Do you know who Eliot Ness is? Or, what does he have to do with Alfonso "Al" Capone? NO. Well then, let's take a little history lesson. In 1929, in order to confront the criminal empire of the legendary mafia, the United States Department of the Treasury formed a special squad, which journalists dubbed "The Untouchables".
It was thanks to Ness and his team that Cleveland, although not for long, was cleared of corruption, and the godfather of the Chicago mafia was sent to prison for a long 11 years. As a reward for this, all members of the squad received a small pension supplement and a gold watch, and back in 1987, Brian de Palma made a film of the same name about them, with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery in the lead roles. Now, through the efforts of an independent studio A Crowd of Monsters"Real American Hero" got its own game.
Don't expect from Blues and Bullets complete certainty. In their project, the developers, so to speak, were more inspired by real events than retelling an already familiar story.
"Never Forget It"


The main character, still the same Eliot Ness, like any classic noir detective - in a long raincoat, with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a pistol in the other, bursts into the mafia estate, hoping to avenge his murdered comrades, independently deals with all the guards, and at the same time sends the godfather to jail for a long 20 years.
However, time, like a prostitute, is looking for new clients, does not stand still. Ness has long retired and found his place in the small town of Santa Esperanza, where in his own cafe with a very original name Blues and Bullets pours coffee and treats visitors with fresh pies and burgers. While a friend of a not very rosy day, one of Al Capone's puppets invites a game
in
This one is for an audience with her boss. The mafia, who at that time had already honestly served his term, instead of a bullet in the forehead or a bowl of cement, asks an "old friend" to help in one thing - to find his missing granddaughter, Alice. The brave detective, without thinking for a long time, puts on his old raincoat, picks up a revolver and goes, perhaps, to a dangerous business in his life.

Kidnapping of children, ritual murders and mutilated corpses with gouged out eyes. The game immediately warns that ahead of the hero, as well as the player, does not expect anything good. Well, the endless rain coupled with insightful jazz compositions further intensifies the atmosphere of complete hopelessness on the player. Plus, all this black and white style with bright red blood and caustic and cynical replicas of the hero - they work perfectly for the cloudy noir atmosphere.
"I'm too old for all this"


As in many modern serial projects, the further development of the plot depends only on the player. Hitting or shaking hands with your worst enemy, drinking whiskey or juice, handing over a poor boy to the police, throwing in a few extra dollars. We have already seen all this in dozens of projects from talltale and other studios. The hero also explores locations, finds clues and talks with other characters.
But what really makes it stand out Blues and Bullets, So these are action moments that, in addition to the classic QTEs with keystrokes at the right time, are diluted with full-fledged cover shootouts. This is usually done quite simply, the player only aims and sometimes flows from one cover to another. And yet, against the background of his colleagues, he looks quite interesting, although there are only a few such moments in the first episode.
And not only the main character will spend his time behind shootings and fights, he is still a detective, so the brain will also have to be strained from time to time. Once at the scene of the murder, an experienced detective turns into a real Sherlock Holmes, and all thanks to the familiar deductive system that the authors borrowed from recent projects. Frogwares. First you need to carefully examine the crime scene, examine the body of the deceased, collect all the clues, and after that, in a special section, you need to analyze the findings and reproduce the last minutes of the victim's life. True, unlike all the same Holsm, you will not be able to lead to a dead end, let alone fill up the investigation.

Of course, Blues and Bullets you can find a bunch of flaws, like poor optimization or a rather weak picture. However, literally in every second of the game one can feel the great love of the authors both for their project and for the classics of the noir genre. Just like a fatal beauty, from the first seconds Blues and Bullets falls in love with itself, intrigues and makes you look forward to continuing.

Blues and Bullets could have been a great noir adventure, but developer A Crowd of Monsters couldn't follow the path of TellTale and carve out a niche in the genre. Sometimes life throws you into such thorns that it seems there is no way out, but having gathered your will into a fist, you continue to make your way, and in the end a well-deserved reward awaits. Sometimes the reward is death. This often happens in noir works. The death is tragic and pompous, or it may turn out that you are just an extra in this retro movie and your role is to be killed by a bullet in a random shootout at the very beginning of the film. The game, unfortunately, played the same role of an extra.

