Blues and Bullets (2015) Online

Blues and Bullets, made by A Crowd of Monsters, is an episodic game about Eliot Ness, former leader of the legendary Untouchables, and how all he wished was to spend the rest of his life working in his diner and not thinking of the corruption in his city, Santa Esperanza. But of course things rarely go as planned. When children start to disappear and the police just turn a blind eye, Eliot decides to take justice into his own hands and find, by any means necessary, the culprit and bring him to justice. Aided by some unexpected characters, the player gets to control Eliot through the increasingly morbid and decadent scenarios to find the clues needed to solve this horrid mystery.

Now to the review part, first I will state the positives and then the negatives. The presentation of the game is great, with an engaging story that is based on history and an environment that is astounding. It seems that this game has everything going for it. The pacing of the story is smooth with us getting to know the characters and to experience the world around them in plain black and white (except for the color red). I must emphasize the environment because it gives the feeling of darkness and of hidden secrets that are just waiting to be discovered.

Now for the negatives, the episode is only an hour and a half long even with looking at all the interactive components of the game. The voice acting can be dull with a few absurd moments. There are a few technical glitches with the camera view and sometimes it is hard to find your way around because of this. But there is one thing that will aggravate even the most patient of people, there is only one episode so far and that single episode was released May 15, 2015, meaning that it has been over seven months since the first episode was released and it is said that episode two is coming out later in January. I know that it is made by an independent company but over seven months is just too long of a wait.

The Verdict: With a great story and environment, Blues and Bullets set the stage for a great episodic series. But with a short first episode, some dull voice acting, and a ridiculously long wait for episode two, it falls short of glory.

The first two episodes were so good but sadly the series has been canceled due to financial issues.