Blacksad: Under the Skin Reviews

The games looks promising, and the comic atmosphere is there, but the game play ain't great ( i may be wrong or stupid, but so far i was unable to change the keyboard....) and at some point at the start of the game, i inadvertantly missed an action, a key action which is supposed to unlock a clue ( Mary has a good writing ) and now i can't go forward with the main story because of this. only solution i guess is to restart.....

Very bad controls, and even worse camera angles. Portion of the game lock you into making chain choices and locations with no way to return and collect missed cards. It was designed with the notion you would exhaust areas for cards first, and then information, but doesn't warn you in the tutorials that places are no longer reachable after certain progress is made, or if a location is a one time visit. The mystery is nice, but it's hard to focus on the details of the case when most of the effort is spent fighting the camera and controls. Devs also didn't bother to set controls to affect every time the game starts up so sound and music are always 100% until you hit the actual menu and load in the same entry scene each time through every title, and it's annoying after experiencing it the first time loading. Some options and intractable don't occur or load, subtitles are wrong, and sometimes voice doesn't play in a scene when you investigate somethings. You can force them by reloading a save and get everything to work again, but it's been several years now and these small quality of life changes should have been week 1 patch.

Definitely has some rough edges (walking controls, soundtrack mixing, a few frustrating QTEs) but if you like the 40s detective vibes then this is a game for you. I had a difficult time getting a stable 60fps on deck, but using the deck's 30 fps limiter gave me a smooth experience. I hope we see a sequel one of these days!

Good game so far, interesting storyline and so far the choices/characters are really fleshed out. A lot of the negative reviews for this game are about the camera since this game is an older game originally intended for console. I'm not having too much of a problem with the camera since a lot of story-based games have a similar system (The Wolf Among Us and Detroit: Become Human are two examples) and it really doesn't bother me. The only real issue for me is the movement is very stilted where you can only go one direction and have to fully stop to turn. Additionally, the lack of custom controls is a bit of a pain since this game requires you to use WASD, the arrow keys, enter, and a mouse with absolutely no way to change which buttons are which. I would recommend a controller but everything else is solid.

This is one of my most favorite noir style games. The atmosphere is truly amazing and immersive in this game, you really feel like a detective in the old days. The music is really good and cozy. The story is interesting, and, to be honest, has a really good plot twist that I didn't expect till almost the end. The choices really matter and it satisfied me to see the results they brought. The characters are very unique and fun, they all have a different personality. Main character's best friend made me laugh many times. I truly wish there were more games like this one, where you can just immerse yourself into the noir world and feel it through with good music and atmosphere.

Seeing this game's release was a breath of fresh air after The Wolf Among Us, which i see their similarities in both settings of "odd detective in odd universe", but as The Wolf Among Us told their own story, which was a prequel to original story, Blacksad: Under the Skin tells the story straight from comic's chapters, which is interesting to see how it would play out in form of the game with actual choices. And here's the tricky part, as much as i love the lore of Blacksad, this game just makes it difficult to actually enjoy the story and immerse yourself in it, because game is RIDDLED with technical problems, glitches, poor optimization and terrible QTE's which are core part of the gameplay (most of which will kill you), another bad apple is that some of the chapters have... really weird illusions of choice, and i get it, in Blacksad some choices really should be thought of carefully, because not everything you do will have a good consequence, but i hate how game gives me whole 4 options, 3 of which will kill you regardless, never understood why this was a good idea to put in majority of the game, especially near the end, if the game goes by it's original, predetermined plot. There's part of the game where you have limited time to find an object, which makes it harder to do with Blacksad's sluggish movement and terrible freezes (not to mention terrible controls if you play on Mouse and Keyboard), which just make you more frustrated. In conclusion, is this a good story? Yes, absolutely. Is this a good introduction to Blacksad? Again, yes. Is this a good game? I wanna say yes, with all my heart, but unfortunately no, voice acting is a bit stiff, which is completely killing the atmosphere with sound bugs, characters pausing for a second or two before continuing, freezes, hitches, music disappearing mid chapter and everything else, like graphical glitches, animations pausing (sometimes some characters just stand there like frozen in time). This could've been another classic like previously mentioned The Wolf Among Us, but unfortunately, game felt into the void, with a price tag that does not justify it's quality

ATTENTION: DO YOUR SELF A FAVOR AND GET THIS GAME ONLY ON CONSOLE It's a great game that you should only play on console. The PC version of this game is utter garbage. The standard control keys are truly manic. If you're using a controller, the game will constantly forget if you're using a playstation or xbox controller, WHICH CHANGES THE BUTTONS ON THE SCREEN IN THIS QUICKTIME EVENT BASED GAME. No matter the settings, the game can't switch between camera angles without stuttering, and the loading times are too long for what you're getting in the end. My RTX 4070 can't run this game smoothly at 1080p resolution. There is constant flickering, the audio doesn't match up well enough with the lip syncing, and all of this completely destroys the otherwise awesome atmosphere. Also, do yourself a favor and don't turn the tutorial on. It's absolute dogshit and constantly blocks and interrupts you with things you've already learned in another tutorial 10 seconds before. Get this game on console. The PC version doesn't deserve to earn money.