Discworld Noir

The Good
1999 saw the release of two adventure games that blended Film Noir with other genres. Grim Fandango was a fantastic mix of Film Noir, art deco and Mexican Day of the Dead. Discworld Noir blends Noir with medieval fantasy, which is perhaps a little less original but still entertaining. There's just something funny about a private eye in a trench coat and fedora working a city of pirates and dwarves and trolls. The voice acting in Discworld Noir is thankfully excellent (there's a lot of voiceover) and the artwork and overall atmosphere is dead-on Film Noir. As far as actual gameplay, the game introduces an innovative dialogue system that lets you use the notes you've taken in your detective's notebook to question NPCs.

The Bad
I realize and appreciate the fact that everyone has a different sense of humor. That said, I have to confess that I didn't find much of the humor in Discworld Noir all that funny. It's not that it's tasteless or offensive or anything...it just falls flat. It falls short of being groaningly un-funny and settles into a place where you can comfortably ignore the fact that the jokes even exist.

The interface is clunky and really shows the game's roots as a PSX title. The traditional inventory-interaction of almost all adventure games is present, but calling up your inventory and interacting with objects is a bit of a pain. The most frustrating aspect of Discworld Noir is that it requires the worst kind of screen trolling (moving your mouse around the screen looking for objects with which you can interact) - the hotspots don't stand out or change color or glow in any way when you mouse over them. There is a (plain white text) popup label for each item, but they are extremely easy to miss.

The Bottom Line
Bottom line: it's no Grim Fandango, but the story is cohesive and compelling enough to keep you interested and some of the puzzles are pretty good.

The Good
This game was delightfully funny with its tongue-in-cheek kind of humor. I haven't played any of the other Discworld games, so I'm sure some of the jokes got by me, but there were plenty of things to chuckle about anyway.

If you've always wanted to know what to say to your favorite monster, you'll learn while playing Discworld Noir. Ghouls, goblins, werewolves, zombies, golems, vampires and dwarves lead ordinary, everyday lives (such that it can be in a place called Ankh-Morpork). Talking to them is loads of fun. My favorite character of the bunch was DEATH, complete with his dark cape and scythe. Listening to his replies had me in stitches. And I loved the spoof on Indiana Jones!

The story is engaging and keeps you interested with its twists and turns. It is not any different than some others - the case ends up much more complicated than the beginning missing persons case. Conversations are the key to everything in Discworld Noir. Luckily you can enable subtitles as well as spacebar through the dialogs if you want.

I applaud the voice actors and actresses for their outstanding performances throughout. You could tell some of them played various characters, but not many. They all had the most wonderful inflections and gave real personalities to each and every character they portrayed. (When the vampire, Samael, sings, listen to the lyrics of his song. They're delightful!)

The music was of the standard P.I. type such as you might hear in a Mike Hammer episode. It was mood enhancing and dramatic when needed. Sound effects were appropriate, too - rain falling, thunder and lightning as well as crashes and bangs.

The graphics are done up in cartoon style. The characters are depicted somewhat funky, in a cute sort of way. The graphic world and the characters blended well together to make the whole thing believable. You can brighten up the scenes with the "Gamma Correction" option, which is nice because they can be a bit dark.

The Bad
I had a bit of trouble getting the game to run. It wouldn't play at all on my Windows XP laptop, and played poorly on my desktop computer with Windows 98 installed. It kept asking for a file that didn't exist (dsetup.dll). Cancelling out of the error message let me open up the closed window again and play. Disabling all other programs running in the background (especially anti-virus) helped some of the problems I encountered - which were stuttering speech and music and a temporarily frozen cursor. (Too bad no patch was made which might have solved those problems.)

Conversations are so important in Discworld Noir, but the interface they designed to use was cumbersome. Finding topics in the PI journal by turning page after page after page was tedious to say the least.

The Bottom Line
I was persistent enough to finish Discworld Noir, suffering through the bugs and quirks, because the story was so good. It wasn't a short game either, and I enjoyed myself with it for about 5 days (playing almost constantly). It's a very good adventure game, and could have been great if the technical side had been more user friendly. As it stands, it is still a worthy play for any of you who enjoy adventure games.

The Good
Discworld Noir's is a great detective mystery with more unexpected twists than your average rollercoaster. The plot is great, and never predictable, and although Pratchett himself didn't write much of it, his humour shines throughout. It isn't slapstick comedy as in the first 2 Discworld games, but that doesn't mean it's not there - sarcasm and irony are used often, if you pay attention.

Graphically, DW Noir is simply amazing, one of the most gorgeous and atmospheric adventure games there are. And of course, who could forget the sound? Mellow jazz is usually played, and the sound effects are top-notch too.

The Bad
Um. Pass.

The Bottom Line
Absolutely amazing. Play it if you're a Pratchett fan, or an adventure fan, or if you just like having fun.