F
or me the mark of a good
point-and-click adventure is
how much I actually want to listen
to the descriptions. It’s fine filling a
scene with pointless stuff I can click
on, but if the results aren’t mildly
amusing, what’s the point? Kathy
Rain, against my expectations, is
surprisingly great at this, to the
point I can’t progress past the
opening scene until I’ve examined
my Christian roommate’s God things
and tried to mess up her bed.
The ’90s setting and spiky
protagonist make me wish this was
on television when I was a teenager
- the sort of show you watch before
your mum calls you
downstairs for turkey
escalopes and chips.
KATHY RAIN
T
his month’s theme, apparently, is
‘games that are weather-
adjacent’. So Sunset Overdrive is a
slight cop-out. But in my defence,
you can’t have a sunset without the
sun. It’s also an excuse to talk about
a game that’s fascinating just because
it’s so close to being God-awful. At
times it feels like it was grown in a
lab using memes and Mountain Dew.
But despite being so self-referential
it’s thrice disappeared up its own
backside, Sunset Overdrive is
adorably, inexplicably great.
It’s like an uninvited stranger
turning up to your house party
with a guitar, then learning they
know all your favourite songs
and they’re not trying to bed
your partner.SUNSET OVERDRIVE
M
ost Nancy Drew games hinge
on some kind of nefarious,
far-fetched criminal enterprise. But a
villain using weaponised bad weather
is perhaps the most gleefully absurd.
It’s the 2 2nd game in the series, and
there’s very little here to set it apart:
sedate puzzling, pointless chores, bad
character models. Even among the
Nancy Drew hardcore, Trail of the
Twister is rightly reviled one of the
weaker entries. But at least
there are 21 other titles to
help ease the sadness.NANCY DREW:TRAIL
OF THE TWISTER
A
moment of honesty: Flower
was originally going to be
one of the shorter entries
in this month’s They’re Back, but
the prospect of following
Bulletstorm with something so
achingly earnest was entirely too
tempting to pass up.It’s refreshing – almost like a detox
for the fingers. The most violent
thing that happens in Flower is some
rocks almost falling over. But despite
the calm, monkish focus, Flower can
be exhilarating. There’s a lovely sense
of speed and fluidity from zooming
around close to the ground and
watching the beautiful grass part
before you. It’s also a zen experience,
even if the effect is lessened for me
when I decide that each section is the
dying dream of a plant.
It sometimes stretches what I
understand to be the definition of agame – there’s no challenge, no peril,
no time limits – but that doesn’t
mean it isn’t fun. There’s a gentle
progression to every section, and
you’ll probably come away from the
whole experience feeling rather
pleased with yourself for playing
something that belongs in a museum.
Like trying to step on a flying crisp
packet on a breezy day, it’s enjoyable
in a way that’s quite hard to describe,
but I love doing it nonetheless.
There’s very little to it – you
whoosh about, things go green,
flowers bloom – but the simple act of
experiencing it is enough. And, unlike
Bulletstorm, I’d be proud if a family
member caught me playing it, rather
than embarrassed. If nothing else, it’s
nice to imagine a bizarro world
version of Flower
developed by People Can
Fly, in which a petal blasts
some rocks to pieces.THEY’RE BACK
91
EXPECT TO PAY
£ 5. 20
DEVELOPER
thatgamecompanyPUBLISHER
Annapurna InteractiveNEED TO KNOW
LEAF IT OUT
Having a breeze in FLOWERBELOW: This the leafy beyond where wedding confetti goes when it dies.
There’s the
twister, tail it.