Blues and Bullets - Episode 1: The End of Peace

Blues and Bullets is a showcase in how to open the story of an episodic videogame.

A strong starting point for this episodic series. I for one am quite eager to see where Eliot’s story ends up leading and if you’re a fan of Noir fiction, or have a taste for the gritty, Blues and Bullets will definitely scratch that itch for you.

Technical hiccups aside, Blues and Bullets is a raucous and relentlessly entertaining inaugural entry into the episodic adventure genre.

Blues and Bullets was a title I had very little expectations of, and it blew me away with a fantastic first episode.

A brilliantly stylized noir mystery, whose dark metaphysical turns evoke equal parts True Detective and Sin City. A Crowd Of Monsters has crafted a uniquely dark experience, drawing both from historical facts as well as their vision of post-war America.

Blues and Bullets gives you the rawness of the emotion that has parallels to L.A. Noire.

As a pilot episode, Blues and Bullets gives the series an intriguing start.

Created by A Crowd of Monster and written by Joshua Monchan (Runaway, Yesterday) its story allows you take the role of the famous Eliot Ness, 20 years after he arrested the notorious criminal Al Capone. This setting is quite interesting although gameplay is too linear and easy.

Quotation forthcoming.

This episodic action adventure has a solid foundation, although there should be something more in the coming episodes to back it up. The premise is promising, just some fine tuning and the product hits right on the mark. [Dec 2015]

We want to give the benefit of doubt to this first episode of Blues and Bullets. It brings back a noir atmosphere that has been missing for quite a while in videogames, but it's also an adventure with well defined rails where the player can only slightly change direction. Now we just want to see where the story goes, and if the developers really deserve our trust.

Even though it had a less than flattery introduction, the second half changes the gear and managed to capture our interest. There is uneven quality among the actors and some cheesy dialogue, but it nevertheless narrates an interesting story that we would very well like to see how it unfolds. Let’s hope that it will prove to be True Detective season 1 and not season 2.

The first episode comes across as being too eager to show you everything all at once, instead of taking things slower and allowing you to absorb what just happened. The script is good but has moments that don’t seem that logical, but in spite of this The End Of Peace is a decent start to the series.

A few bizarre twists and noted historical mutations left me equally confused and intrigued.

If you are interested in this type of narrative games, you're here to telling you a story, and the one that offers A Crowd of Monsters is well shaped and has enough incentives to want to continue it in the next chapters.

Although Blues and Bullets isn’t without its flaws, this first episode sets a distinctive comic-book, crime-noir attitude compelling enough to keep you playing and looking forward to what the series will offer in future installments. Anyone who enjoys classic noir fiction or the decidedly modern, bloody take on it offered up on the grim streets of Sin City will find a lot to like here.

With one episode behind me, I feel like the series may be too rough in far too many areas to heartily recommend to all, but regardless there is something compelling about it.

Blues and Bullets is ambitious, but messy. The design is interesting and the setting promising, but the story is based on too many cliches and unimpressive dialogues. A Crowd of Monsters have shown what it is capable of, without really persuading gamers into loving Blues and Bullets.

Elliot Ness, now retired, is allied with Al Capone to solve the mysterious disappearance of some children in Santa Esperanza.

Though its first episode is a bit of a letdown, especially when you consider that A Crowd of Monsters was billing this as one of the most anticipated titles of 2015 (whether or not this is true is another story entirely), there is a chance that Blues and Bullets might wind up being something special.