With A Bang or A Whimper: A Critical Review of ‘Genesis Noir’
Genesis Noir is one of the strangest gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time, not simply because the game is brimming with the bizarre – which it is – but because I couldn’t stop wrestling with my feelings about the game until the credits rolled. Almost a year ago, I had the chance to play the demo for Genesis Noir, and I was rightly blown away by the completely unique presentation. I wrote at the time that Genesis Noir’s demo was “borderline incomprehensible with its psychedelic overtones,” praising its “gripping and expressive” hand-animated art style that I still believe is nearly “unrelenting with its strangeness.” This past week, I dove into the full experience of Genesis Noir, which, while not living up to the promise of the fantastic demo, presented a handful of moments that are unique to the dozens of games I write about each year.
I eagerly sought after an early review copy of Genesis Noir because it has topped my Steam wishlist ever since its announcement back during 2019’s E3 conference. Playing the demo last year secured my enthusiasm for the monochrome, jazzy take on both space exploration and detective mystery. Though I excitedly booted up the game in anticipation of what wild adventures this game would take me on, I found myself quickly bored, presented with what feels like, for a game like this, the most traditional game design possible. I stopped playing about 45 minutes in, promising myself to return to Genesis Noir the next day.
In the Beginning
The first area of Genesis Noir, “Seeding,” features the otherwise nameless protagonist, “No Man,” wandering the sparse landscapes in the middle of nowhere. Quickly, you are presented with a number of colored seeds: light seeds which consume light energy, dark seeds which consume dark energy, and eventually golden seeds which clear the path of obstructing golden-barred gates. The game design of this section is never bad, but I felt a sort of expectational whiplash after the whacky and fresh take on game design that last year’s demo provided. “Seeding” is almost textbook with its game design insofar as you simply walk around, open up the palm of your hand (your inventory), and place the matching seed into the available hole. There, the seed will grow, clearing your path and allowing you to move on to the next required seed. It was all over in a flash, and I felt no closer to the art direction or the narrative than I had at the outset. If anything, I was pushed further away. “Oh no,” I thought, “we’re in for some puzzle padding.”
Before picking apart why the first several hours of Genesis Noir continued in an unremarkable fashion, it might be useful to briefly sketch out and elaborate on why I was so glowing in my review of the demo last April. Obviously, it’s a good rule of thumb to mentally divorce what a demo showcases from your expectations of what will be present in the full game at release – the recent buzzword “vertical slice” comes to mind – but Genesis Noir’s demo was so outstandingly compelling that I had no doubts that I’d encounter the entirety of the demo during the game. I was right, but I didn’t expect that demo chapter to appear roughly three hours into my playtime. By then, I had all but given up on the promise that the demo had left me with: a visual presentation that routinely interwove cosmic absurdities with pedestrian city life, a gameplay presentation that played off basic point-and-click expectations, and a musical style that wasn’t just present but interwoven into the very gameplay and animations themselves. The vast majority of Genesis Noir, leading back up to this demo, fails to do any of these things.
Genesis Noir starts incredibly slow, and its first two hours are deeply insecure about being a video game. Jamming in little molecular puzzles and traversal segments just feels incoherent with the niche that the rest of the game is attempting to carve out for itself.
Most of the opening hours of Genesis Noir feel like No Man is trapped in an infinite void. Here, you will see repeating images – clones, fractals, parallel universes? – that form the basis of light puzzling and exploration. Genesis Noir’s infinities never reach the visual splendor of recent games like Manifold Garden, for instance, but they are nevertheless visually striking – at least until the game has thrown a similar image at you a dozen or so times. Though there are gestures at narrative – a bodacious woman who may or may not blend into the femme fatale archetype, a rival musician whose angst arises from past insecurities and betrayal, the investigation into a shooting that implies murder mystery, etc. – and I was actively trying to follow along, I got the sense that most of Genesis Noir was meaningless nonsense, astrophysics jargon thrown in a blender with existentialist conclusions as the other ingredient. While Genesis Noir aspired to be the Carl Sagan of games, it ultimately became the Neil Degrasse Tyson in its ethos.
