TSi, Inc., 1996
Noir is a thrilling whodunit adventure game and the classical efforts of Jeff Blyth, an acclaimed filmmaker, to create an adventure game. The game is set in Los Angles of 1940s and you are playing the role of a private detective ready to go on the trail of your missing Colleague, Private Detective Jack Slayton. Jack was working on 6 different cases before he mysteriously disappeared and you are sure that one of these cases is obviously the only reason behind his disappearance but which one, you need to find out by looking into each and every case's file available on Jack's desk. As you study the cases and visit these clients you discover that somehow these cases are linked to each other at some extent, which involves few Nazis, a posh nightclub, a dead race horse, a missing dog, a stolen crate from an opium den in Chinatown and a mysterious butler. To complete the game, you need to investigate and solve all these cases by venturing the dark underworld of Los Angles, where death lurks and one wrong step could be fatal for you.
The most distinguished feature of this game is that it is completely done in black and white by compiling full-motion video cut-scenes and still photographs of actual places or studio sets in Macromedia Director. In addition, the mysterious Noir atmosphere is spiced up with ambient music and sound effects that will definitely remind you all Noir films' music released between early forties and late fifties. While the game play is reasonably nonlinear the puzzles are very generic and can be solved without much difficulty by most adventure gamers. Overall, Noir is quite an interesting mystery adventure game and must not be missed by us, adventure gamers.
