A newer addition to Xbox Game Pass is Night Call from Monkey Moon an interesting game ported over from Steam. This is one of the reasons I enjoy having Microsoft’s Game Pass, I get to play games that I would never have even known about had they not popped up in the menu. Night Call caught my fancy just due to the overall look of the game, and I’m glad that I decided to give it a go.
The Story
The first thing that I found out unique to this game was the fact that at the onset you could play the game out of order. There were five or so cases that I could chose from if I decided to deviate from the path the developers had intended. I decided to chose the proper path so that I found myself playing what the developers had wanted and not messing up their grand plan.
You play as a taxi driver in Paris, one of your fares is killed by a serial killer, and you just happen to be the only survivor of this murderer. The police are keen on ending this murder spree and you happen to find out that all the victims were clients of your taxi cab company. Being the only survivor you are unwillingly enlisted to help police officer Busset. She is a pain in your behind and blackmails you to do her job since she’s not good at it. Your past haunts you through her and you must investigate as you drive your taxi, asking the correct questions and hitting the right spots in Paris are to your benefit.
The Graphics
I really enjoyed the look of this game, the black and white gritty noir design really pulled me in. Each customer is unique and has a great story to listen to and the areas of Paris that you pass look great. The black and white is easy on the eyes and it reminds me of some of the older comic books I would read when I was younger.
The constant driving around does get boring after a time, so the developers were smart enough to include areas of interest that you can investigate. These areas look great for being black and white, I remember when Mad World came out for the Wii, everyone was amazed about the graphics and how difficult it would be to program that. Monkey Moon figured out how to do it, and do it well without sacrificing anything.
The Gameplay
Now, I’m not going to lie to you, Night Call is a taxi driving simulator. The majority of the time you will be driving a cab which you have no control of really. All you do is pick a person on the map, you drive there, pick them up and then you have dialogue options. The dialogue options branch, depending on what you say you can find out more about the killer you seek.
You can pick and chose where you want to go on the map and who you want to pick up. I would suggest picked up the suspects that are on your corkboard, that way you can get more info out of them. Big question marks also appear on the map, these are points of interest where you can also gather more information about the suspects and the case.
RelatedStories
Overall
This game is insanely slow paced, repetitive and has no real replay value that I could see. Night Call happens to be a one and done game, which is fine. I enjoyed my one and done moment and will tell my friends who have GamePass to take a gander at it.
The sad thing about how beautiful this game was is the fact there is no gameplay at all but pushing buttons. You push a button to chose what to say, you push a button to pick a destination and you press a button to sort the clues. You have no input in where the clues go, the game just solves it for you. I would have been more interested in figuring it out myself, I like detective work.
The Review
Night Call
An interesting take on the noir type of mystery story. It is a slow burn and there isn't much gameplay to it; and you'll only play it once, but that once is worth it.
PROS
- The visuals draw you in
- Very engaging story
CONS
- Very repetitive
- This is a slow burn type of game
