Review for Milanoir. Game for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 31/05/2018 The version for Xbox One came out on 08/06/2018
To those who are passionate about television series it seems normal to appear in the list of titles already seen, or still to be seen, series such as "Romanzo Criminale" or "Gomorra" that have seen us excel in the world. Most of the viewers, however, do not know that the precursor of these types of media is what is lovingly called Poliziottesco, or detective noir, a trend of the 70s - 80s that brings with it a load of action, blood, violence and wickedness we are no longer used to today. It was a raw genre, made up of a wickedness close to the real criminal reality and not to that ape in today's series: to understand, first you shoot and then you ask questions.
The team Italo Games repeats this trend in detail with Milanoir , already available on Steam and today also landed on Nintendo Switch thanks also to the support of Gambitious Digital Entertainment.
The development team focused on enhancing, also thanks to a pixelated graphics, the noir and violent atmosphere of the film genre we talked about earlier. In Milanoir the bad guys are real bad guys, and they don't mind killing anyone who stands in their way: women, old people, innocents and even children.
The player plays Piero, a shady guy who doesn't get too much trouble when it comes to taking action. Precisely because of Piero's reckless behavior and his easy trigger, an innocent person ends up killed. It seems almost ethically acceptable, therefore, that an anonymous tip leads the police on the trail of the protagonist and, consequently, him in San Vittore.
Between fights during the hour of air, beatings by the guards, escapes aboard lambrette and alfette, the enthralling plot unfolds that will see you step by step unravel the intricate skein that makes up the history of Milanoir. It would be too cruel to give you other advances, but know that without banalities and clichés, for seven hours you can enjoy a pleasant, curated and bloody story.
The epilogue could also have been less predictable, but in the end it is understandable: it is certainly not on the surprise effect that the Polizziottesque genre founded its empire.
As for the gameplay, it gets complicated. Milanoir was developed to be used on PC via the Steam platform. This means that the gameplay is designed for keyboard and mouse, and in fact with this pairing it really returns a lot of satisfaction. Putting the responsibility of acting as a mouse to the left stick of Nintendo Switch is too much, and the result is less clean than it should be.
The left stick, the backbone for reload and fire, and the one for dodging, also work properly on the Switch, but unfortunately the damage done by the right stick is heavy. The development team meets the player by providing an assisted aiming system which, however, even if calibrated on the highest levels, is not enough to bridge the gap between the use of the mouse and that of the right Joy-Con.
It's a shame given that the gameplay itself, thanks also to the retro graphics, holds up well: luckily after a few hours of use you get used to it and you can compensate in a decent way. To accentuate the discomfort, however, we also find an unbalanced level of difficulty and calibrated upwards. In some points of the game, in fact, the situation becomes frustrating: this is due to a request for high precision in the face of a series of inaccurate commands. Fortunately, automatic saves are very frequent and this does not force the player to repeat long game sessions.
Also interesting is the possibility, by separating the Joy-Con from the console, to face the adventure in two, exactly as it happened in the movies of the seventies in which the protagonist was always flanked by a shoulder, almost always blond and with long hair and mustache. thick.
Too bad for the scarce variety of weapons available which, apart from the Molotov cocktails and the Magnum (classic legacy that lays the foundations in: "A 44 Magnum for Inspector Callaghan", Ed.), Offers very little to have fun with . Fortunately, the approximately seven hours of adventure run smoothly, thanks to colorful and well-designed scenarios and chases aboard the Piaggio Ape, and the action is certainly not desired. Good boss fights, which force the player to study the opponent's movement patterns, under penalty of certain and bloody death.
The graphics are perfectly in line with the plot and atmosphere of the game, and are extremely effective and accurate while being extremely pixelated. The animations are fluid and precise, and the supporting characters are all very well characterized. We find a place for some clichés of the genre, with classic proper names that easily refer to well-known TV series: we have Ciro, Tony, Il Torinese, the African and of course Piero. The underworld of prostitution is the Bauscia, and the police become the Pula: an attention to detail that we appreciated.
The soundtrack, then, is incredibly faithful to the cinema saga of the genre in the 70s and is pleasant, coherent and perfect as a background for our entire adventure without ever being too invasive and underlining with well-characterized sound effects the topical moments of the plot of Milanoir. In short, a very well done job.
Milanoir is an excellent example of how a job can please the world a neglected genre like the 70s crime drama. Such a pulp genre has been excellently transposed by the development team, Italo Games, obtaining a remarkable final result. Too bad for the inaccuracies of the controls and the fluctuating level of difficulty, defects that preclude Milanoir from a triumphal entry into the world indie scene. Despite this, we are sure that the title will hit the hearts of many, exactly as it did ours.
► Milanoir is an Adventure-indie type game published by Good Shepherd Entertainment for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 31/05/2018 The version for Xbox One came out on 08/06/2018
