Blacksad: Under the Skin

Blacksad is a comic book created by Juan Diaz Canales screenwriter and the artist Juanjo Guardnido, and they have been releasing it for Dargaud for quite some time. Since the comic book has quite good setup of noir mysteries in the anthropomorphic animal based world, similar to ours, and quite specific art style with vivid expressions and world building. It was interesting to see how it would translate into a video game adaptation. Pendulo studios are no strangers to point and click games, their Runaway titles were humoristic and serviceable, but Blacksad is a different beast. I didn't like that the controls were tank like on mouse and keyboard, if you have a joystick it is a much better experience. They simplified it to be as basic and barren it can be. Although it has some interesting mechanics, Blacksad has a feature where he uses his senses of smell, eyesight and sound to find more clues, and there is a something akin a thought cabinet where you can combine the clues that you found to get resolution for the case. The animation can be quite janky and uncanny valley, basically couple of characters have great animation for their expressions, while the rest look like dolls. (especially female characters) I deem that the animation style doesn't serve justice to the comic, it could have been much better, but I do think that the studio loved the original material, they even worked on a story with the creators. And the storyline and the mystery are very good, there are twists and turns and this is the driving force to finish the game. Also the game is badly optimized, you will constantly see the loading sign, you go into a new place, loading, conversation over - loading, it's weird to see something like that in a game that came out in 2019. There were some bugs, game crashing when the senses menu is open and not being able to get out of it. I would suggest that you buy it when it's on a sale. Hopefully the team will work on new Blacksad titles, and improve.

This is solid fan service. The plot, characters, dialogue, and aesthetic live up to the comics. I finished it in 10h without paying much attention to collectibles. I did not have any issues with the camera or the Xbox controller. However, there are many small issues that make this feel rushed or poorly quality-controlled. The camera is regularly out of focus during dialogue or cutscenes. You are sometimes "force-forwarded" to new areas without warning, resulting in you losing clues or collectibles.

I pretty much concur with the most helpful review. Worldbuilding, Art, Music and Story are really well done. But oh boy did they screw up in the quality and game design departments. The game is designed in a way that it encourages you to try out different choices or even entire playthroughs. But since you can't skip dialogue and the game is only saved at checkpoints, this is actually so tedious that you likely won't do it. Controls are clunky and I had graphic glitches like flashing dots or scenes where the focus was off. The game also throws quicktime events at you and while I thought that was ok I believe opinions are quite divided on these. All the noir goodness kept me playing until the end, but man it was painful. I just can't help thinking how much better this could have been if were an oldschool point and click adventure.

Please install this game on an SSD! I had it installed in an HDD just because I thought it was a lighter game but it kept freezing, lagging, and with huge load times. Then I re-installed it on one of my SSD and it runs well. It has a very good story and visually is appealing. So no complaints there. The mechanics are Telltale-ish and the controls are just functional, not so responsive, and a little frustrating. But nothing that horrible for this type of game. A lot of comments are pointing out the fact that you don't have a run option, but I think it's better this way. It adds to the pacing of the story alongside the music and Blacksad's personality. Overall a great game, if you're fan of Blacksad you'll surely like it. If you are new to Blacksad, first you should read the comics, because this game has a lot of references to various stories. This way you'll enjoy it a lot more.

From the point of view of the plot (slow but well written), dialogues, acting, crudeness of some scenes, quite well done and well-placed QTEs, a well-made deduction system that requires you to use your head, the game is very good . It would also have a certain replayability for completionists, which however clashes with the impossibility of skipping the dialogues for a second run. On the other hand, the camera management is terrible and limited. I imagine it was a question of budget, but I would have preferred a completely free camera, as to interact with the clues and collectibles you often need to have the precision of a sniper at the right angle. Among other things, some collectibles wouldn't let me take them even if I started the scene again. On the graphics side, I would have preferred greater optimization of Unity, but these days optimizing a game is something that everyone skips over. There are still some bugs, such as the protagonist being stuck at certain points or when reloading a mission, our big cat just kept going, not caring about walls and other objects, ending up off the map. HDR is terrible and the depth of field can only be partially excluded. Some locations are not well optimized and the framerate drops. In short, with a little more care for camera management, bug cleaning (note, I played 1.05), skippable dialogues, it would have been a better product.