Blues and Bullets
Eliot Ness, the former leader of the legendary Untouchables, wished only to spend the rest of his days working in his diner, not dwelling too much on the cesspit of corruption his city, Santa Esperanza, had degenerated into. But things rarely go as planned. When children suddenly start to disappear and the police just simply a blind eye, Eliot decides to take the law into his own hands, track down the culprit and bring him to justice by any means necessary, even if he has to abandon his dreams of a peaceful life and again get embroiled in shootouts with the usual array of assassins and hoodlums. Helped by various characters from some unexpected places, the player must guide Eliot through the increasingly morbid and decadent scenarios searching for clues to solve the cases in the five episodes of this season's Blues and Bullets.
Steam User 80
Fantastic game. Very engaging and mature story. Youc an see the devs didn't have the biggest budget but they went above and beyond creatively to eclipse that obstacle. I highlgy recomend the game for likeable characters, very interesting story and mystery and I grealty await the second episode.
Steam User 72
Blues and Bullets is an episodic alternative history noir game developed by A Crowd of Monsters. The first episode was released in July 2015 with the second due to be released in March of 2016.
I will keep this review updated with each chapter I complete.
Gameplay takes place in third person as you control Eliot Ness, the police officer who caught and locked up the great, Al Capone. Eliot has now retired from being a cop and runs his own diner, called Blues and Bullets. This game reminded me quite a bit of L.A Noire as you search for clues for a crime. There is only one crime scene to investigate in this episode but it is a gruesome one at that. There is a small element of gun play, which is very basic at best; it is done via an “on rails” mechanic similar to that of Time Crisis or Blue Estate. The gun play so far has a very small part to play in the game overall.
Graphically, the game is represented in a black and white noir style visual. This art style just looks awesome, whilst the graphics themselves aren’t stunningly good, the black and white tricks your eyes into thinking it is better looking than it actually it. The animation is slightly on the poor side, but nothing that can’t be ignored. Eliot is voiced by none other than Doug Cockle (the voice of Geralt from the Witcher franchise), and the rest of the voice acting is all done to a very high quality.
I was completely hooked onto the story right from the start of the game, there isn’t a slow ramp in excitement like most adventure games like this, and you get right into the nitty-gritty from the get-go. The ending of episode 1 leaves you wanting more as the plot takes a huge turn of events. There are plans for there to be another 4 episodes released, I am hoping they speed up the development cycle of them, as I think 9 months between episodes is a bit too much in my opinion.
There isn’t any aspect of difficulty in episode 1, the only real puzzle can be completed with just a matter of trial and error and the gun play scenes have checkpoints at every corner so even if you do die, you don’t have to replay a whole lot of content. I am looking forward to see how they make the gameplay elements of this game have more of a challenge in future episodes.
Episode 1 took me just about two hours to complete; this was with finding all interactable objects throughout the scenes to get an achievement. I found out at the end of the chapter, that finding all of these objects unlocks a “Bobble head” mode, which is always a classic cheat mode that used to be included in game. It will be interesting to see whether you can activate this mode in future episodes or whether it is only to be used in episodes you have already completed!
Sadly I did have a couple of technical problems with Blues and Bullets. I suffered two random crashes of the game that took me straight back to desktop, with no error message or warnings. There were no signs that the game was suffering performance issues, it did only happen when completing a scene, never mid gameplay. Thankfully the game saves at the end of each scene you complete, but this does leave room for game save file corruption. The game can be played with keyboard and mouse; normally for third person view games I opt for a keyboard and mouse controls, especially ones with any form of gunplay, sadly I could not do it with Blues and Bullets. Firstly the onscreen controls do not show any keyboard controls; only Xbox controls. Secondly, the cursor in game has a fairly big glitch where it just shows as a blank white square. You have to move your cursor to the bottom right hand corner of the screen for it not to be visible even when using a controller.
To sum up, Blues and Bullets is so far a very interesting adventure game that has a lot of potential. Hopefully the technical problems are cleaned up before the next release of the series comes out. If you are a fan of the Noire themed films and games, this game is definitely going to be for you. It’s a fairly quick paced game which is something that a lot of adventure games can’t boast about so even the casual players amongst you will definitely get some enjoyment here.
If you are on the fence about the game still, you can purchase just episode 1 for £3,99 which should give you a good amount of content to see whether you will enjoy the rest of the series, provided the developers don’t change it drastically or you can purchase the complete season for £14,99. Right now I would be completely happy paying £14,99 for this season, it does a lot of things right and the only negative points are technical problems which will hopefully be patched in the future.
