Nintendo Okie

I’ve played a lot of different puzzle games in my life. I really like that style of game. Whether it’s just a simple crossword puzzle game, or it’s more in depth like the Professor Layton series. I also like a good murder mystery. So, naturally you’d think that by combining the two I would be in video game heaven. Well, Ubisoft has seen my thoughts and created James Noir’s Hollywood Crimes. It sounds like something that has a well established history, but this is the first game in what could become a series of murder mystery style games.

What You Need to Know

James Noir’s Hollywood Crimes is a murder mystery set in the 1960’s. The premise of the game is that you are selected to be a contestant on a game show called ‘The Incredible Puzzle Masters’. Contestants who compete on this show are sort of like rock stars, and a number of former champions end up dead. Between rounds you help out an old friend, whom you haven’t seen in years, introduces himself as an FBI agent. You go with him to crime scenes and solve puzzles left by the killer that lead to other clues and even more murders.

Choose Your Own Adventure

During the puzzle rounds of the game you are given a Jeopardy style selection board filled with puzzles of varying points values. Each round has a target score that you’re trying to achieve while at the same time making sure you finish each round with more points than your opponent. You get to pick and choose the puzzles you want to attempt and are awarded points for finishing the puzzle, as well as bonus points for not using the three hints that are available to you. You won’t be punished if you choose a puzzle and then fail to complete it. You can attempt them as many, or as little, times as you want. The puzzles get progressively harder as you move into further rounds and the hints become more obscure. Early on you’re almost assured that the hints would solve the puzzle for you, while during later rounds there are still many moves remaining after the hints dry up.

It’s this choose your own adventure style of play that really makes the game more approachable than many puzzle games in the past. You can essentially make the game as difficult as you want by choosing the higher point valued puzzles.

Solid Puzzles

The strength of a puzzle game lies in how fun the puzzles themselves. It’s really hard to find a delicate balance between the difficulty of the puzzles, the types of hints available and how much of the puzzle is given away. James Noir strikes a pretty solid balance on the difficulty. Early on I was not using any hints and was able to solve all of the puzzles with little difficulty. There was definitely a lot of thinking involved, but they were never so hard that I couldn’t figure them out. Towards the end of the game I was relying on hints to get me started, and even then I would have to go at some puzzles three or four times, or even give up on a puzzle and try something different.

The puzzles themselves will come in a lot of different forms. I really enjoyed the ones where you’re given a grid with a bunch of numbers on it and you had to create boxes with the same number of squares as the numbers shown and fill in the entire grid. Others would be matchstick style puzzles where you had to link up match sticks to show you numbers that would give you clues to the whereabouts of a new murder. Some of the more difficult puzzles had you crossing a river using various sized planks of wood and having to create a bridge using the same two or three planks over and over again.

There are a lot of different types of puzzles that require a lot of different types of thinking. Some as simple as the matchstick puzzle above, while others would require you to see a half a dozen moves ahead in order to figure out the correct sequence of colored buttons to drop into color coded slots or move chess pieces around to completely swap their starting positions. The variety of the puzzles keeps things interesting and even when the type of puzzle is revisited it’s changed just enough to add a completely new wrinkle to the equation and change it up in new ways.

The Story

This is the one part of the game where I struggled with just a little bit. You begin the game as a game show contestant only to have things quickly change from there. You’re brought in by someone you knew years before. There’s plenty of betrayal and intrigue, but I just found myself not really caring about the other characters in the game. It’s almost like they were there just to give you a reason to do these puzzles. The plot twists came so suddenly and there was never really any hint as to what was going on. It doesn’t really detract from the game in any way, but it just made me want to skip them altogether and get back to the puzzles.

Conclusion

James Noir’s Hollywood Crimes is a very interesting puzzle game. If you can ignore the silly story then you’re going to find yourself really enjoying the puzzles. There are plenty to choose from and you can go back to them again and again. If you saw some during the game show portions that you missed you can go back to those as well. They all become unlocked and accessible through your hotel room. I like the idea of the interactive detective novel and I would like to see more games like this. It reminded me a lot of Hotel Dusk in that sense. If you can look past the story this is a very solid puzzle game that will work your brain muscles for a while.

Final Score: 

Review copy of the game provided by Ubisoft
Played through the story mode entirely. Went back and completed some missed puzzles
Total Play Time: 5 hours