Get in the taxi. We need to talk about Night Call on Nintendo Switch.
As someone who likes his noir like he likes his eggs, Night Call is sadly too soft boiled for my liking. It has its moments; instances when it just clicks and being a taxi driver roaming the shadowy Parisian nightscape feels incredibly lucid, but these are unfortunately muddled by the writing and repetitive structure.
Developed by Monkey Moon, Night Call is a narrative Crazy Taxi with light resource management, with the focus shifted to passenger conversations rather than driving. It’s a visually bold game with an almost Limbo-esque feel. A stark greyscale art captures the murky whimsy of a world that exists beyond a sensible bedtime. Undoubtedly ambitious, Night Call has around 90 passengers for you to pick up and converse with, all complete with great character art that captures their personalities.
Night Call begins when you wake up in hospital after being attacked by a serial killer. You’re then recruited by a police officer to gather information once you’ve recovered and are back on the streets. A great premise, but the execution falters. The justification for being blackmailed into gathering information just didn’t work for me and felt rather contrived, which is something that plagues the rest of the game too.
A lot of the conversations come off as inorganic and the heavy-handed prose doesn’t help. Characters can’t wait to open up to you and spill their life stories as quickly as possible. It could be a far better experience (and more true to life) if the developers went for the opposite; passengers less willing to talk and the player/taxi driver attempting to open them up in the limited lifespan of a single taxi ride. Doing this would make the dialogue options have more purpose; as it stands, they don’t particularly change much.
Another flaw was that characters sometimes feel too whacky. In one playthrough I came across Santa Claus, an alien and a ghost who feels out of place considering Night Call is a gritty noir story about a serial killer. Kudos must be given to the developers for bringing up themes of politics and racism – and the inclusion of an Arabic protagonist – but ultimately the game feels wildly uneven in tone. Having a conversation about racial abuse because of Brexit one moment and then talking to a cartoonishly quirky poet the next felt jarring.
Night Call is split into three cases with a different serial killer in each and, after finishing the first, it was a shame to see that all the cases are basically the same. They start exactly the same way: the protagonist wakes up in hospital and is recruited by the same police officer to find a different killer. You then have seven nights to gather information on the serial killer and solve the case. This repetition greatly impacted my enjoyment as it cheapened the narrative. It made me question whether it was worth doing another case if they are all essentially the same.
One standout aspect of Night Call, however, is the fantastic soundtrack by Corentin Brassart. It’s a dreamy soundtrack that lulls you into a meditative state; the type of soundtrack where you can put the controller down for a bit and have an introspective daze. It actively heightens the late-night taxi driver experience, painting the gloomy canvas with shades of solitude.
In the end, this egg needed more time to boil. But I applaud what Monkey Moon achieved with Night Call and I’m genuinely curious to see what they make next.
Platform: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PC, PS4, Xbox One
Developer: Monkey Moon
Publisher: Raw Fury
Release Date: June 24, 2020
