Noir: A Shadowy Thriller Review

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Noir: A Shadowy Thriller

Review by MrLipidNovember 2004

“I’m Only Going to Do This Once …”

Noir: A Shadowy Thriller is filmmaker Jeff Blyth’s one and only attempt at building a game. And, as the score indicates, it was, for the most part, a very successful effort. While one could argue that a more seasoned hand might have polished some of Noir’s rougher edges, one could also argue that a more experienced developer might not have possessed either Blyth’s enthusiasm for the project or his affection for its material. After all, it was Blyth, and not someone with more imposing game industry credentials, who managed to get the game made. And, better yet, get it made in glorious, crisp black and white. Wrote Blyth, “You wouldn’t believe how I had to fight for that simple idea.”

Not only is the game black and white, the game world is built of photographs of either existing locations or specially constructed period sets. Time for a big statement: Art is choice, and the choice of shooting the real world (or what could be the real world) in black and white earns Blyth the title of artist. Had he caved and done the game in color, it would have had all the atmosphere of The Dame Was Loaded. As it stands, Noir makes superb use of the tension created by draining the world we know of its color and leaving only light and shadow. It’s still the world we know, but everything is simultaneously heightened and abstracted, brighter and more distant. A swell place to grapple with the moral dilemmas. Or bad guys.

Our Story So Far …

After a suitably moody montage that provides a taste of the adventure to come—Hollywoodland, the Bradbury Building, a creepy butler, Angel’s Flight and a lush nightclub—Noir drops players into the empty office of private investigator Jack Slayton. Poke around a bit, and the intercom begins to buzz. Seems Jack has not been seen lately and would you be willing to take a look at his open cases? Before you can say “Philip Marlowe,” the secretary has signed off and left the office.

What to do? Look around, perhaps? Pull open some drawers? See what’s in the closet? Find, unlock and rifle the safe? For those with a itch to snoop, the office sequence in Noir is irresistible.  The crisp black-and-white images, coupled with spare, evocative sound effects, effectively draw the player into the period and into the mysteries Slayton was hired to solve. Once you have looked through every possible niche and cubbyhole, read all of the files, listened to all of the recorded interviews and screened all of the film, it’s time to venture into the inky shadows of the Los Angeles night.

And what a long and busy night it promises to be. There is a defense company with a “security” problem, an heiress who’s run away, a book appraisal a friend has asked you to get, a race horse dead under suspicious circumstances, an aging movie queen whose dog has gone missing and a crate that has vanished in Chinatown.  As you begin to pull on the threads of each case, you begin to see, as one would expect in something entitled Noir, the pattern they form as they weave together. You also run into death, blackmail and more than a few Nazis.

As you pick up clues and make connections, notes appear in the case book kept safely in the bottom left drawer of Slayton’s desk.  Blyth credits his son with coming up with this highly useful game element. Save a game, walk away, come back days later and immediately get back up to speed by reading through the case notes.

Movement around the City of Angels in Noir involves picking a location indicated by a pin stuck in a large city map in Slayton’s office. Clicking on a pin triggers a period clip of night traffic backed by a snippet of suitably dramatic music. Once you arrive at your chosen destination, your success at uncovering clues will be determined by what you already know. Which is another way of saying that Noir is a Macromedia Director game.

The Power Behind the Scenes

As a Macromedia Director game, Noir keeps track of what you’ve seen. Or, to be precise, of what you’ve clicked on. If, for example, you’ve clicked on a screen that reveals the combination to a safe, you can now open the safe. No need to write down the combination, no need to twiddle the dial. Just open the safe. While there are those who might take points off for the absence of writing or twiddling or other inventory item manipulating, I’m not among them. If I’ve picked up the flashlight in Slayton’s office, I don’t feel cheated if, when it comes time to use said flashlight later, I don’t get the thrill of selecting it from a valise full of other items. The more subtle esthetic point is that Noir exists on the plane of the photographs that comprise its world, and breaking that plane, even for a moment, risks pushing the player out of the game world.

For those who agree with Raymond Chandler that the point of detective stories is to provide a frame for snappy dialogue, Noir may be something of a letdown. In place of dialogue, Noir offers monologues from various characters along the way. And, like finding the combination to open the safe, certain specific screens must have been viewed before a monologue will play. For the most part, the logic built into the game to trigger such sequences works quite well. For those places where it doesn’t, it is possible to deliberately “fail” a case by, say, getting bopped on the head. Once you regain consciousness, you’ll find that particular case will have reset, and you can take a second run at it.

Finally, there is also an almost-too-useful informant who can either be phoned or who will phone you to provide information to keep the game moving forward. If you don’t call him, he’ll still call you and, like it or not, you’ll have to pick up the phone. Whether you listen is, I suppose, up to you.

Every Which Way But …

The only aspect of Noir that knocks its rating down from a Mega Supreme to a Pretty Good is its occasionally unbelievably clumsy navigation. Sometimes clicking on a right-pointing arrow will turn one right 90 degrees. Sometimes not. Sometimes clicking on a front-pointing arrow will move one forward. Sometimes it will rotate one a full 180 degrees. (This tends to mean that one cannot explore an area without learning something else somewhere else in the game. File this under “hard-won wisdom.”) There are some sequences that simply have to be learned because the directions indicated by the arrows are more misleading than helpful.

