Genesis Noir

I'm certainly not the first person to point out that horrendous tragedies often lead to great art. Just take a look back at how World War II made way for the Italian neorealism movement or how classic rock bands were inspired to create protest songs to push back at Vietnam. Hell, even Godzilla was born out of the fear and anxiety that came from two atomic bombs being dropped on Japan. I bring all this up because I feel like we're starting to see a similar trend coming out of the COVID era. We're barely four months into the year, and already we've seen countless examples of boundary-pushing titles that are as mesmerizing as they are memorable. The newest example of this trend is Genesis Noir, an absolutely astonishing new adventure game that is so endlessly creative and original that you'll immediately want to tell everybody you know to play it. Which, I guess, is basically what I'm doing here.

Genesis Noir is the story of, well ... everything. What starts out as a black and white crime thriller about a famed jazz musician who shoots his lover quickly spirals out of controls and spans 13.7 billion years of history, as well as the future. It uses the violent inciting incident to tell the story of the big bang, the solar system, how the Earth was shaped, early civilizations, love, death and pretty much everything else. It's a tough game to talk about, because a lot of the story and narrative is both abstract and metaphorical, taking on an unforgettable journey through space and time, while simultaneously introducing the science of music, the importance of human connection and the ramifications of senseless brutality. This is one of those "you just have to play it for yourself" sort of games.

Thankfully, the gameplay is easier to describe than the story. Genesis Noir is essentially a cross between a point and click adventure game and a puzzler. The game is split up into a bunch of different chapters, each of which takes us to a different point in time and has us solving unique puzzles. For example, you'll be gluing objects back together while exploring ancient Japan, while a later level will see you working with NASA to slam particles together using their chaos simulator. There are also rhythm game mechanics, as we discover when we jam with a street musician in one of my favorite story threads.

When you're not solving the puzzles, the game will play out like an interactive graphic novel. We'll run through the different panels and interact with items in the environment, which can be anything from finding fishing equipment in the snowy fields to throwing meteors at nearby planets. The story throws so much at the player that you won't bat an eye when you start gardening or manipulating time. And yet, for as all over the place as the story ends up being, I never lost the plot. I always felt like I came away with something important from each vignette, even when some of those threads come across as being completely random at the time. But it's not random, and Genesis Noir does an excellent job of tying all of these disparate parts together in a truly mind-boggling finale that is both epic and satisfying. So much happens in this game that I was nearly out of breath by the time the credits finally rolled.

Of course, Genesis Noir's secret weapon is its unique art style. You're willing to go on this expansive journey largely because of the way the game looks. It's a mix of 1940s film noir and acid trip retro chic. It's trippy, to put it mildly. Even the more grounded moments feel like they exist in space or are not connected to anything resembling a real world. You'll often see multiple versions of the same characters doing slightly different actions or worlds existing in other worlds. Our hungry investigator will grow, shrink and change as the story sees fit, always giving off the impression that we're stuck in somebody's psychedelic dreams. Every event, both big and small, transitions seamlessly, always in a creative and mesmerizing way. This is one of the most visually arresting games I've ever played, and it only gets better the deeper you get. And it's not one of those games where certain parts stand out more than others, because it's all amazing. Any part I show, even if it's completely random, will blow you away with its style. It's almost unfair to the rest of the games coming out this year.

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Unfortunately, the absolutely stunning visuals come at a price. The biggest problem with Genesis Noir is its performance, which can really chug towards the end. The game runs smoothly for the most part, but there are definitely moments where the animation drops frames and slows down to a crawl. This resulted in one section crashing so hard that I thought I was going to have to turn the computer off. Thankfully, that only happened once, but the performance issues definitely got in the way. Even when everything was running fine, you can still sense that something is a little off due to the floaty cursor. I'm hoping that the game will be better optimized as the developer continues rolling out the patches.

Speaking of issues, it's worth pointing out that some of the puzzles are real hit or miss. You'll start to notice the pattern after a while, where the game will introduce a concept and then have you repeat it five or six times with increasingly challenging puzzles. There are a couple that feel more like guessing and fiddling than actual problem solving, which blunts the momentum for a little while. You'll also run into puzzles that are so easy that they feel like little more than busywork. That said, I commend the developers for finding so many different types of puzzles and tasks to work on, and I like how none of them last very long. Even when you're dealing with the worst puzzles, the pacing is so brisk that you'll be back to the great stuff in no time.

But let's be honest here, you're not coming to Genesis Noir to glue a pot back together. You're playing this game for the trippy narrative structure and spectacle, and that's precisely where it delivers. You play this game to experience something you've never seen before and be challenged by its thought-provoking story. This is a stunning accomplishment that once again proves that there's still a lot of originality to be mined in the video game industry. I cannot recommend Genesis Noir highly enough.