|
Easily remembered yet none-too-annoying names are a hallmark of popular adventure games. Fortunately, Jack Keane is an easy one to swallow. It's also the name of its star, whose romp is a LucasArts-inspired adventure of the point and click fashion. This genre has been relishing the recent casual gaming boom, but Jack Keane isn't enjoying it as much as its competitors.
It starts you off as the captive of some none-too-smart crooks atop Big Ben, which introduces the first setting: London, England. You'll have to think up an escape method, even though you're tied to a chair and there are two men right in front of you. The solution is fun enough, but the world's touches aren't as entertaining. Jack's world is vibrantly colored, but the animation isn't impressive. It's acceptable, although a title with a full retail release is expected to do better. The puzzles should be real brain-teasers too, and thankfully, a reasonable number of them are.
Without knowing for sure that Jack Keane was rushed to market, I'm assuming that it was...
|
Solving mysteries to progress by gathering trinkets and sleuthing for clues is what adventuring is all about, unless you're a LucasArts title. Those often included something more: humor. That's something Jack Keane claims to have in spades, and its gallivanting pirates obviously allude to Monkey Island. Unfortunately, it doesn't do the association justice.
I like to believe that the original script was amusing in its first language, and suffers in its English translation. Strange choices in casting (such as Jack himself lacking an English accent), spelling errors (as in Jack verbally saying "Sure," which is subtitled as "Shure"), and other snafus only detract from the experience.
It picks up every now and then when you're introduced to someone with a passionate voice actor and decent lines, but those are too rare; dialog's often spoken without the right emotions for their scenes, making the whole delivery drab.
You'll come across characters both good and bad as you journey through the game's varied settings, including ports, villages, and swamps among others. Jack ventures 'round the world almost, and this is good to a point; none of the areas have that appropriate ethnic touch. You won't be fascinated as someone really traveling abroad would be, since there's nothing to designate India outside of red dots on villagers' heads, no real reason to believe Jack's from England outside of his saying so, and so on. Bringing the unremarkable animation issue back into the limelight, and the mediocre voice acting right along with it, we see Jack Keane for what it really is: a lot of wasted potential.
If the level designers did their research and molded captivating, accurate (or at least fantastical) areas, traveling between countries would've been a blast. Had the voice actors a chance to actually watch the scenes they were speaking for, maybe they would've used the right emotions in their acting. If the writers took more time, smoothed out the errors, and had someone with a bona fide funny bone checking it all out, they could've delivered on those claims of excessive amusement. Lastly, had the programmers worked out all the kinks, bugs, and tweaked Jack's too-often problematic pathing, they could've had something.
Without knowing for sure that Jack Keane was rushed to market, I'm assuming that it was, and that 10TACLE didn't care to invest into cleaning it up for domestic release. It's not a lost cause, as there's some fun to be had with it, but considering the praise heaped upon it on the box's back, it's a clear case of a publisher promising too much and giving too little. Adventure lovers will find some puzzles to enjoy, but the average casual gamer might find it too tedious, and everyone else deserves something that's actually funny enough to laugh at. |