Still, it is possible to work around this particular rough edge and appreciate just how much Noir got right. One can take as much personal satisfaction in cracking all of Slayton’s cases as Blyth took in, as he put it, “working out an ending that came down to saving the world with a paper clip.”

Technical Issues

Unlike other mid-1990s titles that utilized QuickTime for their motion sequences, Noir used Smacker. This may be one of the reasons why no one has been able to get Noir to run on anything NT-related: NT, 2000, XP. Noir runs just fine on everything from Windows 3.1 to 98SE. Probably runs on ME, too.

There is also a glitch that prevents one of Noir’s critical puzzles from being solved on any computer that does not store dates in the month/day/year standard. Fortunately, this glitch can be easily gotten around by using a saved game from a system that does store date information in a form Noir recognizes. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: TSi, Inc.  Publisher: Cyberdreams Release Date: 1996

Available for: Windows

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System Requirements

IBM PC and 100% compatibles Windows 3.1 or higher (Win95 recommended) 486/66 MHz DX (Intel Pentium recommended) 8 MB RAM (16 MB recommended) 10 MB free hard disk space (minimum installation); 500 MB free (super installation) 2X CD-ROM drive (4X recommended) SVGA (640×480, 8-bit mode) All Windows-compatible sound cards

Where to Find It

Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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14 Responses to Fear Factor

  • Fear Factor | Tap-Repeatedly.com | Reality Topics Blog

    […] nobody@flickr.com (graftedno1) wrote a very interesting post today.   Here’s a quick excerpt:My greatest fear is to be trapped alone in a confined space with a blind human, in total darkness. They have a heightened sense of smell and hearing, and. […]

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Lewis, you made me think of the scariest moments I’ve experienced in gaming, and we’re very similar people.

    Bioshock had two moments – the dentist and the flooded room filled with mannequins.

    Thief had Return to the Cathedral, which was terrifying to me. Thief 3 had Shalebridge Cradle, which is so scary it ought to be fined.

    System Shock 2 kept me on the edge of my seat, but it was more lonely panic than true fear.

    Korsakovia was so scary that I uninstalled it.

    And STALKER. Oh, god, the haunted labs in STALKER. The latter two games don’t have scares like that. Few games do.

    It’s especially rare for a game to have more than mere “moments” – for a game to be scary from beginning to end, that’s a triumph.

    Wonderful article. As if Gregg’s review wasn’t enough to convince me that Penumbra is not something I have the courage to play!

  • DPenn

    I’m with you Lewis … I’m a bit of a puss. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of dread as entertainment.

    Still, I’m drawn to dark stories when they have something interesting to say, whether it’s a game like Thief or a film like, say, Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. So I’ll push through, sometimes peering through my fingers.

    The trouble with games, though, is that if you look through your fingers, you’re probably just going to have to play through the scenario again. :~)

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    I wanted to play this game. I downloaded the demo but the controls were just too wonky for me to get my head around. I liked the atmospheric vibe a lot. I think I’m a bit desensitized from an overdose of horror movies in my youth so I don’t so much get the dread thing from these games as a nice creepy vibration. If only the controls were better…

  • Lewis B

    @ Mike, what’s wrong with the controls bud? As someone who despises poor control schemes, Penumbra’s is just like any other FPS, except to examine things you right click on them.  To use things you left click.  I’m not sure that can be considered difficult 🙂

  • Gregg B

    @Steerpike: Yeah my greatest shit-scared moments were with those games too. A few spoilers below people, so beware.

    Bioshock – Haha, I remember the dentist. I didn’t really find the game that scary overall but the bit where you go into the wine cellar and notice a mannequin facing the wall and after upgrading your weapon it’s stood directly behind you motionless and quiet just for a moment before attacking you. I shat a brick. I also missed that bit originally until Lew told me about it.

    System Shock 2 – same as you really, more unremitting tension all the way through rather than specific terrifying moments. Oh actually, theres a bit where you call a lift and it breaks then you realise a service droid is coming to fix it… I do remember having sleep issues after my first encounter with the cyborg ninjas though.

    Thief: The Dark Project – The Sword and Return to the Cathedral and Down in the Bonehoard and well, loads of them. The Sword made me break out into goosebumps though because there was a bit where you could hear this creepy giggling which seemed like it was following me about then it suddenly changed to this horrible throaty noise. What made matters worse was that the EAX (bless you Creative) made my foot steps sound like somebody else was there with me. That level was incredible, a bit too incredible as it seems I missed great chunks of it because I was so eager to leave.

    Thief II: The Metal Age – Trail of Blood where you end up in that opening with those damn tree beasts. God the first time I saw one of those hurtling towards me I actually died shortly afterward. Do you remember that Mechanist child walking around on one of the levels? That was a little creepy.

    Then there’s Penumbra: Overture – quite a few bits but I’m not mentioning them here.