The idea of ​​splitting games into episodes is no longer new and has managed to demonstrate its viability over its existence. It's an opportunity for community feedback, it's a chance to polish each episode. A peculiar handicap for the developer. What can go wrong? For example, if you create a completely empty project. Without plot, ideas and gameplay. But all this is in Blues and Bullets, how is it? Almost a year has passed since the last news from the developers, and it is not known whether it is worth waiting for the revival of the phoenix. So let's break down what we have for now.

Blues and Bullets is a very stylish game. With relatively lousy graphics, soundly retouched in monochrome and an emphasis on red. It turned out to be a pleasant sight. Already at this stage, you can understand that the developers are very very indie and you should not expect much from them. Moreover, they chose a niche, so to speak, not the most monetary one. There are not so many people who miss noir detectives, and then there are competitors in the form of TellTale.

In addition to interesting visual design, the game also has an exciting storyline. Weaves all the coolest things that usually keep in suspense in any solid detective thriller. Maniacs, religious sects, corrupt cops, Al Capone, secret organizations, an aging detective, Al Capone, mystical deaths, the death of a partner, intrigues with women, memories of the past, Al Capone. In general, such a mixture was guaranteed that it would not seem small, and for two episodes it looked very harmonious. I'm afraid we'll never know the end. Maybe someone will buy the rights to the game, maybe the developers themselves will release a noir comic to close the story, but so far only a doomed suspense.

In terms of gameplay, the developers have swung a little wider than TellTale's limited adventures. But due to small resources, it turned out rather sideways for them. Clumsy movements, uncomfortable shooting, you can only walk in strictly prescribed places, which means that the garbage bag is an insurmountable obstacle for the player. But many minigames have been added. Investigations are generally a whole game within a game. With the same success, you can make a murder investigation simulator in the style of . The rest of the puzzles are the search for objects and the implementation of QTE. But you are unlikely to appreciate them, because you should not take what is a miserable piece of an interesting story. It will be even more offensive that you partially recognized her.

It makes no sense to recommend a product when it is a raw patty with dough, but if one day they make a good juicy burger out of it, then it’s definitely better not to pass by. And now you can only dream of how delicious it would be.

Since time immemorial, people have shown a special interest in the color red. Its symbolic meanings are very diverse and, at times, contradictory. Some believe that passion, love and beauty are hidden behind it, while others, on the contrary, are blood, violence and a thousand lights that illuminate the streets of big cities at night. But our thoughts today are not connected with either ... only with the shoes of Alice, the sweet granddaughter of the most famous gangster of the 20-30s of the last century, Al Capone, who was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And who now, in your opinion, will decide to save her from an unenviable fate? Of course ... the sworn enemy of the past, the former leader of the legendary group "The Untouchables" Eliot Ness, who has long since retired. With this uneasy friendship, the first episode begins. Blues & Bullets, a new intriguing project from the Spanish team A Crowd of Monsters.

But wait, how can this be, because Alfonso did not have any grandchildren, and the main gangster hunter retired back in 1942 and quietly lived out his life in Pennsylvania. Nothing special, just the main writer of the game, Josue Monchen, decided to rewrite the history of both heroes and come up with new images for them, better suited to the gloomy atmosphere of noir. So, for example, Nessus from an alternate universe appears to us as a typical lone wolf in a long cloak and a gloomy expression on his face. A stormy youth with constant shootings and alcohol abuse left its own imprint on his difficult life, but he does not think to lose heart, because all this is left behind. He no longer works for the police and owns a small diner in the fictional town of Santa Esperanza, where he makes blueberry pies and pours coffee for former colleagues. However, we all know that, according to the law of the genre, cops are never “ex” and Elliot is just one of them. Further events will lead him to very unexpected consequences against the backdrop of the abduction of children and ritual murders.

And it is worth paying tribute to Mr. Moncheng: the story itself can hardly be called damn original, but certainly not devoid of taste. From the very first minutes after the launch of the game, Elliot's investigation carries him along and keeps him in constant suspense until the very end credits. Each scene is thought out to the smallest detail, and local dialogues will please not only with sparkling evil jokes about complex interracial relations in the US in the middle of the last century, but also with their overall quality. Poorly animated characters begin to come to life, acquiring their own emotions and unique characters. Many plot moves and phrases balance on the verge of a foul, but the project only benefits from this, demonstrating its uncompromising and special style against the background of other representatives of the genre.

