BENGALURU: Genesis Noir is weird. Most of the game is utterly incomprehensible. But there’s also something about it that makes you want to stick around. A hope that you will understand something at the end, and that it will all make sense at some point.
The short review is that the resolution doesn’t happen. The only redemption is in the fact that it didn’t take very long to finish the game. A film reviewer would probably have more to interpret from its trippy imagery, and its story visualised in a vacuum. When I say vacuum, I mean both the literal void, as well as an absence of dialogue or written text to supplement what I visually experienced.
This explanation started out all wrong. I’m confusing the reader in a way not dissimilar to how the game confused me. Let me restart. Genesis Noir is a point-and-click game available on the PC. It comes free as part of the Xbox Game Pass. The story is about a watch peddler “No Man”. He witnesses “Miss Mass”, a singer at a popular club, being shot by “Golden Boy”. The bullet is on its way to its target. But No Man wants to save Miss Mass. He attempts to do this, a different way.
An improv battle with a jazz man, helping a scientist with the Large Hadron collider, and voluntarily jumping into a black hole are just few of the ways in which No Man tries to stop the scene of horror from happening. The game continuously intersperses theories about the origin of the universe alongside very terse visualisations of what happened in the real storyline of the game.
The obvious best part of the game is the rhythmic jazz music. The game really wins by forcing you to finish it — the ridiculous logic of the puzzles keep you persevering, with your interest dangling on the thread of the logic stitching itself together, much like how the universe did. I rate the game 3 blackholes out of one galaxy.
King’s Bounty II
Fans of turn-based-tactical games have had precious little to cheer recently, but King’s Bounty II might change all that. I never played the original King’s Bounty, but I loved the 2008 spinoff, King’s Bounty: The Legend. If this can capture some of the brilliance of the old Heroes of Might & Magic series, it’ll be very good indeed.
Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut
Ghost of Tsushima was one of my favourite games of 2020, which is why I’m looking forward to the release of the Director’s Cut. It’s got the usual feature updates and bells and whistles but, most importantly, it includes a new expansion with new gameplay content.
Anusha Ganapathi
@quofles
(This economics graduate spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)