9/12/2023 0 Comments Genesis noir review![]() ![]() “Oh no,” I thought, “we’re in for some puzzle padding.”īefore picking apart why the first several hours of Genesis Noir continued in an unremarkable fashion, it might be useful to briefly sketch out and elaborate on why I was so glowing in my review of the demo last April. It was all over in a flash, and I felt no closer to the art direction or the narrative than I had at the outset. There, the seed will grow, clearing your path and allowing you to move on to the next required seed. “Seeding” is almost textbook with its game design insofar as you simply walk around, open up the palm of your hand (your inventory), and place the matching seed into the available hole. The game design of this section is never bad, but I felt a sort of expectational whiplash after the whacky and fresh take on game design that last year’s demo provided. Quickly, you are presented with a number of colored seeds: light seeds which consume light energy, dark seeds which consume dark energy, and eventually golden seeds which clear the path of obstructing golden-barred gates. The first area of Genesis Noir, “Seeding,” features the otherwise nameless protagonist, “No Man,” wandering the sparse landscapes in the middle of nowhere. I stopped playing about 45 minutes in, promising myself to return to Genesis Noir the next day. ![]() Though I excitedly booted up the game in anticipation of what wild adventures this game would take me on, I found myself quickly bored, presented with what feels like, for a game like this, the most traditional game design possible. Playing the demo last year secured my enthusiasm for the monochrome, jazzy take on both space exploration and detective mystery. I eagerly sought after an early review copy of Genesis Noir because it has topped my Steam wishlist ever since its announcement back during 2019’s E3 conference. I wrote at the time that Genesis Noir’s demo was “borderline incomprehensible with its psychedelic overtones,” praising its “gripping and expressive” hand-animated art style that I still believe is nearly “unrelenting with its strangeness.” This past week, I dove into the full experience of Genesis Noir, which, while not living up to the promise of the fantastic demo, presented a handful of moments that are unique to the dozens of games I write about each year. Almost a year ago, I had the chance to play the demo for Genesis Noir, and I was rightly blown away by the completely unique presentation. Genesis Noir is one of the strangest gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time, not simply because the game is brimming with the bizarre – which it is – but because I couldn’t stop wrestling with my feelings about the game until the credits rolled. ![]()
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