Detective stories with anthropomorphic animals as characters are a surprisingly popular topic among adventure game authors. Suffice it to recall Bear With Me or the avian Aviary Attorney that came out a few years ago, and the classic Emerald City Confidential from the master of the genre, Dave Gilbert, partly belongs to the same category; in addition, almost half a dozen more of these things are currently in development – for example, Backbone, about the adventures of a raccoon detective in noir and dystopian Vancouver, is available as a demo . However, against the background of such indie projects, often budget, deliberately toy or just pixelated, Blacksad: Under the Skin stands out for its seriousness, epic and origin from experienced and eminent authors.

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Based in Madrid, Pendulo Studios is the oldest Spanish game development company still in existence, founded back in 1994 and since then has been sparingly but consistently delighting fans of the adventure genre: first with the colorful and drawn point-and-click Runaway series or a fun remake of one of the first of their games, Hollywood Monsters, – “The New Hit” , and then the gloomy mystical thrillers “Yesterday: The Seal of Lucifer” and unexpectedly changed the type of control to the console- like Yesterday Origins . Actually, Blacksad: Under the Skin continued exactly this line of evolution, only this time the project was developed by order of the French publishing house Microids in close cooperation with the French studio YS Interactive from Valenciennes – as a game adaptation of a series of stories in pictures about the adventures of the cat of the same name – a private detective . Which is quite logical, because this comic itself was created by the Spaniards – writer Juan Diaz Canales and artist Juanjo Guarnido – primarily for the French market, although it gained some popularity around the world, being translated into many languages, including Russian.

Strictly speaking, acquaintance with the original source is not required to complete the game: Under the Skin is an independent story in the same world and with the same main characters – however, acquaintance with these latter does not hurt in any way, because there are no references to the past to avoid, and at least a basic understanding of the setting for a better understanding of the situation is necessary to have. Events unfold in the United States – or rather, in New York – somewhere in the early 1950s, with all the features inherent in this era (or the traditions of its display in the detective noir genre), from rampant crime and McCarthyism to aggravated social inequality and residual recurrences of racism. The last moment is especially embarrassing in light of the fact that all the local characters are completely anthropomorphic – bipedal, upright and with hands instead of paws – animals: cats, dogs, lions, lynxes, rhinos, walruses, bulls, eagles, etc. They have names predominantly Anglo-Saxon, as well as Irish, Italian, etc.; at the same time, the species difference, surprisingly, does not have much significance for social status (although, for example, dogs of various breeds are mainly in the police service), and even marriages between representatives of, say, feline and bovid families are in the order of things . Against this background, racist ideas look somewhat strange, because there are not so many representatives of pure white or pure black colors among the same dogs or cats. The most interesting thing is the ability of the detective, when conducting an investigation and, for example, when entering the lair of criminals under a false guise, to impersonate someone else – about which the criminal partners awaiting his arrival know many subtleties, such as the number of children in the family, but with for some reason, they don’t even suspect that he is an elk, and not a cat at all! Well, okay – let’s not find fault, but just take it as a kind of deliberate convention inherited by the game from the printed original.

So, our protagonist is John Blacksad, a black cat and a typical noir-style private detective: a war veteran, cold-blooded and charismatic, he skillfully fights (and even better – solves complicated cases), is dressed in an invariable raincoat and smokes a lot. The two closest friends of the protagonist are the commissioner of the New York police, a German shepherd named Smirnov, restrained and surprisingly decent, with whom Blacksad often manages to find and capture the most high-ranking criminals; as well as the weasel-male Weekley, small and nimble, a journalist and photographer from the yellow press, and therefore an indispensable source and skillful getter of various confidential information. Of course, the detective also has many other friends and informants – for example, Jake Ostiombe, a huge black gorilla and a professional boxer: it is from his visit to our office, in the company of one pretty young feline, that the main plot of Blacksad begins to unfold : Under the Skin. Joe Dunn, owner of a boxing club, found hanged; in addition, his best pet, Bobby Yale, disappeared without a trace, who in just a couple of weeks was to enter into a decisive duel with the reigning champion. The daughter and heiress of the late Sonya Dunn is hiring us to track down a missing boxer – and there’s no doubt that the investigation of this case will be complex and lengthy, full of dangers and fraught with several new deaths, and at the same time will open before us a whole world of big sport – and even more corruption.

Outwardly, New York and its furry, fluffy, scaly and feathered inhabitants look very good; you shouldn’t expect an open world, the storyline doesn’t differ in convolutions and it’s not particularly possible to roam in local locations, however, gloomy nooks and crannies, criminals’ lairs and a detective’s office, a boxing club and a textbook diner – all this looks as bright, detailed and expressive as and facial expressions on the faces of numerous candidates for suspects (well, or new victims). And what is even more pleasing is the voice acting, presented in five versions at once, including not only Spanish or French, but even Russian, performed at a completely professional level and by actors familiar to us from game projects of the 2000s: in adventure games of such abundance we have not seen for a long time! True, skipping dialogues and other scenes is not allowed.

Management is also implemented far from the most optimal way: the interface is almost completely tailored to the controller (the game was also released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and is expected to be on Nintendo Switch in the near future). Surprisingly, more than half a century after the invention of Douglas Engelbart, Blacksad: Under the Skin does not know (or almost does not know) about the existence of such a convenient device as a computer mouse, which cannot even be used in the menu. In the absence of a gamepad, the standard keys W, A, S and D are responsible for the movement of Blacksad, displayed on the screen in a third-person perspective, with the only feature that the angles taken by the automatic camera are far from always convenient and appropriate. In principle, it is very possible to get used to the interface, although the training mode, which is supposedly designed to ease this addiction, is disabled by default and – at the time of writing the review – unfortunately, it is replete with harmful bugs.

