Genesis Noir is an outstanding achievement in visual storytelling. Evan Anthony, one of the main brains behind this game, already had a beautiful portfolio of motion designs and interactive use cases, like working for Google on animations, beforehand. Playing Genesis Noir is just like diving into an artists brain, there are so many feelings and views and impressions raining down on you, mostly just presenting thoughts and things, the creator might just have in their mind and thought they'd show it to us in this deeply personalized way that feels like getting a share of his most abstract dream.
I gotta confess, I didn't get 100% of whats going on, maybe not even 70% but the main premise of mashing the creation and death of the universe with a 1930ies classic murder case, brought to live by the greatest animation work that looks like Saul Bass forget to take his meds (in a good way) and live recorded Jazz music that alone makes it worth playing through the game another time, all of that carry so much additional value, that its fine if some story bits are left for interpretation.
Only cons are some actual gameplay ones. I mean the game isn't very complex, but playing on a Switch/console makes it at some point cleat, the game wasn't optimized for this. It plays OK but often when you have to select things, you gotta steer a mouse cursor, when you ask yourself, why can't you just select stuff with the analogue stick or even tap on the Switch's screen. There are a lot of similar situations, where mouse-cursor focused control schemes drag you out of this jazzy intergalactic feverdream, slapping UX-realities in your face to make you realize, its an indie game that probably didn't have the budget to fine tune this experience for all devices, although I'd say thes should absolutely do a version for mobile devices as it could work perfectly well for that.
In the end its among those games, I never thought I need in my life, I just stumbled over it through Youtube, immediately bought it when there wo barely any coverage, thought at least its gonna be visually interesting, but apart from just being that, its a mind-expanding journey told by all instruments of multimedia. Its a perfect game if you need some more casual, relaxing yet audiovisually interesting breaks from your Elden Ring bossfights or just something to sip a coffee or whiskey to.
I gotta confess, I didn't get 100% of whats going on, maybe not even 70% but the main premise of mashing the creation and death of the universe with a 1930ies classic murder case, brought to live by the greatest animation work that looks like Saul Bass forget to take his meds (in a good way) and live recorded Jazz music that alone makes it worth playing through the game another time, all of that carry so much additional value, that its fine if some story bits are left for interpretation.
Only cons are some actual gameplay ones. I mean the game isn't very complex, but playing on a Switch/console makes it at some point cleat, the game wasn't optimized for this. It plays OK but often when you have to select things, you gotta steer a mouse cursor, when you ask yourself, why can't you just select stuff with the analogue stick or even tap on the Switch's screen. There are a lot of similar situations, where mouse-cursor focused control schemes drag you out of this jazzy intergalactic feverdream, slapping UX-realities in your face to make you realize, its an indie game that probably didn't have the budget to fine tune this experience for all devices, although I'd say thes should absolutely do a version for mobile devices as it could work perfectly well for that.
In the end its among those games, I never thought I need in my life, I just stumbled over it through Youtube, immediately bought it when there wo barely any coverage, thought at least its gonna be visually interesting, but apart from just being that, its a mind-expanding journey told by all instruments of multimedia. Its a perfect game if you need some more casual, relaxing yet audiovisually interesting breaks from your Elden Ring bossfights or just something to sip a coffee or whiskey to.