“Blues & Bullets” — Noir Crime Drama w/ Eliot Ness!

Somehow, Blues & Bullets managed to fly a bit under my radar when Episode 1 released last July, but Episode 2 was released this past March. One of my PR contacts was very kind in my exchange with them, and when I told them I had never gotten to try the first episode (I’d never heard of the game!), they were very nice and gave me an all-access code that contains the two current episodes and will have the three future ones ready to go when they get released. Still, before digging in with the newest release, I wanted to give the first part a play through.

Episode 1 is called “The End of Peace,” and within the first 50 minutes of play featured in this video I can already tell that the game’s off to a fantastic start. The game is set in 1955 and players take control of Eliot Ness, former leader of the Untouchables who arrested legendary gangster Al Capone twenty years prior to the game’s events. Capone, who has just gotten out of prison, summons Ness to his suite on the luxurious flying Hindenburg Hotel to request his help finding his granddaughter who he suspects has been kidnapped by one of his former rivals. Ness, it seems, is the one man that he can fully trust with the case and Ness, unable to let go of the fact that he failed to solve a series of missing children cases some years ago, agrees to help his former enemy.

The game itself is an adventure and detective story with exploration, lots of choice-filled dialogue, mystery solving (and case-solving mechanics), and yes, lots of bullets too. The voice acting is pretty fantastic and the graphical style is dark, gritty, and quite Gothic, thanks to the monochrome style used. Yet, what’s cool about the greyscale is that colors are mixed in here and there, giving the game a sort of Sin City or Schindler’s List kind of look.

Sometime I’ll give you guys a sample of Episode 2 to check out, but for now if you like what you see, you should check out the game on Steam!

Thanks for tuning in, and stick around for some more fun!

Jessica Brown

Retro Games and Technology Editor. She'll beat pretty much every Mega Man game without breaking a sweat.