And don’t get me wrong: I love pretentious nonsense! The very efforts that led me to write about video games in the first place arose from a middle-brow concern that games weren’t taken seriously enough as an artistic storytelling medium. And though Genesis Noir superficially scratches that itch at times, so much of its early gameplay is filled with stuff that I’ve done in every other indie game before, that the overall package would be completely unremarkable if not for its visual presentation. The narrative, even though things get weird (in a good way) towards the game’s end, never quite clicked with me, and I finished the game feeling almost the same as when I set the controller down for the first time: disappointed.
Moments of Greatness
Despite my obvious complaints and reservations about how Genesis Noir feels like a broken promise from the exceptional demo offered last year, I didn’t dislike the game. But it took a while for me to reach this conclusion about Genesis Noir’s redeeming qualities. I think I wanted the gameplay to be more directly infused with the music, for example. The demo, which became the chapter called “Improvisation,” visually responded to the auditory cues given to the player. As a result, every interaction felt musical. Even the everyday mundanity of the city bubbled over with life and movement because the music animated the character’s perception of the world, whether the city or the universe. So many of the early chapters in Genesis Noir, however, treat music incidentally. At the best of times, you will hear a saxophone or a piano ring out in response to a puzzle solution or a cutscene, and at the worst of times you will simply hear generic coffeeshop cymbals absentmindedly tapping along.
Perhaps it’s my background with music or perhaps it’s my quixotic tastes as a player, but Genesis Noir reminded me of how I tend to be more critical of things that are otherwise closer to my heart. I think of my article about The Last of Us Part II from last year, for instance, where I described it as “one of the toughest gaming experiences I’ve ever endured.” Even though I spent ample words praising certain aspects of that game, The Last of Us Part II left me cold because it clearly could have been great, but wasn’t. Genesis Noir strikes me in a similar fashion to the extent that it has moments of greatness which ultimately feel padded out and disconnected from the genuinely remarkable aspects of the experience.
Given these remarkable aspects, I would be remiss to lament Genesis Noir’s repetitive and generic bits at the expense of some truly extraordinary moments of gameplay. Without retreading too much ground, suffice it to say that I was relatively bored with Genesis Noir, middling through the experience. That is, until I encountered the “Improvisations” demo once again. “Improvisations” is still a high point of the Genesis Noir experience, and though it might be easy and cynical to suggest that you would be better off just playing the demo, I will resist that tendency here.
Roughly half an hour to an hour after the return of “Improvisations,” I encountered a complete conceptual and psychological break within the game – something that I didn’t see coming from a million lightyears away. At first, I thought I had encountered the ending. But I soon realized that I had more galaxies left to hop between before my time with the universe was at its end.
Without touching on the narrative beats themselves, Genesis Noir’s apotheosis is a burst of unexpected color and music, a return to form but in the strangest and most unexpected way possible. What occurs in this sequence almost defies description due to how divorced your actions are from most video game verbs; similarly, the visual splendor of this scene had me audibly responding to it, even as I sat alone in my room while playing the game.
“Inquiry Into Relativity”
As the narrative comes to a head, No Man encounters a relatively God-like being, whose blinding white and formless, genderless, naked presence starkly contrasts the moody, masculine, detective-styled protagonist. Together, No Man and this God-character explore the innermost recesses of the cosmos (in the broadest sense of the term, both psychologically and astrologically). They arrive at what I can only describe as a vacant mandala, a complex circular shape that inheres dense symbolism and, as the scene unfolds, vibrant color palettes. Hands intertwined, No Man and this God-character dance around the mandala – literally – filling in the blank void of cosmic blackness with life and expression and blended hues.
While No Man and his companion dance around the mandala, you encounter ethereal versions of the characters that No Man has met along his disparate journey: the musician, the hunter, the scientist, and the ronin. It might sound like the only thing that has changed in this mandala sequence is the addition of colors that you might find on a chalk-covered sidewalk, but what brings this moment into transcendence is the incorporation of music. As previously lamented, much of Genesis Noir divorces its music from its soundscape and game design. In this moment, however, the music becomes inextricable from the experience. It’s a complete and radical abandonment of both the noir and jazz so central to the remainder of the game, and it works unbelievably well.
