“I get the feeling it’s going to be a LONG night,” recently murdered cop James Renoir remarks as his ghost leaves an empty church, rain beating down on the city. In hindsight, his words could not have been more true. Renoir is a puzzle-platformer styled as a murder mystery, with you controlling protagonist James Renoir as he makes his way past environmental dangers while trying to remember who it was that killed him.
Renoir is built in Unreal Engine 4 and the advantages the engine provides are obvious, with wet pavement realistically shimmering under the night lights, fog textures filling the background of a graveyard and more. Using an art style very
similar to Sin City, the game uses mainly a black-and-white palette with color used sparingly to draw attention to a particular item of interest, like the red in a woman’s scarf.
The soundtrack is fitting of the time, with notes of jazz as you enter a ritzy ballroom or somber notes for an empty church but ultimately feels a tad generic. Despite the mystery presentation, the story is mostly in the background, limited to the occasional graphic novel presentation of a flashback, showing bits of his life before the unknown tragedy that killed him.
The dangers come in the form of light, as contact with bright light will instantly destroy his semi-corporeal form. No real explanation as to why is ever really given, perhaps if nothing else a play on the phrase “Going into the light,” as a means of the soul’s ascension.
Another important aspect of gameplay is the ability to create ghost “Echoes“. James has the ability to possess various ghosts found around the levels and record various actions, then play them all back at the same time. With every level requiring increasing amounts of careful timing and proper critical thinking, this allows for some fairly impressive puzzle sections. Unfortunately, it’s during these sections that the game’s major flaws become apparent. Precise timing is a necessity but there is a noticeable 1-2 second lag for any action you take, resulting in quite a bit of unnecessary frustration. 
In addition, the hit-boxes for James and the ghosts he records are hardly accurate. Often, I would try to take an action or jump across a ravine, only for the character model to clip through the ground or refuse to interact with the switch right in front of him. With this compounded by the fact that the entirety of gameplay lies in these puzzles, it very quickly drags out what could have been interesting experiences into purely annoying drudgery. It’s a true shame, as the knowledge that another equally annoying section is immediately waiting afterwards kills any drive to push forward. Other obnoxious bugs, like bizarre framerate drops even on powerful hardware, only further to muddy the picture provided. If there is a single word I could use to sum up Renoir, it would be tedium. There is a mystery, yet I know so little about James there isn’t a real desire to see his story resolved. The puzzles require some impressive thinking to solve but are so unnecessarily difficult by unintentional design they become completely unenjoyable to attempt finishing. Ultimately, Renoir is not a terrible game but it falls far short of what I hoped it would provide.
