Blacksad or Bugsad? – review of the game “Blacksad: Under the Skin”

The story of the black cat

John Blacksad – private investigator and our protagonist – first appeared on the pages of comic books by Juan D. Canales and Juanja Guarnida. A noir-style detective story set in the USA in the 1950s quickly stole the hearts of fans. What distinguished him were the animal heroes, presented in a very stereotypical way (associations with Orwell’s “Animal Farm” are advisable). The title Blacksad is a black cat, and in the gallery of various characters there are, among others, a policeman-German shepherd, a wise owl-scientist, or a robber of a rat. A real zoo.

John Blacksad, in whom we play, is hired to find a rising boxing star who disappeared after her mentor hanged himself. The plot, however, goes much deeper than you might initially assume and draws us into a dark world full of corruption, doping and crime. The plot is interesting, shocking at times, but it does not sound as well as it should, due to mechanical shortcomings.

No wonder, after the success of the comics, it was considered a great idea to create an interactive play with Blacksad in the lead role. And it really looked like the game would live up to expectations. The atmosphere well reflects the atmosphere of comics, both thanks to the graphic style and music, and an intriguing plot. So what has failed? What the game needs to work – gameplay.

Or he could have been Sherlock

As befits a criminal adventure, Blacksad: Under the Skin  combines several more and less typical elements of this genre. They will be especially familiar to people who have played the Sherlock Holmes series before (for example, Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter ).

The gameplay is based on interrogating witnesses by selecting the appropriate dialogue options, looking for clues at the crime scene and observing the interlocutors (with the help of cat senses). The collected clues appear either in our notebook (with a separate page for each character) or on the deduction screen. This one is also almost identical to that of Sherlock Holmes , with one difference. Here it is enough for us to combine related information and the game will interpret it for us – we have no influence on it.

In addition, the game also includes QTE , on which the life of our detective very often depends. The time sequences are relatively easy, but even after collapsing, in most cases we get the opportunity to repeat them. In only one moment, the quick time event  irritated me – in one of the key cutscenes on the screen, a symbol appears on the screen, which must be pressed on the pad or keyboard as soon as possible. We are given very little time for it, and if we fail, we cannot repeat this one time – we can only deal with the consequences of our ineptitude by playing the game again from the beginning.

The necessity to repeat the whole game in order to change one decision somewhere during it is another drawback of this production. The creators did not think about dividing the game into chapters and giving players the opportunity to repeat only a few scenes, instead of starting the game each time from the beginning. This is not in line with the tendency of similar games of this type, which usually have this function.

In addition, most of the gameplay elements have smaller or bigger drawbacks. Gathering clues can be a pain in the ass for three reasons. First, Blacksad moves very slowly, and it can be frustrating when we occasionally have to find something in time. Secondly, in order to collect a clue, even if we can spot it with our skilled eye, we have to approach it from the right side for interaction to occur. Thirdly, a lot of collectibles were woven into the game – sportsmen cards – which were hidden literally everywhere and many times, when looking for clues under time pressure, I was irritated that I was constantly hitting cards and wasting time collecting them.

There were also problems with John’s diary. Two extreme situations happened to me that did not improve my gameplay experience. Twice I found the text [ENTRY_NOT_FOUND] instead of a note. Another time, I got journal entries before my character actually got the information. A spoiler alert would be nice.

The invisible barrier and apparent choices

The gameplay in Blacksad  is incredibly linear. At any given moment, we get access to one or two locations where we need to find all the clues before we can do anything else. We also can’t go back to any location. On the one hand, we avoid spinning in circles and combing all locations without even knowing what we are looking for, but on the other hand, we feel guided by the hand from beginning to end.

The character of John depends mainly on our choices in the dialogues (shown by the screen in the game menu with pairs of traits and a hint which way the hero is leaning), who actually does not affect anything else. Occasionally, our choices may change the fate of a few side characters, but these are not big changes. They are also of little importance to the main plot and the game ending.

Theoretically, the Blacksad final  has several variants depending on our choices. In practice, however, not counting whether we see some characters alive or dead in the cut-scenes after the end of the game, only the decisions from the last scene change something more. So do not count on branched threads with many variants.

Bug on bug

I would like to be able to write that these flaws in the mechanics themselves are the only obstacles in Blacksad: Under the Skin . Unfortunately, the game also suffers from many bugs and glitches. I have already mentioned some of them, such as journal errors. There were also occasional shortcomings in the dialogues, when the selected option did not correspond to the words spoken by the hero. It also happened that the animation while Blacksad recreated the flow of events displayed the wrong character, spoiling that depending on our choices, one of the two heroes could have ended up in that place.

I also had to restart the game several times because it broke in some way. And this stopped showing NPCs, and this blocked the passage between locations. Sometimes a part looped and it was impossible to get through, or Blacksad hung up on something and stopped doing anything. At some point, I stopped counting mistakes, being tired and frustrated by it.

Don’t judge a cat by its appearance… or you will be disappointed

Graphically, Blacksad: Under the Skin  looks great at first glance. The style corresponds very well to the original comics, translating the unique nature of the illustrations into 3D animations. It is a pity, however, that it failed in the case of the characters’ facial expressions, which is almost non-existent. Most of the time, the characters have one and the same facial expressions that do not express much emotion.

However, I can praise the soundtrack, ideally suited to the realities in which the action of the game is set. Jazz pieces perfectly emphasize the noir atmosphere of the production. The soundtrack for the dialogues was also very good – superbly selected dubbing actors are a huge advantage of Blacksad . However, it is worth remembering that the game does not have any Polish language version, so I am writing about the English version.

Wasted potential

It was a great idea to use the well-known and appreciated comic books about the cat detective John Blacksad as the basis for creating a criminal adventure game. The implementation seemed even good at first, but the more time you spend in the game, the more flaws will come out. Bugs that prevent you from continuing the game, problems with the mechanics of some important elements, and linear gameplay effectively discourage you from continuing the game. In the end, it turned out to be a production that needs to be forgiven a lot to at least try to get to know a pretty good plot.

Perhaps, if the developers release a patch, Blacksad: Under the Skin  will become more playable and worth your time. At the moment, however, it is better to reach for comics.