Friend. Confidant. Therapist.
Voyeur. As a cab driver working the Paris night shift, you are many things to different people. Your gift is getting people to talk; and in order to catch the serial killer who left you for dead, that’s exactly what you’ll need to do.
Night Call's focus on story-telling and engaging atmosphere pays off as the developers mix in wonderful music and top quality animations to create one of the most unique experiences in recent memory.
There really should be more games like Night Call out there. It tries something unique and succeeds at it, delivering compelling short stories through a limited yet meaningful interaction and wrapped up in a classy aesthetic. The game shows humanism and wisdom that the billion-dollar titles can only dream of.
Night Call is thriller on the importance of verbal confrontation, adapting to one's interlocutor, creating fluid dialogues without necessarily complying with all their thoughts. A visual novel that is so classic, even predictable in its police nuance, but brilliant in the micro-situations we will experience in every journey.
The characters you meet in Night Call are the stars of this noir-style thriller. Interestingly, the crime plot takes a backseat to meeting the residents of Paris and learning about their struggles and success. Unfortunately, the game becomes repetitive after the first case due to duplicated dialog and a lack of gameplay evolution.
Haphazard gameplay and varying narrative quality put a damper on Night Call's strong mood and hints of brilliance.
There’s no way to continue the relationships you’ve established, or even simply resume a passenger’s storyline, which can sometimes be quite lengthy. It seems like a baffling way to structure a game about talking to people, getting involved in their lives, and developing your character along the way. It’s especially disappointing because the writing is sharp and versatile – capable of being tense, dark, funny, or absurd – and the well-rounded cast of characters are a joy to uncover. Because of this and the poorly fleshed out investigative mechanics, Night Call feels like a mere shadow of its potential.
Night Call has the potential, setting, characters and plot to be an epic noir detective title, but instead of capitalizing on it, the developers feel like they’re too in love with the taxi driver premise to let the best aspects shine through. Instead of using my cunning to find a killer, I spent more time worrying about money and hearing the same conversations over and over. What started as a journey of intrigue and secrets quickly became underwhelming repetition.
March 29, 2018
Lince Works announces an expansion for Aragami called Nightfall. Watch video