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Blacksad: Under the Skin

bertram_tung

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Insert Title Here
https://www.microids.com/us/game-blacksad-under-the-skin-us/




https://af.gog.com/game/blacksad_under_the_skin?as=1649904300

Film Noir detective telltale style adventure based on furry comic
based off of this graphic novel

i just bought it i'll let you know what I think

low metacritic score, mostly seemingly due to bugs on release but it's been patched up a little so hopefully it's better now. I downloaded the european ps4 version because it is more patched up than the US one as of now (EU version is on patch 1.04 and US is on 1.02 at the time of this post)

Adventuregamers.com gave it a 3.5/5 which equates to "good"
 
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hexer

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Played this a few weeks ago.
It's a cool but short Telltale/Sherlock Holmes game with a great plot.
 

bertram_tung

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I am enjoying it so far. It is still a very buggy mess, and I have had to restart a couple of times to get rid of some bugs. It has frame rate issues. Controlling the character is janky and slow (it's not tank controls but it feels as janky as a 90s tank control game).

If you can put up with the above, the atmosphere/voice acting/characters/music is all really well done. It's gritty, violent, and adult. This is a great game for fans of The Wolf Among Us. It actually seems like there are more choices that affect the story so far than in Wolf, but it's hard to tell how superficial that may be without playing it twice. I heard there are 5 or 6 endings but I am not sure and information seems to be sparse on the interwebs since it is flying under a lot of peoples' radar.
 
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hexer

Guest
Yes, I remember having to restart once due to a late game stopping bug.
The most common bug I encountered was that if you would access Hall of Fame and exit it too fast, the scene would remain black and white.
I haven't had any framerate issues but I noticed all the animations are locked at 30 FPS. They promised to fix that.

I agree with your review, it's an above average adventure game overall and I plan to replay it when I finish with two new games I bought on sales.
Regarding the 5-6 endings thing, I have a hunch it could just be a variation of the same scene but I could be wrong.
 

hexer

Guest
Batman, Spiderman, Wolverine and fantasy werewolves are OK but if it's a less known European comic then it's suddenly an issue.
 

bertram_tung

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What can I say - I guess I grew up with Furry Detectives. But what do I know, I'm just a guy with good taste.

1801.jpg
 

WallaceChambers

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It's a cool game weighed down by a lot of technical issues and lack of visual polish, particularly in regards to the facial animations. I still enjoyed my time with it, there's a lot more freedom of exploration than in TellTale games and the deductions were fun. Although, a bit too many of the "alternate choices" result in immediate death. Most importantly the core mystery is well done.

It's a good take on the modern adventure game formula. I still plan on replaying it and getting the alternate endings but I'm waiting a few months for them to patch it up a bit.
 

Rahdulan

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Finished this yesterday and yeah, you can almost feel it buckling under technical duress. I may also be the weirdo here, but game became a lot better after it [structurally] turned into this on-rails affair and less "Blacksad cumbersomely navigates levels getting stuck on every object and fights long loading screens". I'm not sure if I enjoyed playing it that much beyond ties to the source material as it was an awkward reminder of those days when P&C adventure games were figuring out how they would work on consoles as far as control schemes went. Blacksad obviously subscribes to the Telltale formula and made me wish they used the deduction system better. Or at least had proper puzzles.

Like with The Wolf Among Us my recommendation is to check out Discworld Noir instead if you haven't already.
 

CyberWhale

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Fixed camera angles with PnC mouse controls is the proper solution, even for 3D adventures. The only thing you need is the option to run (or even better, skip the animation alttogether) to avoid Syberia-like waste of time.
 

Rahdulan

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The only thing you need is the option to run (or even better, skip the animation alttogether) to avoid Syberia-like waste of time.
Yeah, I forgot to mention you can't run OR fast-forward dialog in Blacksad. I get the impression devs bit way more than they could handle going by patches they released. Makes me wonder what state Blacksad launched in.
 

Rean

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Strap Yourselves In
I refunded this after I saw how awfully it ran.
 

Strig

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When they announced a Blacksad adventure game I immediately bought a first class ticket for the hype train. And then the first screenshots dropped. How do you take one of THE most visually stunning comic books in history and end up with... this? I'm not usually one to whinge about graphical fidelity, but lack of style is not something I can abide by. I would much prefer the game to be a bit more static — akin to maybe Grim Fandango with stylised backgrounds and 3D characters with elaborate painterly textures — than have all this camera panning and zooming around at the cost of visual flair. Think about it, we could be walking through environments that look something like this:

BlacksadSitS.jpg

B76e7gv.jpg

Screenshot-2022-08-31-at-6.12.17-pm.png


Of course, it would never be a one to one adaptation, but surely it'd be better than this bland rubbish:

20191107104426_1.jpg
 

Grunker

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I finished it. Bugs, glitches, faulty audiomixing and awkward camera angles abound, but more importantly: there's almost no unskippable content, so be prepared to sit through minutes and minutes of dialogue or cutscenes whenever something goes wrong or doesn't work as it should (which it will, oh it will), as well as stumble around with awkward fish tank controls. The production values are far lower than for a Telltale game, for example when it comes to the gameplay and cutscenes. This is especially evident with the graphics as noted above, which are really bland, and with the voice acting. With the latter, however, it's good enough in the sense that it is amateurs doing their absolute best under poor direction rather than good talent phoning it in. I prefer the former (it has kind of a Bloodlines-vibe to it). You'll often struggle to make the game do what you want it to do and have to work through what is a relatively huge amount of tedious work to progress for a genre (that is, a genre that should require no amount of tedium at all). Just like Rahdulan said the game works best when it locks you into on rails dialogue scenes where characters and writing can shine and your brain is kept active with how to navigate the choices (which often do a really good job at making you weigh the advantages of the different selections) while it is at its worst in adventure game like fish tank scenes where you have to click enough interactables.

If all that sounds fair to you for the chance to experience a good (not great) story with some highlight moments and very charming characters, some of whom you'll remember fondly for a bit, well then you should play it. Otherwise, skip it.

Regardless, play The Wolf Among Us first if you still haven't. Its story's high points are as good as Blacksad's, and while it has more low points, it has none of the issues above.

For those interested in the amount of C&C, there's a little more than in a typical Telltale game, but not a lot. Some of it dramatically changes outcomes - like characters dying - but the choices that lead you there are often incredibly minor. For example, I saved a character by lifting her spirits just a bit in one scene, while I got another killed with a fairly insignificant dialogue choice early on. Just like a Telltale game, there are a multitude of false or at least cosmetic choices that don't have a clear enough payoff, which is a shame, because they're quite well-designed choices which could have paid off without creating splitting branches or similar design headaches. There are also plenty of choices that are directly false leads, which are more inexcusable, such as the game leading you to believe that how you treat certain characters will lead to different arcs with them, but in the end these arcs are simply not possible within the scope of the game. For instance, you can flirt quite a bit with the female lead in pretty subtle, mostly non-cringey ways, but that's all window dressing and isolated to those specific dialogue choices - it changes nothing.
 
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luj1

You're all shills
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Ive read comics my whole life and Blacksad is one of the worst and cringiest I ever read
 

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