1933 will go down in the history books as the year America passed the 21st Amendment to the Constitution. The Prohibition is over. To the delight of millions, alcohol can now flow freely across the thirsty land. Two days before the official announcement, bars and clubs across the land are stocking up on quality whiskey.
This is the enthralling story of a scruffy but shrewd private investigator who, by an unfortunate mixture of circumstances, becomes the prime suspect in a mysterious murder case. Jack now has only 48 hours to slip the noose and find the real offender. The sands of time are rapidly running out and Jack has to unravel the mysterious plot he now finds himself caught up in the middle of.
Age requirements: ESRB Rating: MATURE with Strong Language, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco, Violence.
Minimum system requirements: Windows XP or Windows Vista, 1 GHz Processor (1.4 GHz recommended), 256MB RAM (512 recommended), 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7 (compatible with DirectX 9 recommended), Mouse, Keyboard.
This game is average at it's best. It has quite beautiful hand drawn backgrounds, some of them animated, sometimes someone just walks past or car drives by, the city just feels alive. Characters are worse, especially the close-ups during dialogues look very crude. Cutscenes are the worst, they look crude just like the close-ups and the style and colour palette are like from a kiddie... full review cartoon.
Voice acting is really bad, sound effects sound sometimes very artificial and there are some bugs as well (at one location, there is sometimes echo when Jack speaks and when he says someting different there is not). Music ranges from perfect to annoying (but downloadable soundtrack would be welcomed).
Controls are literally broken, according to manual, there should be two control options (one a bullet themed menu at right-click, where you pick the commands, second cycling through the commands with right-click) but you get only the menu, the second time without the bullet skin. Then you need keyboard to get to inventory or menus, which is not ideal as well.
Puzzles are sometimes ok, sometimes illogical. Jack nor other characters help you very much (solutions doesn't often come from dialogues or Jack's internal monologue). Items appear at convenient places out of nothing. You can't examine items once you pick them up to give you any clue what to do with them. Some garbage items are active and you can pick them up, some aren't and there is no internal logic, why you can pick up a banana peel and not a wrench which would seem more useful. I know it's common but it's annoying and stupid anyway.
One of two biggest problems is writing. The plot is unoriginal from the start and it really doesn't get any better. Many of the situations are illogical or downright absurd (beginning with the premise that they let you, as a suspected murderer, investigate the case , mess with the crime scene etc) and dialogues are cheesy at best. Characters are poorly written and many of them are bloody stupid, especially the police force is a bad joke.
The second is lack of atmosphere. Despite the classical noir premise (detective suspected of murder, has 48 hours to prove his innocence), the game is not noir at all, it isn't a thriller as well. There is just no tension despite the fact that you can die many times (sometimes you can't knowingly avoid the game over, it happens for example when you enter a location). At the begining you can get to only a few locations but soon almost the whole city opens to you, which means like...I don't know 50 screens? (and there are more to come) And there are tons of rubbish Jack can (and will if you let him) pick up, which can be quite perplexing. You wander around the city freely like you were a tourist and never feel like you should act quickly or you'll be doomed. And Jack himself acts as everything was cool, no matter that he sometimes tells the opposite. That's a huge con for this kind of game. At one time you get to a location that looks like it suddenly fell from a different game (but maybe it's some kind of a homage to Broken Sword, who knows). And the graphic style is too colourful, some of the locations would fit more to a comedy game (the last act especially reminded me of a Czech comedy adventure series Polda).
Pros:
beautiful living backgrounds
big part of the soundtrack
many many locations
some of the dialogue lines (mostly Jack's) are cheesy in the cool way
a few rewarding puzzles
Cons
it's very very very very stupid
lack of atmosphere
problematic controls
feels amateurish
part of soundtrack is annoying
there are really many many locations (depends on your taste)
you can (and will) die a lot of times, possible dead end(s?)
the end is really painful
Result: not worth the money, really not worthy of GOG.
Ok, Jack Orlando is a good old-school adventure game. The setting, plot and characters are just like in the old "noir films", so if you like this kind of movies - as I do - you will probably love the game. However, the game fails in may other aspects: the main character is not very likeable, the voice acting is terrible, some puzzles are irrational, you can die (that's... full review something I don't like in adventure games) and you can pick up too many useless objects you don't have to use (and believe me, is hard to tell which one is useless and which one is not).
So, in a nutshell the game is good, but doesn't play in the same league as Lucas or Revolution.
Do you remember games like Broken Sword, Monkey Island 3 or Discworld? Well, if Jack Orlando was developed by LucasArts or Sierra, it should be named among them. It has an unique atmosphere (just look at the images), which you cannot experience in any other classic adventure game, really classy story about a lone private eye and for just six dollars it should be yours right about now.
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ElPixelIlustre)
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