Years ago after watching and reading Watchmen(heh), Sin City, and V for Vendetta I became a noir fiend. Is V for Vendetta noir? Apparently it is not. Anyway because of this addiction I bought this game called Noir Syndrome. I haven’t played it in four years but if I remember correctly it’s a deductive detective game where you have to find enough clues in order to apprehend the culprit. I remember it not being what I thought it was and I only played a few times for an hour total. So it’s time to jump back in.
This game has two modes, the normal randomly-generated main mode where you traverse a town attempting to find the killer amongst the residents, and a Dinner Party mode where you are attempting to find the culprit at a…dinner party. Since DP mode is just a smaller, close-knit version of the main one, this article will focus on the latter.
The normal mode has you playing a detective who is trying to find a serial killer. This killer is inspired by Anubis and sometimes does graffiti. The longer you take to find the killer the more people will die, and after a set amount of days he’ll kill the mayor and it will be game over. You can travel to over 30 locations and find clues or talk to people. Everyone you talk to has a name so you may end up talking to one of your suspects.
But what can you do exactly? Before I get to that, lemme explain your inventory. You hold three items: money, lockpicks, and bullets. Yes you can shoot people, but the response is very realistic(you will probably get shot at). You can use money to buy bullets and lockpicks(among other things), and use lockpicks for unlocking doors. I fell like that was obvious but still.
As you stroll side-to-side in this 2D world you can investigate things in the world and talk to people and performing either of these actions cause you to lose hunger, which is basically your stamina. Every now and then you’ll find items while investigating that will help you narrow down who the killer is, items like rope and fingerprints.
There are three factions in this game and everybody in the game is a part of one. You have the green civilians, blue police, and red belongs to the folk with mob ties. Sometimes a specific group will takeover a location and that means it’ll be a bunch of them there. I’m pretty sure. Yeah that’s how it works.
Now at this point of the article I’ve played a round of Noir Syndrome exactly one time, and I figured out who the killer was but I did not catch him. He got away because I forgot how to arrest people and ran around like a goofy til time was up. Now after giving you the skinny on the game, I’ll try to beat it once again.
So in my second attempt I was shot by mobsters because I accidentally robbed their safe. I had a good suspect list going with a decent amount of evidence. The music is playing as I type this, and it sounds real noiry. Gonna dust myself off and get back at it.
After getting five names on my suspect list I was able to finger the killer! You have to click on the target icon and pick a name and the game will tell you where they are so you can arrest them. And that’s what I did! But I was wrong. The killer wasn’t even on my list. Time to dive back in.
As I win my fourth case with some intelligent deduction and all-around top-notch sleuthing I am reminded of why I stopped playing this game. I thought it was too easy once you got the hang of it, sort of like Clue. But I don’t recall upping the skill level, so I’ll do that right quick.
Well I’m done playing the game now, because on the skill level entitled “Hard” I walked into a building, the lady in front of me got shot, then I got shot. This is a very straight-forward game, so much so that all higher difficulties do is add a little pizzazz, but once you get used to the changes it all becomes background noise.
This game is fun, and I might play a bit more, but the reason I stopped before wasn’t the best. This game is for when you want to flex your brain a bit. I should’ve just gave it a few more plays that first time around, upped the difficulty, and just chilled out with it. Between this game and The Lion’s Song I’m starting to think that maybe I stopped playing certain games because I just wasn’t playing them right. Some games you gotta play while sitting down in a toasty room with a warm drink in your hand while reciting a self-deprecating monologue with smooth jazz in the background. This is one of those games.
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