Genesis Noir

Amazing experience as a whole. The story and how it's presented is really well made and thought out. Audio-visuals are stunning, it's more of an animated, interactive movie than an actual game, but it works perfectly. I love how scientific descriptions of the chapter are then followed by a totally abstract and full of symbolism, metaphores and allegories. Wow. Really, just wow. The only thing I can say is that some parts of the game seemed unnecessarily long, it could be a bit shorter without any loss to the meaning or the story. The ending was a bit prolonged as well, it felt a bit like they dind't quite know where to push the story. The ending itself was a bit disappointing, BUT the whole experience was amazing and I would highly recommend this game. This is art. 100%

The art style is unique, and the noir-jazz soundtrack deserves its own purchase, but the entire package probably would've been better off as an animated film, because the gameplay is EXCRUCIATING. The game plays slowly, namely just when you want your protagonist to move around, and your mouse cursor presses can be really unresponsive at times. I played 5 hours in, and got to the Supercollider puzzle, and...F that puzzle, because all it is, is tinkering around with a bunch of controls, until you finally get the waveform to resemble what it's supposed to, before turning the supercollider on again. It's just random, tedious trial-and-error guesswork, and I DON'T have time for that kind of shit! Also, the game kept freezing and crashing during that puzzle, and after finding one of the solutions, objects that were supposed to be there for me to interact WOULDN'T appear! Ended up giving up on this, and just watching a Let's Play, and let me tell you, does this game go some REAL WEIRD places in the last hour or two, with dance numbers and lyrics and hippie-bullshit-whatever-whatever!

If this game looks interesting to you, pick it up. I don't think you'll be disappointed, but you should know what to expect going into it. "What came before the big bang?" The answer, clearly, is a jazzy noir adventure myth about love, regret, and the isolation of time. As you play through the game, the writers will give you precious little to go on other than abstraction. For me, that's alright; I don't mind a pastiche of images and sounds that try to convey feeling rather than concrete narrative. It can be jarring, though, to expect a more traditional noir story wrapped in pretty art and instead receive a trippy, existential descent with few straightforward answers to your questions. The game itself is more of an interactive graphic adventure. The puzzles are shallow and basic, but the design keeps things from getting too tedious. At the end of the day, I'll take too easy over too difficult any day of the week. There is nothing worse than a good-looking puzzler that is too obtuse to keep your attention. At the end of the day, I don't think this game fully succeeded at what it tried to do. The gameplay is a bit too shallow to warrant a second playthrough, and the story is a bit too loose and inhuman to hook me in for another ride. However, the story is so abstract that a multiple playthroughs would definitely be required to fully understand the themes buried underneath. That's not to say it doesn't warrant the experience, though. There were a few moments when the game tangled its mystery plot with a sci-fi vision that truly took my breath away. If you've come this far and nothing yet has turned you off, give it a go.

The musical and artistic choices come together beautifully. I wish I could just watch shorts with the art and music. The puzzles are simple and don't hold up the story at all but the story feels disjointed still. Each story piece is seperated by a set of puzzles that then throw you back to the main character trying to stop a single instance. I found myself guessing at the puzzles. I became so disinterested in them and wanted to see more of the back story. I got about halfway through them all before I completely lost interest. It really is a beautiful game but the game portion feels drawn out and tedious.