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Night Call Review: In The Still Of The Night
One name has defined taxis in gaming ever since its debut in arcades in 1999. Sega's Crazy Taxi captured the independent spirit of cab drivers and the cinematic flair of shuttling colorful characters around a city. While it succeeds in that, it doesn't capture the full experience of driving a taxi. It was a very rock and roll game depicting a very droll profession. Night Call takes the exact opposite approach, trying to seize the malaise of slipping in and out of people's lives.
Here, taxi drivers are conversationalists, digging deep into each customer's psyche and often regretting it. Night Call is at its best when it tries to occupy this dark atmosphere, but there's a lot of mechanical gunk that often gets in the way.
Like any given episode of Law and Order, each game of Night Call starts with a violent attack. A serial killer targets a random cabbie in Paris, killing the passenger and wounding the driver. Waking up from a coma, the driver is the only person to survive an encounter with this criminal. Naturally, the police enlist the cabbie for the investigation. Gameplay starts here, switching between customers that suggest clues about the killer's identity and customers who exist to flesh out the modern-day Paris cityscape. Each ride is a visual novel sequence that offers a few choices to steer the action but sticks heavily to a linear script.
Night Call's writing is on point, filled with clever turns of phrase and the type of realistic characters that often elude the world of gaming. There are stories about infidelity, racism, and modern politics weaved into each session, but Night Call never picks a side or gets too preachy. Like the real world, there are lots of opinions and lots of arguments to defend them. The cabbie can often challenge notions and spur debate, even if the resulting back and forth is full of drunken slurs. This is where the most interesting content lies, and it's a shame that Night Call doesn't shine a spotlight on it more often.
The focus is on the main plot, a detective story that doesn't do a great job of simulating detective work. Sure, the average Parisian cabbie isn't going to be Sherlock Holmes, but the mechanics at play fail to come close to the countless mystery-solving adventures out there. Gathering clues involves asking the right questions during conversations, chatting it up with gas station attendants, and taking in the news of the day. These clues all converge on a cork board in the cabbie's apartment, and Night Call automatically makes connections between clues and suspects. It's less about digging into profiles and discovering motives and more about engaging in a mindless noir-themed collectathon.
Even when the writing carries the action, Night Call's minimal presentation can often spoil the fun. Characters are completely silent, which combines with the black and white imagery to make many feel similar even as the writing tries to craft standout personas. There are also several conversations revolving around music, from a DJ jealous about his protege's success to a mousy mathematician who enjoys the way static sounds on the radio. In these instances, there's a yearning to understand why this disc jockey's hook is so phat or why the static calls out to the cabbie once he hears it. That yearning isn't fulfilled. Instead, the entire soundtrack consists of various synth melodies and the sound of a car's engine starting up. The synth does set the tone perfectly, but a few more sounds here and there could have worked wonders.
There are three campaigns to go through in Night Call, but they all feel unfortunately similar. You get a similar opening, a similar structure, and the chance to pick up similar customers along the way. Rather than three four hour experiences, one extended run through this cabbie's life might have made for a more compelling narrative.
In its current form, Night Call feels like a great short story collection trapped in a video game. All the petty distractions and police work get in the way of the real joys of chatting about how much life sucks under a full moon.
Night Call is available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
