Blacksad: Under the Skin

Good: - Unique comic book style detective brought to life. - Fully voiced dialog throughout - Great murder mystery story that isn't overly cliche or predictable. - Native Xbox controller support - QTE's are forgiving in the sense that if you mess up and die, you start over at the QTE to retry it until you get it. - Deductions: a neat mode where you link up different clues you've collected into a larger concept. The game actually shows you an indicator if there is a "new deduction" so you're not constantly trying to brute force clues together until you get a winning combo. - Music and "direction" does a really good job of setting the scenery. Turn up your speakers and enjoy! - Speaking of direction: the scenes/interactions are done really well. Bad: - Blacksad's voice actor wasn't my favorite choice; It's probably how it's supposed to sound from like the comics/source material, but I was kind of hoping he would be a little less laid back sounding, it's like he doesn't have a ton of passion/emotion. Again, probably intentional, but it didn't pull me in. - No "run" option, you have to walk blacksad around to find clues, objects, etc. So if it's a larger room you may get frustrated not being able to traverse it quicker. I realize sprinting makes the game less immersive but it's a nice quality of life option. - Some glitches, not horrible, but I've had to restart the game once or twice in my first playthrough. Summary: You know, it's worth buying if you liked the tell tale games, or enjoy the noire style detective work post world war. The world of Colt M1911's, rounded classic cars, and a good old fashion murder mystery. I'm not disappointed with my purchase, actually for the price of $45 CDN I do feel I got my moneys worth.

I just finished the first playtrough. I loved a lot of the game, but as the title says, there are 2 glaring point for which i removed the stars : - The lesser evil : walking. There are quite a few big rooms, And the character's movement is limited to walking speed. It's very annoying. - The big one : unskippable logos, cutscenes and dialogues. This should NOT EXIST anymore. 'Nuf said. When i see the game's great story, nice graphics and excellent player involvment into the story, i just can't understand why the 2 problems i had with the game were even present. Clearly the people that were woeking on the game were not beginners, yest they still failed to remove those points. That said, other than the 2 point cited previously, i liked the rest enough to not mind the few times i felt discomfort troughout the story.

As a fan of the Blacksad comics, I was really looking forward to this game, but all of the technical issues really detracted from the experience. I bought it at launch but after reading the reviews, I waited to play it in the hopes that the patches would resolve them, but they're still significant at 1.05. Highlights: - Strong writing and characterization that feels consistent with the Blacksad milieu. - The moral choices are interesting and more subtle than the Good/Bad dichotomy of similar games, and they feel more consequential compared to the Telltale games like Fables (which this game is very much in the style of). - The use of the observations and deductions mechanics instead of traditional adventure game inventory puzzles really work well in the context of the detective story. Issues: - Controls are really awkward and there's often a lot of wiggling back and forth trying to figure out whether a point of interest exists or if you're just not in the right position/camera angle to trigger it. - This is particularly frustrating for the various collectible achievements in the game, where some seem impossible to trigger even though their visual representation is visible on the screen. - Lockpicking minigame is broken with an XBox controller: hitting RT after successfully rotating the two thumbsticks into position doesn't complete the game. I got past each of those events by disconnecting and reconnecting my controller, which immediately advances past the lockpicking without having to play it at all. - Achievements don't seem to trigger correctly; I've finished the game and have the game completion achievement, but somehow the game failed to record any achievements after chapter 5 for me, including the unmissable ones like taking the sixth beating. - Nothing is skippable in the game: not dialog, cutscenes, or previously played bits of the Quick Time Events which makes replaying it entirely a turn-off, even in short sequences where you have to retry.

I enjoyed what I played but found several unpleasant aspects. The story is a twisting murder mystery that takes Blacksad through the seedy underbelly of New York. Despite the goofy premise, the characters are engaging and some are even memorable. If you played The Wolf Among Us, Blacksad is very comparable to Bigby in how he can be tailored to a player's experience. An issue I had is that the pacing is very drawn out, and at times I was getting impatient (though I was save scumming my playthrough so keep that in mind). The game also has no skippable dialogue. Gameplay is a mixed bag. Deductions and Blacksad's personal notes give the game some extra flavor to help us learn how characters will act and how we can proceed. The game is sadly not K+M friendly at all, and practically begs you to play with a controller. It is very clunky either way, with Blacksad not moving smoothly, and often getting stuck on environmental details. There's also no quick walk button, which I missed from Telltale games. There are also QTEs which are not difficult but can catch you off guard. The game has some major bugs that I found to really hinder my enjoyment. As I was backing out of the menu constantly, I noticed the game does not load subtitles once you load back in. You will need to quit the game for them to return. Sometimes Blacksad will even load into the map, but not into his walking path, which leads to scenes where I have no choice but to exit to the menu. Blacksad can often slide out of place for animations, there's many models with poor clipping and bad lip sync, and often times my computer crashed while the game was open. The music is great, but the models are not always as good as Blacksad. Female characters can often have muddy looking textures, and there's some strange transparency issues on some objects like Blacksad's coat. I can recommend this game but only after some major patches are delivered. It's a good detective mystery!