Night Call

[i]More reviews like this one [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45764125/]here![/url][/i] It’s so very interesting to me that the games who don’t want to shake things up too much are willing to criticize the police as long as they’re represented by a woman. Such a strange and revealing confluence of institution and other. I was surprised at how misogynistic this game was, which sounds stupid at this point and maybe kind of is, but this one seemed like it was also trying to critique anti-Arab sentiment in Europe, and “Arab people are actually humans but women aren’t” is such a weird mess of a stance. Though I also think I overlooked how noir-coded this one was going on, so maybe it’s back on me there. The premise here is interesting — you’re a cabbie trying to piece together a murder by getting locals to confide in you. I like this idea a lot; there’s a lot of jobs — cabbie, bartender, phone sex worker — that exist in a kind of liminal space which encourages confession, and that’s a really great observation to use as the basis for a detective story. The first issue is that just because it’s a good premise doesn’t necessarily make a good game, and the gameplay here isn’t great. You choose passengers from a map, drive them, and have a set amount of time to do as many as possible before the day turns over. Then any info you get needs to be parsed or whatever, which also takes time, and you often can only do 1 or 2 a night, meaning you’re stuck with tons of info your character won’t look at for some reason. Then instead of letting you sort through clues yourself, the game automakes a pin-board to show how everything connects, so you don’t actually have to do any deduction yourself. The upshot is there’s just not a ton of player input, and what’s there isn’t very interesting. The game has two or three ‘plots’ but then makes the weird choice to have a mode where the culprit seems to be assigned randomly to one of the potential passengers and… that’s not even a story at that point, you’re just playing an elaborate game of Guess Who. I’m not sure why they didn’t commit to a narrative here. Or hell, even do it serial style. The gameplay here just isn’t very interesting, so it’s winning hearts that way, but also the whole point of a whodunnit is that it’s deliberately set up and structured and it’s not doing that either, so I’m not sure what the point of this is… it’s just Clue, really, except the point of Clue is it’s a board game you play with other people, so…? The structure feels so muddled, like they didn’t know what they really were trying to do so committed to nothing. The game also makes the incredibly bizarre choice to have like, urban fantasy passengers? So on one hand its gritty noir, and on the other you pick up a sapient cat and like some kind of vampire? AND it tries to do scifi plotlines, with like robots and messages from the future? It was all super weird and I don’t know what it was supposed to make me feel. It just contributed to the muddled feeling. The other issue is wow does this game have issues with women. It starts with the cartoonishly evil woman cop, who you can call a ‘♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥’ and then if you choose not to, you do it anyway, and then you add a note to your character index that just say ‘♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥.’ Just in case it wasn’t clear. Then there’s the woman passengers, which include: an exhausted mockery of an SJW-coded woman college student for being too stupid to understand film (she even has The Lesbian Haircut); a woman who begs the cabbie to sexually harass her because street harassment is the only way she can feel desireable (there’s a bonus ‘men can’t be sexually harassed’ undercurrent to this one, where the game seems completely unaware of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of the power dynamic between a person in a service job and a client who insists they make sexual overtures as her; the idea this may be uncomfortable and violating for the cabbie never comes up — funny how hating women goes hand-in-hand with an equally messed up attitude toward men); then a crystal woo-woo type who navigates the cab by dowsing and says “the black liquid ceases flowing from my vagina” (so stupid how women talk about their own bodies, what idiots); and there’s this bizarre one with a woman torturing and killing a cat that I can’t even begin to unpack. Honestly I just kept going, “All of the women passengers can’t be so horrible, surely I’ve reached the end of it,” and then the next one would somehow be yet another sexist stereotype. It just kept going, lol. Anyway, I finished one of the actual plots and it was aggressively boring so I never went on to the other. I came out of this feeling like it squandered an interesting premise, but aside from its weird hangups with women, it wasn’t terrible, just dull.

A real example of style over substance. Despite its interesting premise, it quickly becomes another "everybody's got a story" talking simulator with a dose of magical realism - and with nothing much to add. The detective work ultimately consists of making an educated guess, which just isn't that satisfying. The lo-fi artwork style is probably a case of "either you like it or you don't"... you can guess where I fall. It's just not stylized (or stylish) enough for me. It's also awfully optimized. I get why people use Unity for its cross-platform portability, but there's no reason a game with this level of visuals should be making my mid-end laptop overheat.

Night Call isn’t really a detective game, and I think that’s why I loved it. It surprised me in the most unexpected way. I was a bit unsure after the first crime, but the more I played, the more I was pulled into it. You might be asked to solve crimes, but you don’t do it by chasing clues ... you do it by listening. Talking to people, letting them talk, and sometimes just being there. It’s surprisingly calm for a game about crime. As you play, you get pulled into people’s lives ... their pain, their confusion, their hopes… and every now and then, you recognise parts of yourself in their stories. Definitely not for everyone, but very much my cup of tea. A quiet little gem that deserves more love.

