S01E02
The figure lies in the bathtub in cigarette smoke, it seems that the air itself is viscous and sticky as the ex-contents of a dozen empty bottles of whiskey and other booze, which had enough royalties from the last case of missing family valuables. A phone call is heard, and a worried woman's voice is heard...
Textbook exposition when imagining a noir detective. Except for one detail, the detective in the suit, tie and beige raincoat is a raccoon.
The theme of the issue is noir games with anthropomorphic characters...
Backbone
Immediately you can hear at what high level is the music of the game. In terms of gameplay, we want to note that the game began its way with crowdfunding, and the demo version to the company showed a far cry from what was then made. Players who were waiting for the promised, of course, were upset. But if you go through the game without expectations, it falls in love immediately.
Personally, I liked that the choices in the dialogues really leads to variations and even these decisions will affect the dialogues with other characters in other locations, but at the same time, it will not affect the flow of the game and the ending. Which in this case is a good thing because the story is told as piercing as possible.
Chicken Police - Paint it Red!
Two Cocks walk into a bar and say: "Two whiskeys, kid! And no horsing around."
This is a very real scene from another game called 'Chicken Police - Paint it Red'. The preceding song is from the original soundtrack.In contrast to BACKBONE, the sound design here is complemented by a savory voice acting. The whole game is a fun parody of a noir detective, in some places the animals with human hands look creepy, but you quickly get used to it.
Under the black-and-white feathers of Chicken Police hides the classic pixel-hunting with the inclusions of puzzles and mini-games, which all together only slightly shade the speeding locomotive of the viscous noir plot and the whole zoo of actors, to the dramatic denouement. In the middle of the action is a typical duet of two typical cops bogged down in crime of an eternally dormant metropolis, and, of course, a femme fatale as the axis along which the events and characters rotate. Pretty boring and predictable? But only on the surface, like any noir plot of the middle of the last century.
By the way, Chicken Police is the debut of a small Hungarian team The Wild Gentlemen, which consists of AAA-industry veterans who worked on The Witcher 3, Call of Duty WWII, Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, Crysis and Haegemonia.
Chicken Police: Paint it Red is a unique project, made by true fans of the noir genre, so it is a crime to miss it. And by the claims of the gameplay it is easy to understand that it is not really a game, but rather a game movie, which does not make Chicken Police worse, just expect it to be a 100% refined narrative experience.
BLACKSAD - Under the Skin
It is an adaptation of the Spanish comic series Blacksad published in 2000 by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. The game follows John Blacksad as he investigates the suspicious death of a boxing club owner.
Blacksad forgoes a point-and-click interface in favor of direct character control. Gameplay is choice-based, and the player's actions alter the player character's alignment with other characters in the world.
The direction of the story changes based on the player's decisions. During investigations, John Blacksad's heightened feline senses allow the player to slow down time and perceive visual clues in their surroundings, which are then added to the player's clue index. From here, the player may combine clues to form conclusions, both to progress the main story and to solve optional side-quests.
In spite of the release flaws and point & click controls, the player's emotions run wild and fast during the passage. The empathy and awareness of what scoundrels the detective has come up against reaches the very heart.
