Take one of the best time periods in history, some classic cop clichés, and a story that’ll intrigue you right from the start menu, and you’ll get Blues and Bullets. This is the first episode of a five part series. The game takes place in an unspecified time in the 1940s and tells a story about a retired cliché-filled detective named Eliot Ness who opened up a diner and has a ton of history with Al Capone, one of the most notorious mobsters of all time. Suddenly children start disappearing and Eliot calls it upon himself to come out of retirement to solve this grizzly case.
While following the alcoholic, worn out, veteran detective, you’ll find out they use every cliché in the book of clichés for a cop story. But here’s the kicker, they do it in a way that’s unique and fun for the player so you’re not rolling your eyes constantly. Throughout the game you’re given choices and one of these choices is whether Eliot takes a drink of whiskey or juice, you can either give into what Eliot wants to do but shouldn’t and pour the sad slob a glass of whiskey or do the smart choice and keep him sober and pour him a nice refreshing glass of juice. I found this to be very interesting because you get to change this clichéd cop into a strong-minded man and overcome his alcoholism if you choose. He also has that threatening thing where he walks up to a suspicious character and whispers how badly he will mess him up if he so much as even picks up a knife and than walks away leaving the suspicious character with goose bumps all over their body and their mouth hanging open, which is personally one of my favorite moments of all time.
Whether it is scaring a suspicious individual like the one mentioned above or talking to a cop eating at your diner, the game will put you in cutscenes with dialogue choices and this is where you’ll see most of the technical flaws in the game. Right from the moment I saw characters talking, I couldn’t stop watching their mouths and emotionless, empty eyes. The facial animations in the game are similar to ones you’ll see in Fallout 3…awkward and sort of creepy due to how empty the characters look. It was something throughout the entire episode that distracted me and had me giggling to myself out how bizarre and awkward it looked. Not only are the facial animations strange, animations for something as simple as handing a character a plate of food looks strange. There’s a moment early in the game where Eliot serves an officer some pie and his hand sort of hovered over the counter with the plate in his hand and he let go and the plate magically appeared in front of the officer. That coupled with the awkward, unsettling facial animations took me out of the scene. I truly hope it’s something that gets fixed in one of the next episodes otherwise I’m going to keep having horrific flashbacks to Fallout 3 whenever I see Eliot Ness talk about how sad and lonely he is.
Even though he is clichéd, Eliot Ness still has an interesting backstory. He has a strong history with Al Capone. Around Christmas, Al Capone murdered some of Eliot’s best friends and Eliot takes it upon himself to have his revenge by confronting Capone at his heavily guarded home and gunning down everyone in his way to the possibly ill-fated Al Capone. This was one of the most interesting parts of the game.
The shooting mechanics take queues from on-rail shooters like Blue Estate. The only control you have is where you aim the gun and when to shoot, so the game will move you into cover when you clear out enemies and then the game will push you forward. This is probably the best way to do this in a game like Blues and Bullets, it allows the game to show off awesome CQC moments in the form of quick time events and awesome set pieces and keep every gunfight intense and fun. It’s similar to watching a movie. As I just mentioned, CQC is also part of the game! Since Eliot is a veteran detective he’s had his fair share of fights, so he is pretty skilled in fistfights. There’s a moment in the game where a character attacks you with a knife and you must preform a one to two minute quick time event that kept me on edge the entire time! The fights seem so well choreographed and it feels like any wrong move could be fatal. While it seems so well choreographed it looks rough, and not like a flawless fight that is being performed by professional fighters, they throw each other up against objects and struggle over the knife and it all feels very real and is very well done.
Since you’re a former detective called back into action, one of the things you’ll be doing is performing investigations at crime scenes. You’ll go to said crime scene and investigate the area by thoroughly looking for clues. It’s similar to L.A. Noire and while finding these clues can open up your investigation and allows you to piece together what exactly happened at the crime scene, the only thing I find disappointing about this is that there is no way to screw up and put the clues in the wrong places and draw a different conclusion, similar to Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments. In that game you could basically mess up the entire case if you weren’t examining each clue carefully. If you try to put a clue in the wrong spot in Blues and Bullets it just says, “No, don’t put that there!” And then you just guess until you put the right clue in the right spot. In a game about making choices it seems odd to try and tell you what to do exactly. I do like the investigation mechanic for what it is, but I just wish there was more to it.
In this city of crime, the game features a very unique art style and atmosphere. The game is black and white but some objects appears as red which makes for some beautiful imagery. In one scene in the game you’ll enter a house that has blood splattered everywhere and for something that should be gross and disgusting it is actually very beautiful. You see this boring black and white home with some bright red in spots across the screen. It almost looks like a drawing that was drawn in pencil and than had bits colored in red colored pencil just in random spots. Well, except it’s blood. It’s a very unique art style that I can’t wait to see more of it because there are some very creative things you can do with this.
Not only is the game visually appealing, it’s appealing to the ears as well! The music in the game has that classic 1940s jazz and blues tune to it mixed in with a modern feel so that it gives the score the right blend of a classic 1940s noire film made in modern day. The music in games and movies from this time period has always felt like a character of its own to me. It sets the tone of the scene, and helping you feel what the character feels as well, all through the music, which is incredibly powerful to me!
Overall, I really enjoyed the first episode of Blues and Bullets! Despite the technical flaws and lack of difficulty in the investigations, the music and unique art style, interesting story, and interesting shooting mechanics truly make it something fresh and unique! If you have a couple bucks to spare, give Blues and Bullets a shot! I can’t wait for the next episode.
Pros:
• Intriguing story
• Amazing musical score
• Fantastic art style with much lots of potential
Cons:
• Distracting technical flaws and some performance issues with frame rate
• Lack of difficulty with investigation system
Cade is a games journalist, Gaming Writer at ComicBook.com. They contributed 108 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, and Xbox news: served as Editor-in-Chief at GameZone before joining ComicBook.com.