Blacksad: Under the Skin is a really hard game to review. It is both brilliant and also highly flawed. You play as detective John Blacksad, a cat detective and war veteran. This may sound jarring if you aren’t aware of the Eisner-winning Spanish comic the game is based off, but every single character is an anthropomorphised animal.
Early critic assertions had it at around a 6/10 while user reviews on Steam are categorised as “very positive”. I played through the game after initial patches had released, so there is a chance I had a more polished experience. There certainly are still problems with the game that I will get to later in the review, but I do think my time with the game was positively impacted by the patches released over the first month.
Initially released under the radar at the beginning of November on the EU store, Blacksad then came to the US PSN in early December. Truth be told, I have never read any comic and hadn’t even heard of this particular franchise until the game popped up on the PlayStation Blog. Playing through this though has inspired me to pick up my first graphic novel, which at the age of 34 is a huge complement to what Pendulo Studio has created here.
The story begins with Blacksad in his office as an angry Rhino is looking to rip your head off over photos you have of him cheating on his wife. Straight away the game introduces you to it’s QTE mechanics and gives you a choice to make; agree to not show the Rhino’s wife the pictures or drop him right in it. From there you meet Sonia Dunn, daughter of boxing club owner Joe Dunn, who has died in suspicious circumstances. This is the case you spend the game solving, with twists along the way.
The opening scene sets the tone for what is to come. I would best describe the gameplay as a cross between Telltale games outstanding Wolf Among Us and Frogwares Sherlock Holmes series. The setting is a 1950’s noir soaked New York, where corruption and murder is around every corner. Despite the anthropomorphic characters the tone is mostly witty and serious. While some took issue with this I was happy to suspend my disbelief and found the story really engaging.
Much like in the Wolf Among Us you walk around detailed environments and interact with the various object and characters gathering clues and advancing the story. At times you have the option to enter a detective mode where you identify key clues which is a nice touch and there is also a thinking board very reminiscent of the Sherlock games where you marry together key pieces of information that then open up new lines of inquiry.
Unfortunately the game isn’t without it’s problems though. From reports it found it’s way on to the EU PSN store ahead of schedule and in an almost completely broken state. Since then a patch has fixed a lot of the issues, but not everything. I always play with subtitles on due to two loud kids running around and there were a few lines of dialogue throughout with no audio.
The game also crashed on me a handful of times, although thankfully checkpoints are generous and I never lost more than a few minutes of progress. One annoying glitch came when I was to examine a photo for clues but it was blurry. Despite initially thinking it was supposed to be like this, it became clear afterwards that it wasn’t.
The one potential game breaking bug I came across was when Blacksad was unable to walk through an open door leading to the next objective. It was almost like there was an invisible door stopping him. Reloading the checkpoint didn’t fix it either. Luckily I had a save backed up on a USB stick from about 10 minutes earlier. So word to the wise, back up your save regularly as the game only auto-saves over the one slot.
I was so invested in the story and the characters that none of these issues put me off at all, but I did always worry in the back of my mind about a corrupted save or a game breaking bug stopping me from progressing. I hope the rest of these problems can be ironed out, because with an extra layer of polish Blacksad: Under the Skin would be up there with some of Telltale’s best work.
None of the trophies are difficult, but it looks like it will require at least six partial playthroughs to pop the gold for seeing all alternate endings. Between that and some difficult to spot collectibles not many are likely to obtain the platinum trophy. In-fact as I write this no-one has earned it according to PSN Profiles.
Overall Blacksad: Under the Skin is a brilliant but buggy game. The amount of bugs you find is likely to be the deciding factor in your lasting opinion. I completely understand the low scores I have seen, but personally I loved every minute of my time with the game. One massive sticking point for some will be the price (£34.99) which is clearly too high. I hope over time this drops and more people jump on board with what is one of my favourite gaming experiences of 2019.
-VDZE
A review code was provided by the publisher. Reviewed on a PS4 Pro.