As I visited these characters once more, each would feature a tiny iteration that was inspired by the puzzles accompanying each. These tiny puzzles took but a moment to dismiss, which established thematic closure and allowed the music to quickly resume, blaring through the speakers in the same way that the neon colors contrasted with the flat black background of the universe. Those who are familiar with the musician Never Shout Never’s album Time Travel might find themselves right at home in the psychedelic recesses of this unforgettable scene in Genesis Noir. The music feels straight out of a psilocybin mushroom trip, so much that I audibly laughed at this scene – not a laugh of ridicule or derision, but a laugh of shock, of awe, of incredulity: “Holy crap,” I exclaimed, “they’re really going for it!”
The chorally chanted lyrics during this psychedelic mandala scene also betray hallucinogenic qualities in their breakdown of basic grammatical structures. Themes of love and dissolving barriers and unity permeate this hypnotic song, even as that acceptance and celebration brings together nonsensical formulations like “embraced by we.” Of course, these lyrics are deliberately undermining their grammatical foundations as all good psychedelic musical speculation does, but I would be lying if I said I expected these words out of a video game – Genesis Noir, a relatively moody and superficially self-serious game, no less.
I truly think Genesis Noir could have ended with this celebratory psychedelic mandala scene, and I would have been shocked into silence if so. But it doesn’t end there. There are a few more encounters that No Man and his God-companion make on their journey towards the end of the mystery, the metaphorical bottom of the black hole. Even though I would ultimately deem everything after the psychedelic mandala scene to be redundant and unnecessary, the remaining visual presentation is fascinating such that it could be an interactive art installation on its own.
Lingering Thoughts and Cosmic Depths
Though nothing else remotely approaches the grandeur of this mandala scene, there are nevertheless a few other moments throughout the game that deserve attention and praise. One such favorite moment was my encounter with a golden record floating in space. This record is reminiscent of the Voyager record, which, amongst other things, contains sounds and images from planet Earth, including the hopes of intelligent life one day intercepting our signal of life in the cosmos. When you encounter this record in Genesis Noir, the description reads, “A golden record. Beautifully made – inspires further listening.” Aptly, I began listening to all of the human voices whose words were captured on this meager record. I spent perhaps five minutes listening to every single voice recording in dozens of languages until I noticed the English voice repeat. It felt quaint, innocent, and deeply human to pause my experience with Genesis Noir and just listen. (I was half-expecting an achievement for listening to them all, given how many voice recordings there are, but nope!)
The symbolism in the narrative is also worthy of examination, though this article is far from the place for such a detailed dissection. One of the things that could spiral out into its own article about Genesis Noir would be an examination of how No Man collects items on his journeys through the universe. At every stop along the way, he gathers an item before returning to the central game hub: a cello, a saxophone, a notebook, a photograph, etc. But at one stop in particular, No Man finds a flower that “isn’t needed anymore” (the game’s description), symbolizing what becomes an ultimate choice for this protagonist: to pursue and save his love interest. Instead, No Man drops this paper flower into a sort of supernova of sun rings, incinerating it. For the first time in the entire game, No Man has not taken something; he gives something away, letting go of a part of himself as he approaches the heart of this cosmic adventure. Other such narrative threads are ripe for interpretation.
Spacetime Warping in on Itself
A final note worthy of consideration is, unfortunately, the game’s performance. I played Genesis Noir a few days before its official release, so there might be a patch on the way for some of these issues, but I stumbled into some consistent problems throughout my five or so hours earning all 14 of the game’s achievements. The most obvious problem with Genesis Noir is a blurriness to the linework. Because Genesis Noir is so compelling from an artistic standpoint – again, things appear hand-animated and drawn – the many overlapping textures of the game, particularly the starry space background, blended in with the lines a little too often. There was always the issue, as a result, of fuzzy and staticy edges to the characters and important interactive elements in the game. Considering the demo didn’t remotely have these visual problems, I wondered if there was something wrong with my settings. But in the menu, the only thing that seemed to make any difference was turning V-Sync off; even then, however, it didn’t live up to the visual splendor that the game otherwise undoubtedly promises.
Another common problem I encountered was the issue of textures not properly loading in certain areas. Genesis Noir convincingly bills itself as a mostly 2D adventure, but there were times when a clearly 3D object would render into the scene and the texture that was intended to be mapped over the shape would not properly load. This often resulted in various features of the landscape, most notably inside of a cave mid-game, flickering in and out of existence.
