Posted March 26, 2009
First, let me say, I love adventure games. I've played all of the old school popular games all the way back to Sierra's KQ1. I enjoy all of those, even with the cheap deaths and illogical puzzles. This game though, Jack Orlando, is absolutely the worst adventure game I've ever played.
Story/Presentation: The story is rather silly and that's the biggest part of an adventure game. What really hinders it though is the fact that the dialogue is absolutely horrific. Easily some of the worst voice acting I've ever heard. Plus the dialogue itself is just complete garbage. I turned on subtitles so I could read what they were saying instead of waiting to listen to the voices and seriously, it's like this thing was written by a five year old. This is no exaggeration. Normally I can handle bad voice acting and dialogue, but it really really ruins the game and brings it down a whole level.
Graphics: The graphics are decent at best. Though considering the game was made in the late 90s, there are other games from the same time that blow this game out of the water graphically. The game talks about having a bunch of high class artists draw all the backgrounds and everything, but I have to say, it looks more like something a child would do for art class.
Sound: The music is alright. I tend not to notice music in games for the most part unless it's really annoying. It didn't stand out to me, so it's passable.
Gameplay: Seriously flawed and poorly designed gameplay. It really is like this thing was developed by five years old kids. There are tons of items you can pick up in every screen, but literally 90% of them are useless. They even make a point of that in the manual. That is not good game design. When you do pick something up you can't examine it so sometimes you don't even know exactly what it is. Ridiculous. Then the puzzles are often completely illogical. So it all compounds on top of one another to create just terrible gameplay. On top of that there are tons and tons of locations, many of which I'd say are totally unnecessary. It's like they did it to pad the length of the game. And yes, as others have said you enter an old tomb at one point such as in Broken Sword, but it makes no sense in the context of this game. They don't even explain it. Absolutely ridiculous.
Oh, and yes they have deaths in this game. Something the good developers learned to do away with by the time this game was released. While I can handle dying in a game, it's really poor design when after you die you are forced to reload a save. I didn't realize I was entering a timed and dangerous situation at one point and hadn't saved for a decent amount of time. Died and stopped playing because I didn't want to go through all of the crap again. Apparently the concept of retrying such scenes didn't occur to the developers. Pathetic.
And overall that is what I'd have to say about this game. It's really a pathetic attempt and easily one of, if not the, worst offering on GOG. This is by no means in any way a good adventure game. It's more a compilation of all the terrible ideas from the early days of adventure games wrapped up with a terrible story, horrific voice acting and dialogue, and boring art. Definitely give this game a pass if you can. This is a game I would totally return if GOG allowed it.
Story/Presentation: The story is rather silly and that's the biggest part of an adventure game. What really hinders it though is the fact that the dialogue is absolutely horrific. Easily some of the worst voice acting I've ever heard. Plus the dialogue itself is just complete garbage. I turned on subtitles so I could read what they were saying instead of waiting to listen to the voices and seriously, it's like this thing was written by a five year old. This is no exaggeration. Normally I can handle bad voice acting and dialogue, but it really really ruins the game and brings it down a whole level.
Graphics: The graphics are decent at best. Though considering the game was made in the late 90s, there are other games from the same time that blow this game out of the water graphically. The game talks about having a bunch of high class artists draw all the backgrounds and everything, but I have to say, it looks more like something a child would do for art class.
Sound: The music is alright. I tend not to notice music in games for the most part unless it's really annoying. It didn't stand out to me, so it's passable.
Gameplay: Seriously flawed and poorly designed gameplay. It really is like this thing was developed by five years old kids. There are tons of items you can pick up in every screen, but literally 90% of them are useless. They even make a point of that in the manual. That is not good game design. When you do pick something up you can't examine it so sometimes you don't even know exactly what it is. Ridiculous. Then the puzzles are often completely illogical. So it all compounds on top of one another to create just terrible gameplay. On top of that there are tons and tons of locations, many of which I'd say are totally unnecessary. It's like they did it to pad the length of the game. And yes, as others have said you enter an old tomb at one point such as in Broken Sword, but it makes no sense in the context of this game. They don't even explain it. Absolutely ridiculous.
Oh, and yes they have deaths in this game. Something the good developers learned to do away with by the time this game was released. While I can handle dying in a game, it's really poor design when after you die you are forced to reload a save. I didn't realize I was entering a timed and dangerous situation at one point and hadn't saved for a decent amount of time. Died and stopped playing because I didn't want to go through all of the crap again. Apparently the concept of retrying such scenes didn't occur to the developers. Pathetic.
And overall that is what I'd have to say about this game. It's really a pathetic attempt and easily one of, if not the, worst offering on GOG. This is by no means in any way a good adventure game. It's more a compilation of all the terrible ideas from the early days of adventure games wrapped up with a terrible story, horrific voice acting and dialogue, and boring art. Definitely give this game a pass if you can. This is a game I would totally return if GOG allowed it.