Review: X-Noir

[Ocedic 249]

Title: X-Noir

Author: Volrath and Artbane

Version: Demo v2.0

Review by: Ocedic

 

Introduction

 

X-Noir is a story-driven detective adventure game with an action battle system and investigation-style gameplay.

 

 

Presentation

 

The first thing you'll probably notice are X-Noir's unique and well-done facesets. Custom graphics are plentiful in this title, from the tiles to the characters. Some RTP characters slip in like the ones in the therapist's waiting room; these should really be removed as they stick out like a sore thumb in the otherwise consistent modern setting. On a similar note, some characters had facegen facesets that don't match the custom ones whatsoever. It's impossible to give every NPC a unique drawn face, but in that case you should simply use no faceset for those without one. Consistency is key, folks. And truth be told, while the game pulls off the look of modernity, it doesn't quite live up to its namesake of 'noir.' Noir means black in French, and generally film noir involves very muted, gritty colors with an emphasis on highly contrasted lighting. There's a few scenes in the intro that pull of the look, but as the game progresses it looks more like an Earthbound game than LA Confidential.

 

The mapping is very good for the most part. It's clear that a lot of environments were carefully crafted and there are lots of details that bring them to life. Unfortunately, it's plagued by a lot of mapping bugs. You can walk in places you shouldn't, and some tiles which should be overhead are not. The biggest offenders come from the cars that drive around the city, which simply pass through the player. I realize that it's exceedingly difficult to create traffic behavior, but every player is going to try to run themselves over and every one will be pulled out of the immersion of the experience by cars moving through them like ghosts.

 

 

And on a lesser note, while a lot of attention has been given to the graphics themselves, the visual appeal of the text has not been given as much love. As you can see above, the names in name boxes are scrunched for some reason, and text often fails to fill out the entire message box and is inconsistent in length. It's not the end of the world, but small details like that make the game feel less polished and professional, both of which are qualities that I imagine the authors desire for their title.

 

In terms of audio, the music is quite good but at the same time very limited; you'll hear the same tracks over and over again. Sound-wise, the game has decent use of effects but a lot of it is RTP and doesn't quite fit the tone of the game. The menu sounds in general are the default RTP ones, and they immediately stood out as strange. The authors should really give a bit more consideration towards sound and how it dictates mood and emotion, as it's really not doing its job at the moment.

 

Verdict: Graphics unique, mapping good but buggy, music selection sparse, sound bad, noir look is not nailed down

 

Gameplay

 

The combat system in X-Noir is an action battle system, and it's probably the worst aspect of the game right now. Like every ABS I've played on the RPG Maker engine, it's clunky, unwieldy and a chore to use. Combat generally degrades into spamming shots while moving backwards or sideways, sometimes abusing the AI's poor pathing. But you don't even really need to do the latter, as enemies drop more ammo than it takes to kill them and the game is liberal with healing items. There's almost no chance for you to ever lose.

 

 

More importantly, it really brings you to question whether this game needs an action battle system, or any battle system, at all. It feels like a tacked on feature that's there so that the project can be labelled a 'game,' and it really casts a shadow over the finer aspects of the game's gameplay and story. It feels so out of place in the context of the story and basically pulls you out of the suspension of disbelief every time it comes up. For one thing, it makes the game feel more like a cheesy 80's action flick than a gritty noir film of the 40's or 50's. It also just makes no sense at all how many bullets people can take. Your main character starts off as a guy who has never fired a gun before, ends up killing about a dozen people in cold blood and talks about getting chicken wings afterwards and somehow comes out of the situation with no PTSD. Where was this guy when we needed to catch Bin Laden?

 

 

Honestly, I think the authors should give serious consideration to scrapping the entire ABS mechanic and focusing on the game's strengths: its investigation and puzzles. The few puzzles throughout the game are pretty cool, in particular the pipe puzzles in the sewers. It makes sense that a game about a private investigator should have some puzzle solving elements to it; I kind of wish there were more. The investigation sections are nifty, but flawed. It reminds me a bit of LA Noire's interrogation mechanic, but it lacks the visual and audio cues to help the player decide if witnesses are lying or not. The only inflection you get is from text, and sometimes it feels like shooting in the dark than educated intuition. Other times, the answer is exceedingly obvious due to the way the dialogue is presented. Though there isn't much of a way around this, the authors should take a look at it and see if there's any way to expand this mechanic to be more involved. Why not have the classic method of allowing you to contradict statements with evidence/logic, for example? This is used well in both LA Noire and the Phoenix Wright series.

 

 

Having said that, the investigation sections aren't bad at all and I did enjoy that aspect of the game.

 

Verdict: Investigation mode should be expanded, puzzles well done, ABS is boring, tedious and pointless

 

Story

 

My biggest gripe with the story is that it's really not dark enough for a noir game. The only hint of character weakness is the implied alcoholism of the main character, but he seems rather high functioning for someone with a severe addiction. His relationships, work and health don't seem to suffer at all. In fact, the only indications of his alcohol abuse are the large number of beer bottles strewn throughout his apartment and his constant references to alcohol. For one thing, it's a rather cliched character flaw, and it ultimately doesn't seem like a flaw at all. He never struggles with his alcoholism, when in reality it's a very devastating condition that basically ruins someone's life. It never hampers his investigations or interactions with people and is simply never utilized.

 

And once that faux weakness is out of the way, the game is very much devoid of anything resembling grit. I realize that sex, murder and drugs may not be everyone's cup of tea, but is finding a girl's locket really considered hardboiled? I would have wagered that the authors were going for a family-friendly story, but the use of profanity at least implies that the game wanted a mature and dark story. The game's cases feel like the most boring missions of LA Noire, but those served a purpose in the plot of that game to show the rise of the protagonist from lowly street cop to detective. Basically the game's plot failed to hook me in and I felt the rest of my playtime was out of obligation rather than intrigue.

 

 

The writing itself is not bad. The dialogue has a great flow to it, though at times it comes across as contrived or unintentionally comical. However, there's rarely a sense of classic noir bitterness or dark poetry. Stuff just kind of happens and characters just kind of say things. One issue is that there's so many filler NPCs, many of whom offer nothing substantial in the way of discourse. Here, the authors were given an opportunity to craft an atmosphere of suffocating corruption and hopelessness that the genre is known for, but instead it's squandered on non-sequitor humor.  This is a symptom of the great issue at large, which I believe is that the authors focused on the amount of content rather than the quality of it. The intro's dialogue, mood and setting suggests that the authors are capable of doing noir, but they wanted to create so much content (an entire city) that they simply didn't spend enough time fine tuning the setting.

 

 

Verdict: Not very noir-esque, uninteresting plot, good writing and good characterization but not utilized in the most effective manner

 

Recommendation

 

If you like games like LA Noire or Heavy Rain, X-Noir is worth taking a look at. The writing flows well, and there are some good moments here and there. However, it comes with a fair amount of tedium and a poorly chosen battle system. If the author can cut loose its faults, better emphasize its noir nature and focus on the core strengths of this title, it could be a great detective game.