Face Noir

[h1]Short version: 71%[/h1] Face Noir captures anyone easily in its world of noir tropes, but to enjoy that, you have to deal with the typical point ‘n’ click logic, the slow controls, subpar voice acting, and that… interesting ending. [h1]Long version:[/h1] The title of Face Noir is very apt: it takes every noir detective story cliché known to mankind and pushes it right into the player’s face at full force. We are talking about clichés such as a mysterious phone call, a murder that the police is trying to pin on the alcoholic ex-cop private detective protagonist, and of course a case where the threads lead to the highest circles of the city — everything would fit a Philippe Marlow novel except the motive (which would go well with Indiana Jones instead). And, of course, I have to mention that anyone buying the game has to live with the fact that it ends with a cliffhanger, and the chances for a sequel are… slim. The presentation is a little difficult to rate. The exposition dump dialogues are part of the noir setting, and the writing is mostly acceptable. The voice acting isn’t bad, not at all, but it sounds more like some amateurs and family members doing their best to try to act than actual actors playing roles. (The audio quality is terrible though.) Game mechanics are painfully simplistic: look at items, pick up items, and use items. For the most part, progress is logical, albeit suffers from the ancient adventure game design problem that doesn’t want to finally die: every single action requires several trips to different spots of the city, even to do simple tasks as making a phone call. There is one addition that brings some novelty, the deduction parts, where the player has to select two previously acquired facts out of many to reach a conclusion. They are a welcomed change of pace, even if their contribution to the 9-11 hour game time is negligible compared to the constant travelling.

Thumbs down! First off, this game ends on a cliffhanger and they never made a sequel. That alone is a reason to avoid this game. However, even if the story had been resolved, I still wouldn’t recommend this because the gameplay isn’t really fun. The gameplay is rather frustrating. You find objects that you can’t pick up until you actually need them and some objects have pointless mini-games associated with them. The doll is a good example. You find a crate of toys, but you can’t pick up the doll until you meet the little girl. However, in order to finally get the doll, you have to assemble it yourself in a mini-game. It’s not enough to put the pieces in the right order. You also have to rotate the pieces to the correct orientation without any clues as to what the correct orientation actually is. This wasn’t a fair puzzle at all. I had to look at a walkthrough to see a picture of what the doll is supposed to look like. The story has some potential, but drags on a bit too much, especially since there is no resolution. I suspect Face Noir 2 wouldn’t have resolved anything either, but would have ended with another cliffhanger. In addition, there are some glaring errors that break the immersion. For example, despite living in Manhattan and being suspected of murder in Brooklyn, you have to repeatedly travel to Hoboken to get to the New York City Police Department. Hoboken is actually in New Jersey, not New York. Final verdict. Stay away from this one.

An Extremely fascinating P&C-Noir quest that combines all the classical of the detective genre with its own interesting features and ideas! You are a private detective Jack Del Nero who is been hired by some rich oldman to take a few "compromising" pictures of his distrustful stepdaughter. Just another "chore" for Jack to take care of... what could possibly go wrong?

Cant recommend saddly, it has a great german synchro but its speed wise SOOOOO slow, the char walks slow the conversations are slow, the story is not great but the graphics and such are awesome! Wish it was faster in its pacing, you need to solve a puzzle you can see allready, NOPE you didnt trigger event X, so trigger wise trigger it first or you cant pick the item up. Yeah cant recommend.

Played it 12 years ago for the first time and even today this is still a very cool and relaxing point & click adventure. I especially like the cozy, jazzy and somewhat melancholic athmosphere of the game. If you like raymond chandler or dashiell hammet go and buy this game!

Осторожно рекомендую поклонникам данного жанра. Хорошая атмосфера и музыка. Есть интересные паззлы. Но есть и ложка дегтя, которая подбешивала на протяжении всей игры. Приведу пример, как в этой игре работают некоторые цепочки действий. Дано: масляная лампа, пепельница, кукуруза. Окей, заливаем керосин, ставим пепельницу. Логично догадаться, что надо кинуть зерна кукурузы сверху. Но этого нельзя сделать. Сначала надой пойти и поговорить с владельцем забегаловки о его кукурузном поле, но только строго после того как осмотришь это самое поле. И тогда старик расскажет, что у него случилась перестрелка недавно с соседями. И только после этого можно будет применить зерна. В чем здесь проблема: ломается логика, я и так уже с ним поговорил и пробовал применить "предмет". Ни единого намека, что после осмотра поля стоит подойти и поговорить с ним. Как стоило сделать: либо при первом разговоре дать возможность узнать про это, либо каким-то комментарием персонажа подсветить этот момент. А то бегаешь по локации и пытаешься понять что надо сделать. И в общем-то понимаешь общую цель, но сбивает с толку такой подход. Может это конечно субъективно, но ИМХО - топорно. История довольно интересная, жаль что продолжение не вышло. С учетом определенных проблем вышеописанных - оценка 6/10 примерно. Крепкий середнячок с хорошими моментами.

Un gioco con un gran potenziale sprecato, con un indagine che non sembra mai procedere e che si interrompe bruscamente, proprio quando il giocatore finalmente inizia a fare progressi nel dipanare la matassa. Face Noir sembra un enorme prologo di un secondo gioco che però, dopo quasi un decennio, possiamo affermare ormai con certezza non vederà mai la luce, in quanto gli sviluppatori hanno chiuso bottega anni fa e sono passati ad altro.

gute rätsel, gute Story, schade das es keinen zweiten Teil gibt. Funktioniert auf Windows 11 ohne Probleme. Grafik ist auch gut obwohl es schon ein älteres Spiel ist.

Unterhaltsam! Ich liebe Krimi-Adventures! Dieses Spiel kommt mir also sehr gelegen, und ich habe jede Minute genossen. Der Held, das Setting, das Gameplay etc. wissen zu gefallen, auch die Rätsel und die Spiellänge sind top. Wer kein Triple-A mit 3D und Raytracing braucht, bekommt mit solchen Spielen definitiv oft günstig sogar mehr Spielfreude geliefert. Eine Perle der guten alten Zeit. Kein Bewertungsüberflieger, aber es macht was es soll, mich gut unterhalten. Noch eine wichtige Info: da das Spiel schon einige Jahre alt ist, könnte es sein, dass man unter Windows 11 in einigen Situationen diese komischen Performanceprobleme bekommt. Installiert das Spiel, und wenn gleich am Start der große Platz Probleme macht und einstellig wird, und im Hinterhof und im Gebäude wirds je nach Raum massig besser, dann habt ihr es. Schaut euch im Forum an, was man da machen kann, bei mir hat es ganz gut geholfen, und die FPS steigen dann wieder massiv an, bzw. fallen dort nicht mehr so extrem tief runter, es ist also alles gut spielbar, versucht alternativ Linux mit Proton, da muss das eh in eine andere API-Sprache umgewandelt werden. Fazit: Face Noir - ein neues Gesicht, ja, das gefällt mit gut ;-)

Gutes spiel, läuft auf Windows 11 ohne Startprobleme. Hängt sich nach ca. 2 Stunden immer mal auf, aber ist für ein so altes Spiel ok. Grafik ist natürlich nicht super, inhaltlich echt coole Atmosphäre, davon sollte es viel mehr Spiele geben! Gut zu Wissen ist wohl, dass das Spiel am Ende auf einen zweiten Teil hinausgeht, der aber nie Umgesetzt wurde und wird, da es das einzige und letzte Spiel dieses Studios ist, sehr schade.