Tom's Score Card
1) Stay away
2) Not Recommended
3) Only recommended when on sale
4) Recommended
5) Highly recommended
6) This is a must play
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Steam User 38
Blues and Bullets is an episodic noir-detective click-and-point game.Although the click and point is not as important as in many other games.
Graphics 8 of 10
The graphics fit the game like a glove.The only colors present in the game are black and white with sometimes a dash of red. Just perfect.
Music 8 of 10
The music is consistent with the era the setting takes place , think of 1920ies. Jazz tunes and so and classical suspense background music and sounds. Really nice. The voice acting was generally good although there are some characters that sound offbeat and kind of fake.
Gameplay 7.5 of 10
I have mixed feelings about the gameplay. Overall it's okay with quite some QTE taking place. But I wish there was an option to actually run and not stumbling forward , like slow motion and all. But I really do like the detective mode, where you have to find clues to solve some of the mysteries that take place in the event of the game.
Story 8.5 of 10
Without spoiling the story I must say that I truly enjoyed it and it's hard having to wait for the next episode to be released. Basically you are an ex- cop who's got quite some issues and still has one open case to solve before he can find peace. That's said enough.
Steam User 28
Yeah, the game is unfinished and will never be finished. So, I dont recommend gettting it.
Yet I still leave this a positive review, as the 2 released episodes are truly great. This is by far the darkest, grimmest and most violent take on a Telltale-style story. Got to love the dark atmosphere, and the situations way too grim and ugly for big game publishers to touch. Little touch of steampunkiness also makes the Film Noire world an interesting place. Most importantly, the story is very intresting and keeps you glued to it, and darkness of it makes anything possible, this is not your generic Hollywood story.
Shame and sad that this game was never completed. The developers should have found a publisher to fund the whole game, instead of relying on the sales of first episode. Their business model failed, and everyone lost.
Steam User 31
Former retired detective Eliot Ness is called back to duty when children start going missing and police refuse to follow leads. Getting approached by a strange yet familiar character while on shift at the local diner brings an opening to get back into the game and bring some justice to his small piece of the world.
Opening episode was like a good book, hard to put down page turner that ended with a bang leaving you wanting more. Similar to the telltale series a playthrough will take around 2hrs. While movie-like by nature, you do receive tasks to arrange a puzzle-board containing collected photographic evidence along with including some interesting albeit easy gunplay segments. Would like to see more options with dialog choice in future eps and perhaps open areas up for further exploration. Given some of the detail a lot of it felt glossed over and short lived.
Performance issues seems to have been fixed as of last patch, check the forums to be sure. Gamepad would be suggested but keyboard/mouse is managable, No controls needed to be mapped so the option was not available. Resolutions scaled upto 4k+ and the game provided several presets for shadows and otherwise, should run on a range of systems.
With aesthetics that seem inspired by Sin City/Max Payne, wonderful soundtrack and great voice work from memorable characters including Capone himself. Blues in Bullets is a series worth recommending taking a look at, just don't expect much of a challenge. Cheers folks.
Steam User 22
The main character is voiced by Geralt of Rivia. What else could you want?
Steam User 21
8.5/10
genre: adventure game in 3rd person
You play as Eliot Ness , former cop , who is made to abandon his now peaceful life working in his diner, in order to investigate the disappearance of a child in the corrupted city of Santa Esperanza.
+ Presentation is generally nice, although inconsistent, character models are well designed, great atmosphere, although a bit morbid at times, red is the outstanding colour.
+ Fantastic soundtrack, great voice acting and memorable characters.
+ First episode was a bit slow at start, like reading a book , an interesting one though that is hard to put down, but near the end the game really shines both in gameplay and story.
+ Gameplay wise it's a traditional adventure game in 3rd person , where you examine things to find clues , speak with people choosing the appropriate questions and answers. Some choices you make might matter in next episodes, so think wisely. No puzzles, other than a murder scene where you have to complete the puzzle of the murder. A shooting action scene, that is pleasant enough and a few QTEs that are easy enough and just add to the tension of the moment.
+ Good duration for an episode, seemed longer than a telltale one, especially if you take your time and examine everything it's around 3 hours.
- Very slow pace at the beginning, even for an adventure game.
- Hope next episodes will add more to the gameplay variety, especially puzzles (that will be relevant to the story though).
Blues and bullets seemed like another story driven adventure game that lacked something vital gameplay wise, like most adventure games that come out these days. But after the first half or so, the game started to shine, especially the murder scene was incredible, although a bit brutal and morbid, so children beware. Dark game in all aspects, in the same level of quality as telltale games or the recent life is strange. More advertisement advised to the developers, since the game can truly become one of the best story driven adventure games of the year. Highly recommended !!!!