    Oh and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – The brain scorcher lab just because it was so damn quiet. My imagination seriously got the better of me there. Those stuffed animals and heads I’d seen in various buildings led me to believe that those creatures were lurking somewhere in the Zone, specifically that lab.

    @Mike: My control setup was perfect after some tweaking (as well as the simple weapon swing fix). If you ever fancy giving it another go, give me a shout and I’ll let you know my setup.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not sure why guys, but one of my starting paragraphs had gone missing, even though I copied it straight from the original source, and It was fine earlier. 

    Incase you missed it due to some technical issue you might want to re-read just after “Well no she wouldn’t in truth, but in Penumbra: Overture you don’t want to move anyway.” at the very start for those who’ve already read the article. Apologies 🙂

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Lewis, it was the weapon swing. It had this terrible, unresponsive feel to it, like trying to hit through molasses. I couldn’t stand using it. I tried the .ini fix as mentioned in the review but it didn’t seem to help. Of course this was the demo…but that shouldn’t have made any difference. I might try the second game instead as I guess they did away with the weapons thing.

    I’m see your first paragraph just fine. It’s the dialogue, right?

  • jdeuel

    I like the argument that weapons can remove fear, but even loaded to the teeth with ammo in AVP’99 the Marine missions were frightful because the enemy was anywhere at any time.

    As for Penumbra Overture, if the controls are anything like the original Penumbra they need to hack in some Wii-Remote 3d controls. I did not like using my mouse for 3d movements.

  • Gregg B

    @Mike: I’ve read that many people avoided conflict altogether in Overture which incidentally is something forced upon you in Black Plague. As somebody who has been renovating a house over the last 6 months with no DIY experience I can safely say that swinging a hammer is significantly easier in real life than it is in Overture without the fix. The fix balanced that for me.

    I’d highly recommend completing the first Penumbra because it’s one big build up to Black Plague which spoils the ending to Overture in the intro. And it’s a great ending too. Just so you know!

  • Lewis B

    @ Steerpike, those moments you mention are all my worst too!!  Do you remember the Robot labs in SS2? Absolutely terrifying, waiting for robots to burst out on you! 🙁 oh and have you ever player Condemned?

    @ Mike, The use of weapons in Penumbra is different to say HL2, where the player is physically holding the weapon, as in Penumbra it floats slightly infront of you.  However, if you change the control method to normal weapon swing, it’s no different!  Speak to Greggi and he’ll tell you what to do 🙂

    @ jdeuel, AVP the original and its sequal were scary however what type of fear do you think it is? I don’t think it’s anything more than sheer tension.  Having a Smart Gun makes you feel incredibly powerful.  I can honestly say in Penumbra the fear is sheer unrivalled terror, where you actually have to force yourself to play on.  It genuinly is that scary! 🙂

  • Jason Dobry

    It’s so true, an arsenal of weapons and ammo rapidly deflates any sense of horror or uneasiness in any game for reasons you already mentioned. Sakey, I thought Bioshock was more “lonely panic,” while I was pretty much always terrified in System Shock 2. I really, really, REALLY did not want to enter The Many’s nursery, and my weapons were so unreliable and ammo so scarce that I never felt safe.

    Silent Hill was terrifying for the same reasons. Ammo was rare and I frequently had to rely on my pipe for self-defense.  Even when I had ammo, the game mechanics prevented my character from being anything other than marginal with any firearm.

    Fear had one moment for me: I was climbing up a ladder, and as I reached the upper platform, my guy briefly looked down as he climbed off. As my perspective looked up again, that Ring-esque little girl was RIGHT THERE, reaching for me. I screamed and she was gone.

    What else…the original Aliens vs. Predator sent me into a locker room and I could only hear the facehuggers scurrying about somewhere within. I had to go in there. I advanced about three steps before the damn thing screamed and filled up my screen with its repulsive underside as it implanted me with its spawn. My roommate made fun of me for weeks for screaming like a girl child.

    Korsakovia–meh.  I was too annoyed and frustrated by the box rearrangement/jumping puzzles to be scared. I uninstalled it after an hour of play, I think. Maybe the scary parts were later, but I doubt it.

    As for Penumbra, I did play through about half of it before other games distracted me. I remember unease and creepiness, but no sweaty fear. I think I’m to blame here, or, more precisely, my daughter, who was still an infant at the time and generally allowed me only to play during the day for 45 minutes at a time. I was denied total immersion and the fear effect suffered. Maybe I should give it another go after I finish Call of Pripyat since she sleeps through the night now. With any luck, Penumbra will keep me from doing the same.

  • Gregg B

    I played the demo of F.E.A.R. but that ladder scare is the only bit I remember. Christ, that made me jump. I’m not too good with cat scares.

    Also I felt exactly the same about Korsakovia. It was creepy at first but then it began to irritate me far too much and it just soured the experience. I stopped playing as a result. Not to mention, when I realised I could bash those smoke-things with my crowbar they didn’t bother me nearly as much.

  • Online Up

    Great article. I look forward to reading more in the future.

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