Unheard – Voices of Crime Edition review | I’ve always enjoyed watching a good detective movie/series and also playing detective games, and at this point, I don’t think there’s anybody who hasn’t at least heard of Sherlock Holmes in some shape or form. Now imagine having to solve cases without being able to see clues or people, sounds impossible, right? But that’s exactly what you’ll be doing in Unheard – Voices of Crime Edition.
| Developer | NExT Studios |
| Publisher | 505 Games |
âšī¸ Reviewed on Xbox One | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion of the writer. Got unanswered questions about this game? Get in touch on Twitter!
What we Liked!
- Unique | While I’ve seen other games explore the idea of being sound-based in some way before, I’ve never seen one where you have to solve cases by simply hearing people and ambient sounds before. You can see people’s locations, but you’ll have to figure out their identities by following them and listening to dialogues that eventually will give them away. It can get pretty complicated with a lot of people being a part of a case, and scenarios that get progressively longer, but it works pretty well.
- Good voice-acting | As a mostly audio-based game, Unheard – Voices of Crime Edition wouldn’t work without good voice actors, and thankfully that is the case here. While there was at least one instance where I thought something sounded cheesy, the rest of the dialogue was pretty convincing and matched what was revealed about the characters’ personalities. You’ll notice that there are repeating voice actors for different characters, but there’s a pretty good explanation by the end of the game of why that’s the case.
- Again and again | You’ll be rewinding recordings over and over before being able to find out every detail required for each case, considering you need to check different people that are in different rooms at that time. To get to different rooms you can move your character around, moving in a room also changes the direction of where the audio comes from.
Mixed Feelings
- Overwhelming | Some cases felt overwhelming at first, with lots of rooms and characters and long recordings. There was one case that made me check a guide to find out some characters’ identities, I failed to notice that information through the audio, but the end-level recap of everything that happened after the case was closed made it clear. There’s also a DLC case in this edition that has the longest recording duration and has the most people in it, it’s pretty interesting but unsurprisingly complex. It’s a good but complicated game, which could be a reason for someone to not give it a chance, I still recommend it though.
- Visuals | There isn’t much to say about Unheard – Voices of Crime Edition‘s visuals. They fulfil their role well enough, which is showing the rooms’ layouts and giving some story context, but they feel a lot more secondary than the audio does, so don’t expect to see anything incredible-looking here.
What we Disliked
- Go on detective, there’s nothing important for you here.
How long to beat the story | 4-5 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | around 7 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | I can’t think of any similar games
Conclusion
80/100
Unheard – Voices of Crime Edition is a pretty unique experience, one of which I’ve never played before. If you like to play detective, this will be worth your time, and maybe even make you think more about what people say around you.
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Hi there, I’m Gabriel Colombo (Hence my reviewer name), I live in Brazil and I’ve been gaming since I was around 5 years old. Xbox became my main platform on the Xbox 360 era, before that I had played a bit on PC, Polystation (basically a skinned SNES), PlayStation 1 and 2. I really enjoy to experience immersive worlds, but I also enjoy playing silly games to have a laugh or just have fun.
