40 minutes of Blacksad: Under the Skin

Driftwood
Saturday, January 25, 2020 | 4:00 PM
5 comments

GSY Video PC PS4 Xbox One Switch

If you're into comic albums, chances are you already know the excellent series Blacksad by Juanjo Guarnido and Juan Díaz Canales. If you don't, go to the nearest library and borrow the 5 albums immediately. Blacksad: Under the Skin is the video game adaptation of the series but it features a completely original story. Developed by famous Spanish studio Pendulo, we hoped the game would deliver when it got released in December. unfortunately, it clearly came out too soon considering the number of technical problems it suffered from. The PC version was even stuck with a choppy 30 fps framerate until recently. Also to blame was the sluggish controls when it came to moving the character around and, in our humble opinion, the main character's voice, which sounds a lot better in French for once (just give the French video a try and compare). Things have improved a bit since release, but mainly in the technical department as far as we can tell.

High quality stream and download

The First 20 Minutes (PC/FR)

High quality stream and download

The Next 20 Minutes (PC/EN)

Sdarts

Commented on 2020-01-25 17:04:21

I have never heard of the Blacksad comics before. But concerning the game, it looked very interesting from the trailers, however I still don't understand why the developers decided to release the game in such an awful state, as you've described it.

The first impression is the one that counts the most a lot of times, and with a AA game like this which didn't have the notoriety and/or awareness as a AA title like Hellblade, for example, that first impression and the word of mouth are extremely important.

The fact that they released it in such an awful state, instead of waiting for it to be polished enough to be released - whether the decision of the developer or the publisher, doesn't alter the result - means they basically sent this game to die.

Which is a shame, since there's 303 user reviews on Steam and it has a Very Positive rating with 86% Positive reviews. So clearly it's a good game, but this mentality of releasing unpolished games with extremely clear technical bugs should be over by now.

I will check this game mainly because of your news post, the very positive user reviews and the studio, which is definitely not famous, I never ever hear Pendulo Studios mentioned in anything. Never. Even Daedalic Entertainment is more famous.

I only recognized the name because of the Runaway trilogy, The Next Big Thing and Yesterday. Which to be fair even then it still took me quite a while to remember what the developers had released before.

I don't know how well they are recognized in France, but in the rest of the world I doubt anyone ould even know that it is a games studio. Which is an absolute shame as Runaway 3 and The Next Big Thing are truly great games, well worth playing for Adventure and/or Story fans.

In reply to

The first impression is the one that counts the most a lot of times, and with a AA game like this which didn't have the notoriety and/or awareness as a AA title like Hellblade, for example, that first impression and the word of mouth are extremely important.

The fact that they released it in such an awful state, instead of waiting for it to be polished enough to be released - whether the decision of the developer or the publisher, doesn't alter the result - means they basically sent this game to die.

Which is a shame, since there's 303 user reviews on Steam and it has a Very Positive rating with 86% Positive reviews. So clearly it's a good game, but this mentality of releasing unpolished games with extremely clear technical bugs should be over by now.

I will check this game mainly because of your news post, the very positive user reviews and the studio, which is definitely not famous, I never ever hear Pendulo Studios mentioned in anything. Never. Even Daedalic Entertainment is more famous.

I only recognized the name because of the Runaway trilogy, The Next Big Thing and Yesterday. Which to be fair even then it still took me quite a while to remember what the developers had released before.

I don't know how well they are recognized in France, but in the rest of the world I doubt anyone ould even know that it is a games studio. Which is an absolute shame as Runaway 3 and The Next Big Thing are truly great games, well worth playing for Adventure and/or Story fans.

Commented on 2020-01-25 17:04:45

Forgot to mention that anyone can pick up Runaway 3 and they won't get lost in the story. It's very well self contained. Runaway 1 and 2 are very dated in too many aspects nowadays, so it's probably not the best place to start.

Alternatively, The Next Big Thing is an original story, so would be the best place to check the studio's quality. And if that intrigues anyone, they can check their other games.

MinorDespera

Commented on 2020-01-26 11:15:42

Did they fix the game yet? Last I played it had 30 fps lock and people complained about regular camera glitches rendering game unplayable, so I stopped.

Driftwood

Commented on 2020-01-26 11:46:55 In reply to MinorDespera

Framerate isn't locked at 30 anymore on PC, as for camera problems, they're not always ideal but we haven't seen glitches (though we haven't played the whole game so we can't say for sure there are none).