THERE’S BEEN A MURDER

Blacksad is a fairly popular European comic about an anthropomorphic black cat detective named John Blacksad who investigates murders in an alternate universe 1950s New York. I bought and read the graphic novel because of this game, and what is nice is that Under the Skin is a new chapter in the Blacksad story and therefore a great introduction to this series. The world of Blacksad has translated well into a fully 3D video game and the voice acting is superb; it feels like the comics.

This time John Blacksad is investigating the murder of boxing gym owner Joe Dunn after his apparent suicide. The story has a lot of twists and turns and is by far the main focus of this game. I can’t go into too much detail without spoiling major plot points, however because of the way this game plays there are key moments that will play out differently based on the player’s decisions. This includes how long the story is, because this game has plenty of red herrings and if the player decides to not question what is in front of them they might wrap up the case early. Blacksad’s competence is only equivalent to that of the player’s.

PLATFORMS: PS4, XB1, PC
MSRP: $49.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $49.99

The gameplay is a take on the Telltale adventure format. Players move Blacksad around a 3D environment looking for clues and talking to other characters to advance the story with certain choices affecting future events. I’m happy to say that the decision making actually heavily affects the story, and I was always unsure as to what would play out in my favor and what wouldn’t. There are moments where a wrong decision would end with a game over, forcing me to restart a segment. I think a big part of why those decisions feel more important than they do in other games of this type is not only because some pay off within a very short time frame, but that Blacksad is a full experience; no episodes or chapters break up the gameplay.

I think the most unique aspect of Blacksad is that instead of an inventory like classic adventure games, Blacksad collects ideas and statements. From these clues he can deduce new information about events and characters that may unlock new dialog or progress the story. It’s more interesting to me than the fairly tired formula of clicking on an inventory item and then using it with an object in the world; it feels like a more realistic way a detective would solve a case.

Let me just say that I love this game. I say that now because I’m about to dive into the problems.

Problem one is inherent racism. I generally wouldn’t bring this up and while it does end up being minor it’s something I wish was addressed better. In the world of Blacksad racism and more importantly white supremacism exists. Players will come across racist graffiti scrawled on the locker of a boxer early on in the game, and the boxer happens to be a gorilla. Now the lore of this is established in the comics and is handled better there. Blacksad, a black cat, is black as well but he does not explicitly say he is also considered black until much later in the game and it is quick and nothing more is said about it. In the comics the white supremacists come into a bar and tell him and his friend to leave to which he smarmily replies pointing to the sole white spot on his chin. Racism in the world of Blacksad is based off of fur/feather color, which is a neat concept but poorly explained in this game. I shouldn’t have to read tertiary material to understand that, and more so this game barely touches upon racism past that point.

Problem two is that this game is buggy at times. I had crashes, lock ups and textures not loading in. The only saving grace is that this game autosaves constantly, meaning that I was never too far from the point where the game decided to stop working, but it was still irritating. This is post launch day patch as well. The game just has some rough spots. One NPC had his eyebrows raise and lower extreme amounts, so while the dialog was pretty emotional the moment lost all impact with me.

Problems aside though Blacksad: Under the Skin is an interesting tale of murder and corruption that presents in one of the best takes on the adventure game formula-multiple endings, choices that really matter, and a cast of characters that are extremely engaging. I never felt like the story was coming out of left field with its ideas, and was shocked when I started figuring out what was happening. I love this game and if the Life Is Strange or one of the many Telltale series has ever been enjoyable, I think there’s a lot of enjoy in Blacksad.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.