Review of James Noir's Hollywood Crimes by TimovieMan

Hollywood in the ‘60s. You get selected to participate in a popular TV show called “The Puzzle Masters”. Unfortunately, during your run on the show, a serial killer starts targeting past winners. The FBI agent that’s assigned to the case is an old friend of yours, and he enlists your help to take down the killer (who keeps leaving clues in the form of puzzles). Can you stop the killer before you become his next target?

A pretty sound premise for a puzzle-heavy adventure game, and the game really does start good. For instance, as part of your audition for the TV show, the game takes your actual picture, and that gets used in newspaper clippings and other moments throughout the game. This kind of involvement gets enhanced when the 3DS camera films you whenever you’re in front of a mirror in-game. Small touches that add to the game and your immersion in it.

Unfortunately, James Noir (a person who never once gets mentioned in the game nor in the manual) his “Hollywood Crimes” drop the ball at several opportunities. First of all, the graphics are lacklustre and mediocre (the background during the TV show is bland and generic, and the crowd is static). The puzzles also get repetitive fast, especially during the TV show sequences. And this is where the game falters most, the serial killer chase is pretty interesting, but the TV show is little more than a barrage of increasingly repetitive (not to mention easy) puzzles.

At least the investigation into the killer manages to mix things up more. It even surprises by making you, the player character, into a believable suspect as the serial killer. Sadly, this part takes up only less than half of the game, and even then it goes a bit too fast and is focused too much on puzzles and too little on plot.

All in all it’s not a bad game, but it had more potential than it finally ended up showing. It’s far too puzzle-centric for its own good (and the puzzles are not diverse enough), and its promise of “over 150 puzzles” only holds true for completionist players like myself. You’ll do less than half that number if you just play through the story once, without redoing any of the TV-show sections or solving the puzzles you get in the in-game fan mail.
Coupled with the weak production values, I feel this game is simply a missed opportunity that could have been a lot better with a bit more attention to detail, a bit more fleshing out of the story and a bit more use of the 3DS functionality. As it is, it looks more like a DS game than a 3DS game…

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Time Played: 10-20 hours
Difficulty: Easy