Excellent somnifère : je me suis endormie en 25mns.

Hmm, I'm not quite sure what to make of this game. Night Call definitely has its strenghts. Visually it's very atmospheric and the Taxi dialogues satisfy my inner voyeur and even tickle some quite philosophical itches. There's a bunch of very different characters to drive around each with their own interesting stories. However, actually you have to solve a criminal case, and thats where the game falls short. There are three cases to solve, which are not integrated in an overall story arc. The beginning and end of those cases are exactly the same, so you'll see the same scenes multiple times. Then you have 6 days to find out whodunit. But doing so involves not much sleuthing or finding evidence on your part. Instead you drive to certain locations or speak to certain people and afterwards evidence magically manifests on your task board and is already tied to the correct suspects. The same applies to case files you get handed at the beginning of each case. There's not much background to find out, nothing to read and you don't have to find out what's relevant or what's a red herring. Everything is prepared for you, I didn't feel like a detective at all. I also never had the feeling that some specific action proved guilt without a doubt. So after your time is up you just blame the person that seems to have the most evidence stacked against them and then you find out if you were right or not. So the criminal cases for me were the weakest parts of the game - unfortunately they are the central premise. Apart from solving cases you can enter a free roaming mode where you just drive around people and can follow their stories. I thought this part may be more worthwhile because the dialogues are well written and interesting. However the whole "you have to earn your keep" part is also gone in free roaming. You don't have to take care of fuel or money anymore, which would be the only thing giving the game some kind of stakes. I can't hate Night Call. But I feel it could either be a good Taxi simulator (if the monetary aspects were available in free roaming mode), or the sleuthing part of the game needs more detective work - like actually reading files, taking notes and finding evidence yourself. In its current state however it's two games in one with each somehow failing in their main premise.

很棒的游戏风格，虽然刚打完 Judge 一章，不过的确很合我的胃口：切实的沉浸感，作为一个旁观者感受乘客的故事，适当的推理难度、画风、以及非常恰当的BGM——为什么我在网上没找到原声带，令人沮丧 : ( 事实上，作为一个局限在疲惫的，循规蹈矩生活中的玩家来说，能够沉浸式地体验其他人的故事和生活，加上不需要过度用脑的线索收集和推理难度，堪称完美。 值得一提的是，购买之前我也注意到许多测评对于收集线索和推理部分的评价，关于这部分很大程度上是对的：新线索的收集路径其实有限，更多的乘客只是来讲述他们的故事，对收集线索帮助不大；有时提示我收集到线索，但在线索板上却没有出现——也许是重复的线索？——我不能确定是不是bug。不过故事整体其实不难，因此即使收集线索很随机，有些关键点还是会让人立刻缩小范围，甚至直接有八九成把握锁定嫌疑人。 关于全收集部分，实际上，我给出推荐的一部分原因是我不是一个全收集玩家，据其他测评说游戏存在乘客词条不能解锁的问题，令人不悦。对我而言，我不太会刻意打多个周目选择不同的选项——也许并不合我心意的选项——来完成全收集，这也是为了保持沉浸感。因此我的推荐不能代表这部分游戏内容 : ） 总的来说是一款好游戏，适合喜欢追求沉浸感或者爱好视觉小说的，接受轻度到中度推理难度的玩家；也许并不适合硬核解谜和全收集玩家

Night Call is a noir game about a night taxi driver who helps the police track down a serial killer. You only have 6 nights to solve the case. The concept sounds very interesting: you drive through nighttime Paris, pick up passengers, talk to them, and gradually gather information. However, in practice, it doesn’t feel as well-developed as it could be. The detective aspect is quite weak, since the main clues basically attach themselves to suspects automatically, so there isn’t much real deduction required. The game features three story missions and a Free Roaming mode. Despite the realistic setting, it also introduces elements of mystery, fantasy, and sci-fi. One notable issue is the Passidex system - its buggy. Because of this, unlocking all achievements can be difficult or even impossible without using a 100% save file. The game is also touches on many social and political themes, which may not be for everyone. Overall, it’s a mediocre experience. It looks atmospheric, but doesn’t fully deliver on its gameplay potential. Neutral Review. Follow Curator: [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44793303-The-games-that-I%2527ve-played/] The games that i`ve played [/url]

Наконец-то доделали русификатор к этой игре! Теперь любой может захватить свой кусочек нуарного Парижа. А уж по скидке взять - сама Иштар велела)))

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Intresting story and a gameplay itself is quite is nice