In addition to the four keys for moving the character around the crime scene and other game locations, the interface also uses four arrows to control the movement of the camera, but not to a very large extent; in the event that something worthy of attention appears in our field of view – a suspect with whom we can talk, or evidence that requires a more thorough examination – such a point of interest is indicated on the screen by a large cross in a circle. It is unlikely to fail to notice it, but finding and achieving the appearance of such an indicator may not be so easy because of the already mentioned masterful camera angles. This is especially true of optional collectible items – fragments (and whole copies) of cards depicting various sports celebrities (naturally, horned and furry): football players, hockey players, etc. After collecting them, you can admire them in a special item of the main menu (called by pressing “Esc”), in the “Hall of Fame” album, and in the game itself they are located in random places, so finding them all will require quite a bit of pixel hunting (and a certain amount of luck).

As for the required points of interest, when they are activated – which is carried out using “input”, and if there are several such objects in Blacksad’s field of view, then the Tab key is used to select between them – we most often get the opportunity to consider the evidence more in detail, close. In this case, you can rotate the camera both with the arrows and – finally – with the mouse, while to return to the main perspective you will need to press either the Backspace or the right button of the manipulator. At times, when studying the appearance of suspects, our detective can and should use his “cat sense”, activated with “W”: after that we also go to a larger picture, but in slow motion and in black and white; finding, with the help of decreasing and increasing circles, the necessary details that are accessible to our heightened hearing, vision or smell (for example, a rapid heartbeat or a weapon hidden in a purse, to which our interlocutor’s hand involuntarily reached out), we use the “Q” and “E” keys to focus they have a camera on them – and we get new information for reflection in our piggy bank.

But the inventory is missing here as a class: all the information collected by the detective cat – with the exception of the collectible cards already mentioned – either falls into a notebook (you can view the records cataloged by the identities of witnesses and suspects using F1, although this is completely optional for a successful investigation ), or, as clues, to a special “deduction” section, the contents of which will necessarily need to be analyzed using F2. On the screen that appears by pressing this key, you can see the individual facts we have received – and connect them two by two (sometimes three), building logical conclusions (that among the information we have obtained there are already one or more “pairs” that match each other, is evidenced by the label with the number next to the brain icon on the deduction screen, as well as the periodically appearing hint from Blacksad on the main screen).

The conclusions obtained during the investigation allow us to move further along the plot – to see the next scenes laid down in the scenario or visit new locations (in the vast majority of cases automatically), as well as to involve additional topics in conversations with other characters. Replicas available for selection are displayed next to the designation of the keys that activate them: all the same W, A, S or D; at the same time, such an action is often also limited in time, which is symbolized by the circle icon in the middle of the dialog menu: if you do not have time to make a choice before this circle is filled with white, Blacksad will simply remain silent instead of a replica, which also formally means one of the possible lines of behavior . “Formally” – because, despite the abundance of more or less significant plot forks, their consequences are far from always obvious. Yes, sometimes our words and actions can very soon and unexpectedly lead, say, to another murder, and in the main menu, in the “Your Blacksad” section, you can always see the “balance” of such character traits of your character as “sensitive / callous” , “pragmatic / principled”, “silent / talkative”, “prosperous / poor”, etc. However, due to the general linearity of the plot, a tangible influence on the fate of Blacksad and other characters, this choice does not particularly have: perhaps, in a different similar surroundings The Wolf Among Us from the late Telltale Games, the consequences of our actions were realized much more clearly.

But in what few adventure games can compare with Blacksad: Under the Skin, it is in the abundance of QTE: not only the choice of a replica in the dialogues, but also many other actions must be performed quickly, and at times very quickly, either by pressing some keys with a letter (out of the same four most familiar ones), visible on the screen for one or two seconds, or by pressing the “spacebar” quickly and repeatedly. On the one hand, this is quite logical, because it is in this way that fight scenes and other situations of the use of force are implemented in the game, without which an American detective, by definition, cannot do. On the other hand, individual cases of QTE may still seem annoying and simply uncomfortable to fans of leisurely adventure games: which prevented the authors from making at least two difficulty levels to choose from, with the ability, if desired, to somewhat ease (if not skip at all) the mandatory actions for reaction speed, unclear. Fortunately, situations of death or failure of Blacksad due to our sluggishness or simply the wrong choice do not lead to the end of the game: a second attempt is always available by pressing “Enter”. However, at the same time, we often have to listen to and view scenes and dialogues already known to us over and over again, which, we recall, are not allowed to be squandered.

Nevertheless, despite a considerable number of minor errors in terms of control and gameplay, Blacksad: Under the Skin turns out to be a very worthy project that cannot but be recommended to all fans of full-sized adventure games and especially stylish detective stories (and not only fans of the original comics: rather, on the contrary, the release of the game can stimulate a lot of interest in the drawn source). One has only to get used to the local interface a little – and the investigation of murders and corruption in the world of big sport and various anthropomorphic animals can captivate seriously and for a long time. Or rather, for 10-12 hours, depending on your ability to manage the QTE – however, during this time (albeit exceeding the average duration of a modern adventure game), you are unlikely to be able to find all the collectibles and in any case you will see only one ending of six alternatives. True, the finale turned out to be not as large-scale as we would like: for example, more detailed information about the further fate of the characters in accordance with the choice we made during the game will not be provided – let’s hope that the developers will be able to fix some of the shortcomings noted in the upcoming patches.