Milanoir Nintendo Switch review
An offer you can refuse.
Milanoir begins with a very promising prologue. It’s the 1970s in the smoke-wafted streets of Milan. Controlling a nameless man appropriately donning sunglasses and a mullet, you enter a bar – a dive as dirty as they come. Wading through the drunkards, you make your way to the bathroom in the back and pull out your gun, relentlessly hailing the stall with bullets. Job’s done. But it’s not – a shot bursts out through the stall adjacent and lands squarely through your head. Whoops – wrong stall. The man who killed you leaves the bathroom stall and crouches down by your corpse. As he takes your sunglasses and puts them on himself, the player takes control of this new character as you leave the bar and head off on your motorbike into the relentless night.
Milanoir is peppered with wonderful moments like this that feel straight out of a ’70s Italian crime flick. Sadly, all too quickly these moments get lost in the details, replaced with an overwhelming frustration due to repetitive gun-play and misguided design decisions. Milanoir has high highs, but ends up falling short.
The first thing worth noting about Milanoir is that, visually, it’s gorgeous. While its visuals have drawn comparisons to Hotline Miami, Milanoir offers a more detailed, crafted world that contrasts with Hotline Miami’s psychedelic vagueness. A flock of birds scatter through the air as you walk by, while an unkempt man leans out his window, smoking and looking on. Environments are presented with an affectionate level of detail that gives life and character to the world.
During its gunfights Milanoir may seem like it plays similarly to Hotline Miami too, but I believe it draws more from the linear structure of Uncharted. While the frantic gameplay of Hotline Miami has the tight design of a puzzler, Milanoir is more content being a typical cover shooter. Though there are some unique gimmicks such as deflecting bullets off of stop signs to hit unsuspecting enemies, overall combat is limited by its lack of weapon variance and meat-and-potatoes design. It would work serviceably enough in a more story-driven game that limits its combat to discrete scenarios. Unfortunately, Milanoir is very action-heavy, and it isn’t long before it becomes quite the slog.
While for much of the campaign I didn’t run into all too much trouble difficulty-wise, all of a sudden there are tremendous difficulty spikes about halfway through. There was a particular sequence where you are pursued by trams while the game throws hordes of enemies at you. The level is tight and gives you no cover to hide whatsoever. It took me well over one hundred tries to beat this sequence, and it was only done through wildly running past enemies, dodging a hail of bullets and grenades all the way to the end of the level – which I survived through pure, unadulterated luck. There are several difficulty spikes just like this throughout the latter half of Milanoir; the lack of depth in the gun-play and harsh checkpointing make them a particularly huge bummer to bash your head against.
To add insult to injury, Milanoir had a habit of crashing on me every once in a while on the Switch, oftentimes just as I was about to reach the end of a chapter. And don’t think you can start again back from a mid-level checkpoint – if you didn’t beat the entire chapter before exiting the game, you’re sent right back to the very start of that chapter. After having the game crash at the very end of a really challenging chapter no less than three times, I sure did wish I was sleeping with the fishes.
Even with all of its schlocky ’70s style, Milanoir’s writing largely falls short. There’s a lot more saying rather than doing throughout the story, and it’s very easy to lose track of who’s who in the sea of typical mobster names. On the positive side, about halfway through there’s an extended, combat-free prison sentence sequence which was very strongly executed. Unfortunately, once done, you’re right back to mindlessly shooting people because Mobster Guy double-crossed Other Mobster Guy, who also probably double-crossed someone too. It’s all pretty forgettable, which feels like such a missed opportunity.
In fact, missed opportunity pretty much summarises my time with Milanoir. For fans of cult-classic crime cinema, there are enough fun sequences sprinkled throughout to get a kick out of. However, Milanoir doesn’t provide enough polish in its gameplay to really let these moments shine through.