In all other respects, this is a typical episodic adventure game of a new format established by the notorious studio Telltale Games. Part of the time you will devote to walking around the neighborhood in search of clues, another part to shootouts and fights with enemies, and the third part to dialogues built around moral dilemmas and difficult choices. Unfortunately, today it is still difficult for us to say whether the decisions you made can somehow influence the further course of events in subsequent episodes, but there are certain prerequisites for this. But the puzzles here are head and shoulders above than in the same The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us. Elliot's deductive method is a light mixture of L.A. Noire and the last part of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes from the Ukrainian studio Frogwares. You need to carefully study the local scenery, find evidence even in the most remote pieces of locations and compare them with already known facts. True, there is also a big minus here - the riddles themselves, from the point of view of the logic of their solution, are quite simple, and the developers throughout the entire passage will never indulge, in truth, with difficult tasks.

But what makes Blues & Bullets a particularly attractive project in the eyes of any player? Of course, its thick, enveloping atmosphere from all sides. Long shadows, gloomy backgrounds and an invisible threat in the air... the game constantly flirts with unnecessary pathos in an attempt to portray itself as a real interactive version of "Sin City" with all its cruelty and unique image. And to be honest, she's really good at it. The virtual operator constantly chooses only the best angles, and the black-white-red palette gives the picture a special charm.

Although such a style has a downside - behind all this beauty, serious shortcomings of the graphic component of the project are skillfully hidden, whether it is unfinished facial animation or textures of not the highest quality. It’s good that you don’t pay much attention to all this, while luxurious musical accompaniment plays in the background, led by the title theme performed by the Polish singer IZÄ. Western artists also did their best, putting their whole soul into the voice acting of the main characters, especially Doug Cockle, who is familiar to our readers from the role of Geralt from the popular The Witcher series.

Eliot Ness(Eliot Ness) is an American national hero. An honest, principled treasurer who, in 1929, led a group of special agents of the US Treasury Department, nicknamed by journalists "The Untouchables." They hunted the main mafiosi of America - in fact Ness and his people were put in jail for 11 years Al Capone(Al Capone) and cleaned up Cleveland of corruption. And as a reward they received a small increase in pensions and a premium watch. Pro Nessa and his team rolled books, filmed serials, and in 1987 the picture "The Untouchables" was released Brian de Palma(Brian De Palma) Kevin Costner(Kevin Costner) in the main role. So, in the newly minted episodic adventure Blues and Bullets from a young studio A Crowd of Monsters Eliot Ness works... for Al Capone.

The atmosphere of Blues and Bullets occasionally reminds me of Max Payne.
There are no more untouchables
No, game writer Josue Moncheng(Josue Monchan; actually he is in Pendulo Studios rolled history for runaway and Yesterday) did not lose his intellect and did not decide to defile the memory of the national hero of America. He just came up with an alternative story and image for him.
AT Blues and Bullets he looks more like a typical film noir detective - in a long coat and with a bottle of whiskey in his hands. Once he drank, beat, almost sent Al Capone to the next world (as a result, the main mafia “only” sat down for 20 years), and now he leads a quiet lifestyle in the fictional city of Santa Esperanza, where he cooks pies and pours coffee in your own diner.
After 20 years, Al Capone, who recently got out of jail, is trying to find his main enemy ... to find his missing granddaughter, Alice. Ness, yearning for detective work, again changes the curtain for a long cloak and takes up the clothes. In the process, he will have to face such things that both corruption and mafia showdowns fade against their background. Kidnapping of children, ritual murders, ashes with torn burkalas and teeth - there will be enough reasons to kiss the bottle again.
Naturally, such a gloomy noir story is made in black and white style with nuances of blood red - we recall the "Sin City" in one gulp. Constant rain, biting dialogues with the necessary amount of cynicism or irony, Eliot's hoarse voice and red woman vocals performing a minor jazz composition - everything perfectly injects into the gloomy noir atmosphere.
Eliot's Choice
However, returning to the bottle, let's say that you decide for yourself: will Eliot Ness drink juice or whiskey? After all, according to its basic structure Blues and Bullets- it's pretty typical telltale-shaped adventure game. The hero explores locations, roams countless, periodically fights with enemies (and we help him by leaning on the shown keys in time) and makes more or less majestic decisions. We are not told that such and such a character remembered that you were enrolled, but the times to choose are accurately limited at the same time.

