Noir Chronicles: City of Crime Collector's Edition

Solving crimes is a thrill when it comes to video games and movies, mainly because no one actually gets hurt in the process. It’s quite the rush to find the culprit and solve the mystery, but the game as a whole needs to keep you invested from start to finish, as well as feature a nice cast of character in order to make the whole thing feel believable and engaging.

Noir Chronicles: City of Crime is a gritty adventure game with puzzle and hidden object elements, in which you play the role of a detective named Gingertail. The game features the usual gameplay mechanics found in casual HOPAs, so you shouldn’t go in looking for original concepts or anything of the sort. However, at least the riddles can be pretty challenging every now and again.

The whole thing starts when Gingertail is called to the house of his ex-girlfriend Barbara, where he finds out that she has been murdered. You must conduct the investigation and find the clues to lead you to the culprit, as well as make sure that the detective doesn’t take his revenge too far in the process. As you can tell, the story is not too groundbreaking either, but there are enough engaging scenes to make you forget about it.

The gameplay formula is as classic as it can get if you are a veteran of the genre, which means that all you have to do is examine every scene carefully and pick up items. These items can then be used to open the way to the next scene, as well as solve the occasional puzzles. Speaking of which, there are all sorts of mini-games when it comes to the puzzles, each one of which requires either coordination or a bit of critical thinking.

Lastly, the graphics are the same pre-rendered scenes with hand-drawn artwork on top, but they look gorgeous most of the time, and the artists were free to add as much detail as they wanted without impacting the performance. There’s voice acting for dialog scenes, as well as carefully-chosen sound effects to go along with the action on the screen.

Noir Chronicles: City of Crime can be regarded as just another HOPA, but it’s very well-designed, and the story is pretty nice as well. Thus, it’s worth a shot if you happen to be a fan of the genre. NOTE: This is a downloader for the game. Once run, the application will automatically download and install the game on your computer.

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