Developer Mad Orange's title Face Noir attempts to revive the classic genres of point-and-click and film noir in one fell swoop
With the exception of Del Nero’s voice actor (who isn’t terrible), the voice acting is very poor and really hampers on the experience as characters deliver lines as if they were reading directly off the script. It is clear that the game’s first language was not English as often times the mouths will not sync up to the voices.
While the story is intriguing and mysterious harkening back to the noir days of yesteryear, I couldn’t help but feel a little underwhelmed at points in the story where not much was happening. Couple this with some boring, clichéd dialogue and it really hinders the overall experience.
Although not without its flaws, Face Noir manages to recapture the style, mood and atmosphere of a time long gone while coupling it with classic genre elements. That being said, this is no Raymond Chandler and it shows creating a great idea on paper that doesn’t transition smoothly to the screen. Fans of the point-and-click genre as well as film noir fans may get a nice kick out of this but it has little to offer aside from that. With a proper cast this could have been something special, but for now it’s time to down that last glass of whiskey and hope to forget this one.
Score: 5.5 / 10