One of the weirdest bugs I encountered throughout my time with Genesis Noir arrived in a scene following the incredible mandala scene described earlier, in which No Man enters four colorful doors – each one representing one of the four named characters he has met along his cosmic journey. I entered each door with no issue, zooming in and out of three vignettes for each character, until I visited the “Just the Hits” door for the musician. While each of the other three characters’ doors allowed me to zoom in and out, the musician’s would get stuck at the zoom-in stage. None of my button presses – controller, keyboard, or mouse – would do anything to zoom me back out. I thought I had soft-locked myself into restarting the game until it occurred to me to pause the game, back out, and try the inputs again. As soon as I closed the pause menu and hit the “A” button, things zoomed back out as intended. This bug persisted for all three of the musician’s faces at the zoomed-in stage and yet I didn’t encounter this issue once with the other three characters. Pausing each time allowed my inputs to resume, but it was a jarring wall to hit regardless.
Finally, the game crashed on me. About an hour or so into the game, No Man walks into the ocean. As he submerges himself into the water, the game presents you with a number of nodal puzzles that join together as sort of molecular structures. There was one molecular structure that stumped me for a few minutes. As I toggled around, impatiently pulling connections between each node, the game had a “fatal error” and crashed to desktop. It was the only time the game crashed, and I’m sure I was spazzing out with my inputs, so I doubt all players will run into this issue. But the fact that it happened, losing progress and causing me to restart the entire sequence from the chapter’s beginning, is worth reporting here.
The Big Crunch
The writing in Genesis Noir is sparse, relegated primarily to inter-chapter text logs. But what’s there attempts to be profound with its meanderings. Sometimes that attempted profundity is quirky and fun, like when the game writes that “For 99.998983% of the universe’s age, the only histories written were in the strata of lonely geology. But this quiet would not last.” Notice the overly precise series of decimal places that could easily be shortened, as well as the tone with which the narration juxtaposes “histories” and ”lonely” geologies with a “quiet” that “would not last.” I like the writing in Genesis Noir even though it rarely goes somewhere direct or meaningful.
Even at the game’s end, when the God-character tries to impart the all-important lesson to No Man that “[He doesn’t] have to save anyone,” the meaning feels vapid and intentionally mystifying. Whether saving his lost love, his betrayed friendship, or uncovering the truth underneath it all, I never felt – even with the binary choice at the game’s end – that I was on a journey to save anything or anyone. If anything, Genesis Noir takes such a late-game bend that it might be more correct to describe this narrative journey as a journey to save (i.e. spiritually redeem) the protagonist, No Man. Otherwise, the actual characters and plot of Genesis Noir are left primarily to visual interpretation rather than manifesting in the writing itself.
Ultimately, when considering whether I would revisit Genesis Noir after writing my review, I decided to leave the game installed. That mandala sequence – and I cannot stress this enough – is something I will be going back to a number of times. It’s practically a music video but could just as well be someone’s experience with mescaline. It features a song that instantly hooked me with its musical pulsations and lyrical themes. This moment tied together a cornucopia of disenchantments that arose from my tedious slog through Genesis Noir’s snail-paced opening hours, single-handedly redeeming the game in my eyes. Whatever negative thoughts I might have harbored while playing most of Genesis Noir will always be overshadowed by this indelible moment of serene harmony. Genesis Noir’s mandala scene punctured me, however momentarily, leaving a hole worthy of investigation. I can’t say this about most games that cross my radar.
Genesis Noir could have trimmed away a third of its interactive puzzle sequences, especially at the beginning, and been a stronger game for it. The clear strength of this game is its art direction – visual, auditory, and otherwise – and I think players who are drawn to this game for those aesthetic reasons will be satisfied by what’s on offer in Genesis Noir. This game’s weakness, however, lies in its constant reminders that you are playing a game, not watching an animation or short film. There’s a certain magic that the demo, “Improvisations,” captured that most of Genesis Noir lacked overall – save for the revelatory mandala sequence. These moments of magic, sparse as they may be, are truly special – a singularity, you might say – but perhaps not worth stopping the Big Bang for.
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