Posted July 03, 2009
The idea of a Noir styled detective story for an adventure game sounds great, unfortunately Jack Orlando fails to deliver.
Puzzle wise, you are going to pick up a lot of rubbish. Both in odd junk to solve puzzles, and actual trash. The trash appears to have no use other than to fill up your inventory. What is even worse, is that on a few occasions, Jack will complain about picking up stuff. So, that odd gadget is no good, but rotten fruit is okay???
Some puzzles can also only be activated if you speak to someone in a certain order. It's hard to get stuck, but unless Jack is told of a location, what he needs will not be there. Half the time, you can even go there before you are told about it.
There is also lots of empty scenes. Now, while I'm not against these to fill out the world a little, it just feels too much here. Especially when there is no interaction in them, even just for commentary.
Audio - is pretty much average. I didn't find the voice work too bad (though dialogue is another issue), but the music was fairy nice & atmospheric at times.
Graphically, it's a little unimpressive, and sometimes requires too much pixel hunting. The short cutsceens are decent, and they did try something new with using them overlayed into a scene to highlight a few things of importance.
Also you can die. Sometimes, it's unexpected when you reach a scene where this can happen. So it's best to save every so often, as there is no retry option.
Overall summery: Unless you are really into adventure games, and are willing to be more than a little forgiving: Avoid this one.
Puzzle wise, you are going to pick up a lot of rubbish. Both in odd junk to solve puzzles, and actual trash. The trash appears to have no use other than to fill up your inventory. What is even worse, is that on a few occasions, Jack will complain about picking up stuff. So, that odd gadget is no good, but rotten fruit is okay???
Some puzzles can also only be activated if you speak to someone in a certain order. It's hard to get stuck, but unless Jack is told of a location, what he needs will not be there. Half the time, you can even go there before you are told about it.
There is also lots of empty scenes. Now, while I'm not against these to fill out the world a little, it just feels too much here. Especially when there is no interaction in them, even just for commentary.
Audio - is pretty much average. I didn't find the voice work too bad (though dialogue is another issue), but the music was fairy nice & atmospheric at times.
Graphically, it's a little unimpressive, and sometimes requires too much pixel hunting. The short cutsceens are decent, and they did try something new with using them overlayed into a scene to highlight a few things of importance.
Also you can die. Sometimes, it's unexpected when you reach a scene where this can happen. So it's best to save every so often, as there is no retry option.
Overall summery: Unless you are really into adventure games, and are willing to be more than a little forgiving: Avoid this one.