Noir: A Shadowy Thriller

The Good
The "noir" approach worked in the movies, but it has had little success in the gaming world. In fact, there have been very few made and for good reason.

The term film noir, literally black film, was coined by French film critics to describe what they perceived as a distinctly darkened, desperate and cynical tone to American cinema that emerged following World War II. Film noir had a distinctly dark and dreary look and mood. The films typically featured innocent people who became victims or villains thanks to high and low angle shots that intimidate. Low-key lighting and night-for-night shooting create harsh contrasts between the light and dark areas of the frame, surrounding centers of light with shadows, resulting in a world as hopeless and menacing as its inhabitants.

The only good thing going for Noir: A Shadowy Thriller is the lure of an intriguing story. Private eye Jack Slayton was investigating 6 totally different cases and suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. As a fellow gum shoe, your task is to find out what happened to Slayton. You read his notes, listen to his tapes and set off to reconstruct them all.

The Bad
The entire game consists of static images you must move through. The whole thing takes place at night so everything is dark and, of course, all done in shades of grey. The graphics as a whole were a bit blurry and, in my opinion, just plain substandard. I thought that the cut-scene movie clips were below average too, even for as old a game as it is. The story is moved along with QuickTime movies, and bad ones at that.

Somehow all six of the cases intertwine ... but unfortunately I was yawning way before I found out how. I'm not fond of digging around in the dark anyway.

Finding your way around is a bit stupid when you only have a few direction choices. When you get to a new location, everything you can find is way too obvious. There are virtually no puzzles to solve and the answers to those are given to you by a phone-in "informant".

There is no conversation as such. You just listen to others who speak to you on the phone or in the cut-scenes.

There is no inventory to manage since everything you pick up is automatically used when the need arises.

The Bottom Line
When I play a game, I expect to be entertained or at least challenged. Neither was the case here. This game was a total waste of my time and I uninstalled it in the middle of the second case. In my opinion, it is simply a click-through of a very badly made B-movie. If you want to play a game with a "noir" theme, play the much better Grim Fandango.