REVIEW : Nine Noir Lives (PC)
We’re returning to the presentations of one of our most beloved genres (point ‘n’ click adventures, duh), after being given the opportunity again. We are talking about Nine Noir Lives, the maiden adventure of Silvernode Games, which is the fruit of the five-year effort of a fairly small team from South Africa. Maybe in some galaxy the planets there synchronized and showed the year 2022, there is no other way to explain why so many interesting adventures were released in such a short time. Because Nine Noir Lives is another adventure game that fills us with very good impressions and leaves a strong legacy for even more adventures in the future.
The approach of Nine Noir Lives is not entirely original, as it chooses to tell a noir story, in which instead of boring… humans, cats with human characteristics have taken their place. I don’t think we can cite a creepier example than Blacksad, however, Nine Noir Lives chooses a lighter and more humorous style, while the population is “limited” by 95% to the cute little feline devils. After all, the town where the story takes place is called… Meow Meow Farrington, while the leading role is played by private investigator Cuddles (!) Nutterbutter.
An investigator who, regardless of his not-so-hard-core name, is always the second (not to say last) choice of the local police for the cases that concern them. The consequence of this is that Cuddles undertakes, for the most part, “harmless” cases, which correspondingly bring low compensation. The little desk he keeps verifies the truth of the word. Despite everything, Cuddles does not lose his confidence and is convinced that at some point he will be given a big opportunity for a breakthrough.
That opportunity finally came, after a relatively quiet evening where Cuddles took on an “unheard of” job of copying the… decoration of a sad bar. The chief of police makes an urgent call to his office, where his ever-faithful secretary, Tabby Marshmallow, informs Cuddles about the incident. Things are very serious, as the son of the mobster Bartholomew Montameeuws (are you wondering about the names? You shouldn’t) was found dead and in fact, in the very nightclub that is the Montameeuws’ point of business. In the only place, the scion of a mobster could be safe. The police are afraid to get involved, as there are suspicions that this heinous and brazen crime will trigger a possible war between the two major families of the town, the Montameeuws and the Catulets, so the easiest solution is for an independent investigator to intervene, to avoid bloodshed.
So Cuddles takes on the case of his life, one that will determine not only his future, which he hopes will include him alive in the years to come but also that of the entire town. A case that includes everything you would expect from a… black story: fatal women, dangerous secrets, mafia murders, most boxes are ticked, always sprinkled with several doses of humour. The remarkable thing is that it manages to bring all the individual pieces together very intelligently, without exaggerating anywhere or succumbing to cheap dramas and hasty conclusions. And the mystery is largely kept under wraps until just before the last act of the drama, although suspicions have already been forming much earlier.
The same consistent student is shown in the adventure element. The setting is the familiar one found in a point ‘n’ click adventure, with the solving of the puzzles being a product of choosing the right questions and answers to the various characters we meet and the correct use/combination of objects. The level of difficulty of the puzzles, although generally depending on the experience that everyone has in the particular type of game, is in the medium to low range, with some exceptions that require a little more… head-scratching to find the solution. Especially if we are not observant enough of Cuddles’ comments or the details of each screen, we are likely to get stuck somewhere for hours.
However, there is a quite useful journal that records the current objectives that we have to complete while giving some small hints, before starting the adventure, we can alternatively choose a kind of story mode. What the story mode mainly does is generously fill the journal with more information, in case we just want to enjoy the story. Needless to say, it never even crossed our minds to hit yes on the said button, so what you read here is all about “orthodox” adventuring.
Besides, there’s no need to rush. Nine Noir Lives is a fairly rich adventure, in terms of locations and things we undertake to do, which can reach up to eight quality hours until we watch the end credits. A not bad number, since we are talking about an indie adventure, which stands out for its even level of writing, both in the descriptions and in the dialogues/monologues of the protagonists, as well as in its subtle humour, which of course is regularly enhanced by “catty” puns, but never overdoing it. And the characters we’ll meet are extremely well-made and convincing in their motivations, some of them aren’t great, like the lady at the police station or the… “funny” raccoon who thinks he’s a cat. Some welcome additions sweeten the recipe, such as the fact that in some cases we control Tabby instead of Cuddles, which of course requires a different approach to solving its problems. And more intelligent we would add.
In terms of handling, we have some objections, not particularly important, but some decisions seemed a bit outdated. In particular, for all the actions we will perform there are three verbs in the game: Look, Use and… Lick (yes, what’s the strange thing, we’re talking about a cat), which are switched once by pressing the right mouse button, in the standard of Sierra’s old adventures.
At first, we hated this process, as we are now used to one-click operations or even having the verbs appear by holding down the button, however, we soon got used to it and this is also the reason for the small number of verbs – in fact, we never accepted it. If the verbs were five or six, then we would be speaking on a different basis. Apart from this, however, the rest of the quality of life features that one would expect in a modern adventure, exist as normal: hotspot indicator, click to skip to the next dialogue and double click on the exits for immediate transition.
Moving into the technical realm, Nine Noir Lives excels with its painted visuals. They are not state-of-the-art, but they do their job very well in certain locations, such as the theatre, the backgrounds look quite impressive. However, the cat-like characters are detailed, neat and highly likeable and with the help of a very good voice-over for each of them, they compose an extremely pleasant audio-visual effect.
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