Some decisions, let's guess, will still be reflected in the following episodes.
True, in the first episode, we almost did not see the same majestic dilemmas that affect events, as if in The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, where it was possible to decide who to live in, who to die and where to rush in search of evidence first of all. Only one choice, made at the very beginning, when we play as the kidnapped girl, will have real consequences in the finale of the episode. And one more, alone, most likely, will affect the future.
And yet, decisions about whether to drink or not drink, to shake Al Capone’s right hand or first to punch him in the face, and then to shake, freak out and blurt out at the piano on the burkals of a child or take a gun to Palestine in one gulp, are also important, as if they form psychological portrait of your hero.
Scandals, firing, investigations
But A Crowd of Monsters hardly not the first to decide to expand the format of such adventure games. First, in Blues and Bullets, in addition to dialogues and finding active points, there is still action with shelters to eat. We get to shoot a little bit, in total twice per episode, and the mechanics of such shootings is extremely simple. And yet, in this format, it looks quite fresh and entertaining.
Secondly, from a series of adventures about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes from the French-Ukrainian studio Frogwares borrowed deductive mechanics. Once in the place of ruthless ritual murder, we must carefully look around, examine the body, concentrate all the evidence, notice all the majestic details and in a special menu, picking up the revealed facts, respond to requests: what happened, as if the murderer flew into the house, was there at that moment Is anyone else here? True, compared to the "Frogvar" quests, everything is easier here - it's basically impossible to cheat by placing evidence in the wrong logical chain, because they won't let you do it.

Blues and Bullets is planned to have five episodes.
***
However, a single serious encroachment is not an oversimplification (compared to a similar bloody noir The Wolf Among Us here it’s like one needs to be smart at least a little), but easy optimization. Looks Blues and Bullets painfully stylish, but not so chic as to periodically “slow down”. In the other, the game awakens remarkably exalted emotions. Action and adventure, film noir, mafia and ritual murders with the search for a maniac, Al Capone, who lives in a huge airship hanging over the city, and Russian bandit Ivankov, who lives on his own submarine - Josue Moncheng and his colleagues came up with a painfully unusual vinaigrette.
Pros: fascinating plot; availability of moral choice; charismatic hero; noir atmosphere; stylish picture; amazing work with sound; quite all kinds of gameplay for such a format.
Minuses: easy optimization.

Blues and Bullets as honest as a drunken sailor. She does not hide her sources of inspiration, here they are - on the surface. Telltale series mechanics, the Sin City palette, and all the usual components of the noir genre. All that is missing is the final elegant stroke: the fatal beauty that will ruin Detective Eliot Ness.

But the A Crowd of Monsters team has four more episodes to go.

Through the night

Alfonso Capone was by no means a saint. Bootlegger, pimp, racketeer and ruthless killer, he long held the title of America's greatest villain...until FBI agent Eliot Ness, head of the legendary group The Untouchables, busted him for tax evasion. For the collapse of the criminal empire, Ness and his team received a modest increase in pensions and wristwatches.

Blues and Bullets twists this story in a twisted (in a good way) way. Unbending Ness tumbles into Capone's house alone with a bottle of whiskey in his hand - and this is in the era of prohibition ...

Twenty years pass. The legendary detective owns a diner with the elegant name Blues and Bullets and serves burgers and pies to the cops. But then Al Capone comes out of prison - and invites Ness to his place to ... hire.

Ness, looking for the missing granddaughter of a sworn enemy, is, frankly, a bold idea. "I'm doing this for her, not for you," he says, before punching Capone in the jaw. Or shake hands: here the developers give you the right to choose.

Game Ness resembles an aged Rick Deckard from Blade Runner. The spitting image of Harrison Ford.

As in Telltale games, you are constantly faced with choices that change plot details - but not the plot itself. Lie, truth or change of subject? Sarcasm, spite or friendliness? Drink whiskey or juice? Add the usual portion of sauce to the boorish client's burger, overdo it or not put it at all? You have to choose all the time, but to judge the scale of the "butterfly effect" is not even close.

