Why did the chicken cross the road? No, the answer is not to get to the other side. Well, in a way it is but there are some extenuating circumstances around that. Over the last decade, there has been a lack of Noire-styled games. Is this because they have become boring and stale or is it because there isn’t a massive demand for them? In the last twenty years, there have been less than a dozen Noire-style games and even some of those are borderline in the genre.
In the last twenty years, The Wolf Among Us, Max Payne, Disco Elysium, and L.A. Noire have been the most notable; some would argue that The Grim Fandango, Mafia, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Backbone, and Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments could fall into that category as well. Now, a new game called Chicken Police: Into the Hive looks to join that limited genre; the game is a sequel to Chicken Police: Paint It Red developed by The Wild Gentlemen.
Preview
At PAX West 2023, we had the opportunity to check out Chicken Police: Into the Hive. At the start of the demo, players are asked if they want to play the game in color or in a Noire style. Playing the game in color gives a whole different feeling to the game but in a way, it feels wrong. The game in itself can be played in color, but the feel and voice acting come off differently. In the noir style, the way the characters talk and their actions feel more authentic to the time period; in color, their actions still make sense, but it just feels like every other crime game. Don’t get me wrong, the color and attention to detail the developers have put into the game is great, but after seeing the difference, the noir style is the way to go.
The game’s controls are fairly easy to pick up and the game gives auditory clues as to what the player needs to do in order to progress the story. At PAX, the developers left a little cheat sheet for players to follow if they wanted to progress the story without having to troubleshoot. The game features a ton of dialog that helps expand the universe, gives character depth, and gives clues on how to solve the mystery. The game’s demo uses a 2D side-scrolling art style everywhere except for the shooting range; at the shooting range, the gameplay turns into a shooter.
For a demo, the game did a great job at setting up the story and flushing out the overall premises. After playing the Chicken Police: Into the Hive demo, I will have to go back and play Chicken Police – Paint it RED! If you have time, make sure to check out both games.
Chicken Police Steam Features
Chicken Police – Into the HIVE! is a character-driven, story-rich, film-noir detective adventure in which you must uncover a complex, world-scale conspiracy by gathering clues, interrogating suspects, and solving puzzles.
Sonny and Marty, the Wilderness’s toughest detectives, are about to embark on the biggest case of their lives, which will take them through the insect underworld and force them to face the darkest reaches of their past.
The soul of the game is the characters that bring it to life. There are over 30 deeply fleshed-out characters to talk to, all of them handcrafted and 100% voice-acted. The Wilderness is a world with a history that goes back thousands of years and is full of fascinating facts and mysteries. Explore the city of Clawville and with it the colorful cultures, traditions, desires, and fears of its anthropomorphic inhabitants.
In Clawville you go wherever you want. Alongside the main story, explore a myriad of side quests, pathways, and opportunities, solve problems in different ways, and play the adventure over and over again to unravel every last thread and secret.
You’re in for a story that will affect the fate of a whole city, even the whole world, and yet it’s also very real and ‘human’. Murder, betrayal, conspiracy, loss, friendship, and even love await you in this dramatic and absurd adventure.
- Explore the city
- Investigate at your leisure
- Uncover hidden places
- Save Clawville before it erupts in flames!
The Wilderness is collapsing! Riots, dubious schemes, political corruption, and mass psychosis! Sonny and Marty, the two famous rooster detectives, must investigate a case that leads them to the Hive, a walled ghetto of insects.
Amidst a mound of misery and oppression, they stumble upon a worldwide conspiracy as they struggle with their own demons. The question is: will they manage to remain ‘human’ in the end? Or will they have to go WILD to set the world straight again?
- Meet more than 30 fully dubbed characters
- Explore the city and its 35+ locations freely
- Collect clues, analyze evidence, and interrogate suspects
- Solve problems in different ways, often with different consequences
- Focus on the main mission or lose yourself in a sea of side-quests
- Play the story over and over again to discover all its hidden secrets
- Bring some color to the mean streets of Clawville with Technicolour mode! If noir is not your thing, paint the town yellow… and every other colour!
- Prove you’re the hardest cock in the Wilderness!
