hours, apparently, to do my first playthrough back in 2022, and about six to do my most recent one, so between this and Kathy Rain 2 you've got about 18 hours of Kathy Rain goodness if you want some point 'n' click fun. I guess now I need to go play Whispers of a Machine and see how that holds up, although I think I'll miss Kathy...

"Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer"

Warning: Full spoilers for Kathy Rain and Kathy Rain 2 below.

For people who played Kathy Rain when it first came out back in 2016, the last 9 years must have been a long time. I first played Kathy Rain in its 2021 Director's Cut form in 2022, and I really loved it. While a bit derivative of Twin Peaks and the oeuvre of David Lynch in general, like so many mystery stories with an element of the supernatural, I nonetheless enjoyed the writing and voice acting and I liked the character of Kathy. That game ended with the hint of a sequel being possible, so I kept an eye on the game over the last couple of years to see if anything was in the works, and here we are.

Overall, I like Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer a lot. I don't love it quite as much as the first game, but I did enjoy playing it and I think the team behind the game should be immensely proud of what they accomplished. It's fun and interesting with great art and music, good voice acting and a reasonably compelling story with puzzles to keep the player engaged. The story is probably where it falls slightly short of greatness, along with a few visual shortcuts which reduce the immersion a tad.

Kathy Rain 2 is set three years after the events of the first game. As that game suggested would happen, Kathy's become a private investigator. We find out that she worked for an old stereotypical gumshoe named Lucas Longhorn for a while before she and her friend Eileen went into business together, cracking some big cases. In the end the work dried up, however, the two of them had a falling out, and now Kathy's alone, broke and drinking to forget her woes. Her last hope to save her business is to try to solve the mystery of a serial killer dubbed "the Soothsayer" who is terrorising the city, and to claim the reward money.

The most obvious highlight of Kathy Rain 2 is the presentation. Like the first game, the sequel has lavish pixel art and animation. The environments have lots of texture and detail, and the character portraits that come up during dialogue are full of personality. The atmosphere, always crucial in these kinds of games, is great; a particular highlight is the hill outside of town, from which you get a hazy view of the city with the sights of distant construction and passing aircraft. Rather than a map screen, like the first game this has a fun animation of Kathy riding her motorbike from which you choose the location. The animation in general is fairly good, with the game only occasionally falling back on the fade-in fade-out approach that a lot of adventure games use to avoid having to deal with complex animation.

Things are strong on the sound front as well. Kathy Rain 2 has a great soundtrack which perfectly suits Kathy's character and the investigation. The voice acting is also pretty good, although a bit more variable. The main highlight is Kathy's voice actor, Arielle Siegel, who returns from voicing her in the first game here, and who coupled with the portraits makes Kathy feel very real, sympathetic and believable. Several of the other voice actors from the first game also return to reprise their roles, which provides a nice degree of consistency.

Story-wise things are okay if not especially groundbreaking. Kathy Rain 2 starts off as a "new mystery" that about halfway through pivots completely into being a close sequel to the events of the first game, so this one mercifully provides a recap of the first at the beginning. As much as I loved the original, I didn't remember too much about its story, so this was appreciated, especially since a lot of characters and elements end up returning. My biggest critique of the game is probably that the story ties a little too heavily to the mysteries from the first game, to the point that the ending in particular, in which Kathy ends up in the same strange dimension as she did in the first, feels repetitive. Maybe if it had been four to ten years since I'd played the first, rather than just three, things would feel different. I think it isn't helped by the fact that for the first half of the game your motivation is "catch the Soothsayer to make a bunch of cash" which, while realistic, isn't that compelling either. I would have liked something a bit more personal without as much of a do-over of the first game, so maybe I'm being picky. My other complaint on this front would be that I think the climax is a bit rushed and weightless, such that I didn't quite feel the impact of things that the game probably wanted me to.

I'll just go into spoilers and say that towards the end of the game you discover that Kathy's doppelganger from first game (another Twin Peaks type element) and a deranged park ranger are in cahoots to reawaken the powerful being, "the Old God", hinted at at the end of the first. Their plan to do this is through a series of ritual murders involving obsidian scrying mirrors and a drug manufactured from the hallucinatory plant of the first game. In the end Kathy, Eileen and a new ally who is the redeemed Crimson One from the first game track them down and Kathy has a series of surreal encounters with her doppelganger's victims. She shoots the Crimson One's replacement, "Mr. Burgundy", with a magic bullet she was given just before the finale, the Old God decides he isn't interested in humanity any more (or something) and leaves.

I'm being glib, but none of this quite landed for me and wasn't that interesting compared to the more personal confrontations Kathy had with her past at the end of the first game. Kathy does find herself confronted in this game with her own selfishness as she imagines Eileen and an old school friend, Josh, accusing her of using them, but this occurs about two thirds of the way through the game and doesn't bear out much in the ending. Further, Kathy's troubled mother makes an appearance and is kidnapped by the doppelganger, but all it takes is a few lines of dialogue to convince her that you're the real one. It's all just not given quite enough weight. There's also Lucas, her mentor as a PI, who gives her the "quest" at the beginning of the game and is predictably murdered by the Soothsayer part way through. Lucas is a fun character and his relationship with Kathy is interesting, but it's not exactly anything we haven't seen before. All in all I can't help but feel that the story just needed a bit more drafting to improve the structure, pacing and character development a little.

The other limitation I mentioned previously is some of the visual shortcuts. The game doesn't have many, if any, establishing shots of any of the locations in Kassidy you visit, from Kathy's own office building, to the local businesses, the areas in Bear Creek, or the mines where the final showdown takes place. You pick a location from the map and Kathy enters that room or area from a door or one side or another. You also get the reverse, in which you conveniently can't enter a witness's apartment because she's a germaphobe, or a crime scene because the police have already wiped the area and there's no point. I understand that art is expensive and time consuming to make, which is fair, but I feel like this slightly decreased my immersion and gave me a weaker sense of the landscape of Kathy's world.

In the grand scheme of things, however, these are relatively minor drawbacks. It took me, according to GOG Galaxy, eleven and a half hours to get through Kathy Rain 2, and I honestly wish it had been longer. The game's puzzles are not particularly difficult, although I was referring to the "task list" which is apparently the game's built-in hint system and which other people have complained should be turned off by default. Personally I thought that this was just a way to keep me on track and didn't think that I was somehow circumventing some degree of difficulty by using it, but who knows. Regardless, the game kept me coming back to it for a couple of hours a day for about a week, which I think is as good an indication as any of the game's success.

Ultimately, despite some criticisms, I'd still recommend Kathy Rain 2, and I think it's a worthy successor to the first game. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to make one of these games, especially with a small budget and a small team, and to have made something this elaborate and substantial is impressive. I'd definitely be keen to see a third, in the next decade or so.