Sometimes Blues & Bullets mixes genres. If things take a turn for the worse, Ness is not shy about using his fists and firearms, and, say, in the interlude with the assault on the Al Capone mansion, the adventure game turns into a laconic shooting range: Eliot runs from cover to cover, and our job is to change position, aim and fire.

But the melee is decorated with primitive QTE: watch a beautifully staged cut-scene and press the direction buttons in time. Sometimes you need to quickly press the same button. Wrong - the hero dies, the scene is restarted. Fortunately, these episodes are short and infrequent.

Aiming in shooting range mode is not very convenient, but it is almost impossible to die, and the shootout ends very quickly.

What it lacks in detail is made up for by great art style. A stupid animation - the work of the operator. It turns out that "cheap, but with a soul."

True detective

Much better Blues and Bullets successful detective intrigue. In the first episode, Ness will shake the old and thoroughly inspect the crime scene. And what! The victim without arms, without eyes and without teeth is impaled on spikes, a broken bottle of whiskey sticks out in his side. Severed hands clench a handful of teeth on a creepy altar, and the victim's house is a miniature museum in which we are allowed to examine every corner, analyzing the evidence and reconstructing the picture of the crime. There are many clues, and each new clue is displayed as a picture in a special menu. There they need to be decomposed into logical blocks, such as “method of murder” or “motive”.

The clues are interactive. You can twirl an interesting item and interact with it. Get the drum of the revolver, unclench the dead fingers, open the cigarette case. Everything is done with one button, but still nice.

This puzzle gives you a chance to use your brains, but, alas, it does not throw a real challenge to your "gray cells". The developers carefully mark all noteworthy places, write down the number of clues in each interactive zone and will not let you put a picture with evidence in the wrong block.

It is impossible to stall in the investigation, and even more so to screw it up. Such "guardianship" may seem humiliating to those who like to spread their brains, because even a semi-detective story of one little "not like everyone else" girl in Life is Strange not afraid of the player.

But the very construction of a logical chain captivates a little less than in the "full-fledged" adventure games about detectives. And no one will take away your satisfaction from your own correct conclusions, ahead of the flow of thoughts of the protagonist.

The developers not only competently use the noir scale, they know how to turn the location into a real attraction, where every detail complements the rest.

Visible darkness

Creating an interactive noir-style drama, the developers did not save on the main thing: the plot and aesthetics. The first episode constantly shuffles situations, places and faces. The conversations turn into fights, shootouts and investigations; a modest diner is replaced by either grotesque luxury or gloomy slums; the gray-haired Ness is getting younger in the scene from his memories, and in the meantime we are given to play for the very granddaughter of Al Capone, whom the hero of America contracted to find.

History can play a trick on itself. Sometimes she throws up comical (and usually optional) skits that disperse the clouds. There was even a place for an outright farce: how do you like a Russian mafioso living on his own submarine?

And after passing the episode, the mode of huge heads opens.

Dialogues are devoid of real non-linearity, but are written lively and tastefully. Heroes constantly exchange evil jokes and sarcastic remarks. I want to replay the episode at least so as not to miss the best barbs that Ness is capable of. Even optional conversations with extras have been worked out: not a single remark tires you, every time you will be thrown a witticism, and even with social overtones. This endows the characters with enough personal charm to make their sparsely animated faces come alive - and etched into memory.

B&B knows how to let in sweet melancholy. Not the most optimistic characters help her in this, and uncompromising cruelty (the faint of heart will especially “like” the scene with the punishment of the child), and expressive style. The developers know how to choose the angle and perfectly emphasize the already beautiful locations with a black-white-red palette. And it is worth hearing the local soundtrack - and a trip through the night Santa Esperanza turns into a dream excursion.

One of the strongest scenes is the surreal path among the huge words that reflect the thoughts of Ness. A shootout using letters as cover is included.

* * *

AT Blues and Bullets much more invested enthusiasm and love than experience and money. She carefully uses the cultural heritage of the noir genre and, with modest means, tells the plot of a tough and dark detective story, not without self-irony. It's a gloomy ode to battered cops, cities rotten with corruption, and dark stories with no right to a happy ending.