Developer Mad Orange's title Face Noir attempts to revive the classic genres of point-and-click and film noir in one fell swoop
The design, while being flawed at times, is a nice nod back to classic point-and-click games where aside from a help button that shows where you can interact, does little to aid the player in finding what to do. This may be tedious and difficult for some, but when you finally finish a puzzle and figure out what to do it is amazingly satisfying and makes you feel like a true detective.
That being said, it is very dated in the sense that you have to complete these tasks in a specific order to do something like for instance when you want to get a drink from Greta, instead of using your leftover money (which you use earlier to bribe someone), you have to remove a patron, switch a radio station to something sultry and attempt to convince Greta to give it to you. It’s frustrating and caused me to look up a guide at times. Del Nero also has a “detective sense” sort of feature which allows you in conversation to put together bits of information you’ve collected to try and convince someone to let you do something. It’s a neat addition, but is still very linear without much depth.
From a visual standpoint, the character models are decent but look very stiff and facial animations are very run of the mill but are acceptable for an indie developed game. As well, the soundtrack boasts wonderful jazz trumpets and smooth basslines that really pull you in to that world and make one feel nostalgic for the period. But the high points mentioned do little to help the low points of Face Noir.
