Subject: Mini review of Discworkd Noir

Anyone who has played the first two games in the Discworld series 
will be in for a major shock with this game.  Discworld Noir portrays 
the dark side of Ankh-Morpork, where it's always raining, and always 
nighttime, and people are <nasty>.  There is still a fair amount of 
Pratchett humour in this game, but the film noir aspects are 
definitely in the forefront.

The game is more of a detective-style game, where the prime objective 
is to collect clues, not objects.  You play Lewton, a private 
detective, and you guide him around on his first case(s).  I don't 
want to say any more about the plot, since that's a major part of the 
game;  I found enough plot twists to keep me interested, so it can't 
be all that bad...

Here's a few quick notes about various aspects of the game:

Graphics:
    	Stunning film noir.  Dark, brooding, rainy.  Very pretty.
Music:
    	Best I have <ever> heard with a game.  I would buy this game
    	for the music alone.
Character animation:
    	Somewhat crude, but good enough that I could overlook the flaws
Plot:
    	Lots of plot twists.  Enough to keep me interested.
Voices:
    	Only about 5 voice actors, but I found that they did a
    	pretty good job.  Nothing too jarring.
Characters:
    	A mixed bag.  Some of them were so believable as to be scary.
    	Others were pretty shallow and out of place.  One of them
    	(the sculptor) is so irritating to talk to that you avoid him.
Puzzles:
    	Collect clues, cross-correlate clues, talk to people about
    	clues, talk to people to get new clues added to your notebook.
    	Some inventory items, and you use them in pretty standard
    	ways.  A map of locations in the city, which get new places
    	added when you talk to the right person about the right thing.
Ugly puzzles:
    	No mazes, no timed sequences, no dead ends, no sliders.
    	You die, but the game will start you over at the beginning
    	of the scene automatically (much like Sanitarium).  As a matter
    	of fun, make sure you do the wrong thing and die at "vault 51".
    	Absolutely hilarious. 
Puzzle difficulty:
    	Not terribly difficult.  I sometimes got tired of having to run
    	around and talk to everybody "one more time" when I was stuck,
    	but that was about the worst.  Not being a hard-core gamer,
    	I would fail to cross-correlate clues or inventory items, but
    	that's just my laziness showing through.
Controls:
    	Mouse-based, easy to use.  No problems here at all.
Bugs:
    	A few, but none of them were fatal.  Things like an inventory
    	item re-appearing where it was before, even though it shouldn't
    	be there.  The game seemed to work fine anyway.

If you like detective-style games where you talk to characters 
throughout, then you should like this game.  I am not a big fan of 
this gaming style, but I liked this one a lot.

Pros:
    	Wonderful music, wonderful graphics, interesting plot,
    	good jokes about various film-noir topics.
Cons:
    	Having to talk to everybody multiple times can get tedious
    	at times.  Too many quotes directly from Pratchett novels;
    	I wish he would have written some new material for the game
    	instead of just copying it.

Final score:
    	Discworld Noir gets added to my adventure game top 10 list.