Playing this is the right call! It's a game of two halves. Consistently interesting stories bulwarked by a peerless atmosphere, but a badly executed detective game. Ignore the latter for the writing.
Only night call you're getting is the fire department kicking your door down.
A presentational marvel - its noir pastiche, rain-assaulted Paris is haunted by the ashen-faced passengers whose stories and animations appear ethereal and dreamlike. The perfect illusion of travel is cast by the framed windshield window into our night-time confidant's world - entrenched by Pah-rhee's anatomy and detailed by verisimilar GPS progression. Only with the greyest of hearts could you fault it on the continuity errors between the apparent driving that's occurring and the occasional mention of having 'stopped' or 'turn here.'
A detectorial disaster - is there a bigger sin a game could possibly commit than 'inciting my amateur soapbox rants about the medium failing us on detective mechanics?' Yes - many - but it doesn't make it any easier on you, dear reader. Why Night Call would wish to subject you to me, I don't know. We'll get through it, I promise.
Night Call is a game of two halves. First, however, know that, for goodness' sake, Night Call is worth your time. I played it for ten hours on the PC gamepass, received a review copy and then went on to do exactly the same again on Steam.The former half is being slapped with a 'highly recommended' right here and now.
Making you a racist was a bold decision.
The premise is inspired if not delightfully deranged. In the driver's seat of a Parisian taxi driver with a history who's hospitalised by a serial killer, you're subjected to salt-wound rubbing by the police no less. Find the killer or be arrested for the crimes of your assailant. They certainly take 'victim-blaming' to a whole new level. I'm a big fan of the darkest depths of cynicism here.
Because beyond the flick of its hair and a wink, Night Call's voice is yet its strongest suit. Without missing a beat, its writing can jump from cynical, outré and earnest, and always politically-pointed whilst it does it. This isn't equal opportunity South Park wherein everyone's a target and thus no one is. Night Call has a political voice. That it avoids tonal whiplash whilst juggling real life-inspired stories with complete fantasy demonstrates its facility. In spite of some Telltale-esque smoke and mirrors, the dialogue choices feel involved, fun, and consequential. Your knowledge of each passenger is charted and each playthrough leaves a lot of empty space.
It's too bad Call's approach to replayability is slightly borked. Whilst I appreciate the effort of three set killer scenarios (no random generation making detection too predictable - see Shapeshifting Detective), the very same passengers are reset every time to the beginning of their conversations with you. Perhaps if the game prioritised passengers you hadn't encountered before or allowed you to select from a roster your priorities? It's a damn shame that a game so clearly aiming for replayability simply can't escape it in its structural totality.
Procrastination sure is one tough demon to scrimmage with.
Right. The fun bit. I'm admittedly fussy with detective mechanics. It seems to me that there are so many ways you could systemise the serial killer hunt in interesting ways. Unfortunately, what it amounts to here is time management between fares and evidence hunting. Run out of money through overly compromising your time and it's game over. Back to the beginning of the night you're on at least. What THIS amounts to, even on the hardest difficulty, is not much more than that you shouldn't splurge money on evidence - which, as we'll see, you really shouldn't worry about regardless. With the amount of passenger shepherding you'll be doing, so long as you're not listening to the radio or reading the paper all night long, you're really not running a real risk of failure.
Evidence collection, as ever, provides some rich character moments free from the seat, but mechanically is ever so underwhelming. You're often simply informed that you've been told information in the abstract - that you later see on an evidence board. It's to simplify development for the different scenarios, etc, I understand, but it's very much the game keeping you at arm's length to the point you don't care.
Its biggest detective sin is that in your final prediction of the killer, the game outright informs you (in a coded way) whether you are correct or not and asks if you'd like to try again. Get it wrong a second time and you can reload to the very same moment for a guaranteed right answer if you exhaust all four options. I had little to no evidence on the killer for one playthough and it didn't stop me from being congratulated on the excellent info I'd amassed upon correct selection.
Here's how you could make it interesting. You're a taxi driver. You've memorised a goddamn city. Your hippocampus has enlarged to size of a melon. You're a congeries of the modern fireside storyteller and priest for confession with no hands available. Systemise that by having the player listen closely and have to physically type out what they can recall of a conversation afterwards - perhaps with the clock still ticking away? Have that placed on the evidence board later. No more abstracted away 'you've been told evidence.' Also, fail to link the killer and it's game over with the save game deleted.
New working theory - they all did it. No... the cat.
That's a very different game I'm fallaciously and unfairly conjuring in front of us, since Night Call is principally not a detective game at heart and shouldn't be slighted so. It's about consistently interesting stories and interactions bulwarked by a peerless atmosphere. Whilst I'm still excited to play such upcoming titles as Neo Cab, Night Call has cast upon me the worst of curses. That of raised standards. To play this, though? It's the right call.
