Customer Reviews

James Noir's Hollywood Crimes

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I run a famous puzzle site, and I've played Hotel Dusk, Again, 9 Hours, Trace Memory, Time Hollow, the Professor Layton series, and the Phoenix Wright series. A puzzle game will depend on both the puzzles and the presentation.

The Puzzles
In the opening scene, where you arrive at the studio, take your own picture, and fill out a contestant form, one 3D puzzle is given, where a plant with multicolored leaves must be twisted to find a particular viewpoint where a number can be seen. Shortly thereafter, a set of 12 puzzles is given to you in a Jeopardy format. Solve puzzles until 80 points is scored, with bonuses for not using hints. The Hint system is excellent, much like the Layton series. After the game show, host takes you out for a drink, but an FBI agent comes to ask for help with puzzles found at a murder scene. Then there is more back and forth -- gameshow puzzles, crime scene puzzles. These are good puzzles, and excellently presented. Puzzle creators include the best in the world: Oscar van Deventer, Andrea Gilbert (clickmazes, River Crossing), James Stephens (puzzlebeast, Anti-Virus), Tom Jolly, and the Grabarchuk family (Big, Big Book of Brainteasers). They get credit in the end titles.

The Presentation
I was reminded of the DS game Again. Live actors are filmed, and dropped into stylized sets which are made of 2D layers. The puzzles come about as fast as in the Layton series (and much faster than in 9 Hours). Each time a puzzle is solved in the Show, there is an applause scene, which gets old fast. But otherwise, I thought the stylized version of 1961 was done okay. The story is still on the thin side, and I finished it in 4 hours. But I've only needed to solve about a quarter of the puzzles to get to the end of the game -- I have about a hundred more puzzles to solve.

Highly Recommended.

This games reminds me a great deal of the Professor Layton games, except the puzzles appear more frequently and you don't have to navigate through a lot of superfluous, boring content to get to them. Some of the games become a bit repetitive, but there's still a good variety. On the con side, the voices of the characters are completely unsynced with their mouths. After a while, it starts becoming really irritating. And the games mostly take place on the bottom, non-3D screen, so don't expect a lot of 3D-type games. Overall, I would recommend this game, but for the price, it could have been a little better.

I will admit that I haven't made it very far in this game, but that's probably due to how annoying it is. Let me first say that I *love* puzzle and mystery games. I have a pretty varied collection on the DS, so when I saw this title available for the 3DS I jumped on it. The premise is sound, but the way they went about it is terrible. The chintzy animation is just distracting. The developer seems to have used stop animation to save space on the cartridge (or something). When someone talks it looks like I'm watching South Park's interpretation of a Canadian with a flop-top head -- except South Park uses more than 3 frames of animation. The acting is pretty bad in general though, so maybe that's why it was done. Hire some convincing actors next time. The game also suffers from pretty lengthy load times. I found myself wanting to go do something else between puzzles just to avoid dealing with more bad cut-scenes and load times. The puzzles themselves were fun, but it felt like I was wading through a sea of terrible to find my reward.

James Noir's Hollywood Crimes is a puzzle solving game set in 1961 with a murder mystery backdrop supported by live actors in FMV.

The game alternates between rounds of a quiz show you're competing on and an FBI agent asking for help with puzzle he finds at murder scenes. One particularly nice thing about this premise is the puzzles are integrated into the story. All are either part of the quiz show portion or the killer leaving you challenges. A small detail, but it is better than stopping the story to play an unrelated puzzle to progress, as some other games of this type do.

The puzzles are very well designed and varied, featuring some that felt quite unique. I didn't use the 3D effects much, but the couple times I turned them on they seemed fine - neither a great enhancement nor a detraction.

While a little on the short side (a calling card of FMV games) and not being something you'll go back to again and again Hollywood Crimes has excellent puzzles, an entertaining story and is a lot of fun while it lasts.

This is a very good adventure for the 3DS. The graphics are simply stunning. I had never played an adventure game on the 3DS before - but I decided to give this a try since I badly needed an adventure game for my 3DS. Man, but I have to admit this game was perfect for me. Excellent story and fun 3D puzzles. The voice acting - I actually like it-but some people didn't as much as I did. To me, the English was perfectly spoken. Overall, I really liked this game and it compares well with DS adventure games which is a lofty statement to make. This is easily one of the best 3DS games out right now, and is worth buying if you bought a single adventure game on the DS.

Pros:
Puzzles - varied in type and difficulty, these are what you bought the game for. Don't expect anything extremely difficult, though.
Plot - trying to crack the case of a serial murderer who leaves puzzles in his wake, you can get somewhat absorbed trying to figure out the killer's identity. However, it's not a strong enough plot to stand alone

Cons:
Hints - there's very little downside to using hints. Additionally, using hints removes almost all challenge from advancing the plot
User interface - text input uses a virtual typewriter with very tiny keys. There is no left handed option for the touchscreen, making some actions quite inconvenient for lefties
3D effects - the cutscenes and puzzles do not benefit at all from a 3D screen
Length - I've completed ~90% of the game in 3.5 hours. Unacceptable for a $40 game

Other thoughts:
In other puzzle/adventure games, puzzles emerge from the plot. In Hollywood Crimes, most of the puzzles feel like they were thrown in to take up the player's time between story segments.

Conclusion:
With other adventure/puzzle games, the plot is generally good enough on its own to hook the player and long enough to leave the player satisfied after completion. Hollywood Crimes is just too short to give any feelings of accomplishment.

So far the best 3ds game I have played. Literally couldn't put it down for hours. Delivered on time and in great condition.