September Assassination #2

Consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!

If someone tries to explain Genesis Noir to you, forget about it. There's no way one can convey the experience in a review, including myself. The short version of it is that this is an unique, haunting, profound artistic experience better experienced than described. It's not much in the sense of a traditional game, but that doesn't mean you should avoid it at all.

As a game, Genesis Noir is a straightforward point&click puzzle game. You mostly click on stuff, and hold the mouse button to navigate the environment, usually in a straight line. Sometimes there are 'tactile' puzzles that require you to push sliders, rotate knobs, that kind of stuff. It's pretty run-of-the-mill, nothing revolutionary in a gameplay sense, but fortunately, Genesis Noir is more than just gameplay. When it comes to presentation, narrative and setting, it's absolutely a mind-blowing masterpiece.

It's hard to break each of those elements, but I'll try my best. Visually, the game is stunning. It has a coherent artstyle that is utilized to it's fully extent here. "Everything looks gorgeous all the time" is a great way of describing it. It's hard to remember the last time I paused so often to take screenshots of my gaming session. It's a commitment to an artstyle that elevates it from a game towards an artpiece. Calling it anything other than art is undermining it's merits. To accompany such outstanding visual spectacle, we have a soundtrack that ebbs and flows between naturalistic background music to acid jazz in a heartbeat, but never separated from the vibe of the moment and the action on the screen. It's effortlessly enjoyable.

All of that is tied together by an incredible narrative arc that explores questions of human character and motivation, evolution, cosmology, astronomy, physics, fate, multiverses, and so much more that it's hard to even believe what I'm writing. I just finished playing it and I can barely believe how much ground it covers, and in such a grounded way. With everything else going on, it didn't need to go that hard on it's themes and narrative, but it does, and it's better for it.

So, if someone tells you Genesis Noir is an interactive, linear story with very little gameplay to boot, they are not lying. It's one way to interpret the game, that while not entirely wrong, is short-sighted. Don't use that as a reason to avoid this game. By all means, buy it, play it, and gawk at it. The regular price ($15) is fine, but it frequently is on sale ($3 as I write it), making it an absolute steal. Highly recommended.