Genre: Adventure
Publisher: The Adventure Company
Developer: Galilea
Release Date: February 02, 2004
Jack the Ripper is a graphical adventure game produced by the aptly named Adventure Company and DreamCatcher developed the title. This 'true crime' title is based off the concept that Jack the Ripper moved to New York 13 years after his spree in London. The player joins Jimmy Palmer, a young reporter, as he covers the murders across New York. Jack the Ripper plays a 'cat and mouse' game with Jimmy. Along the way, Jimmy meets a colorful cast of characters, including the Irish Nightingale, a beautiful singer. Can we say love is in the air?
This title is a member of a massive library of graphical games produced by the Adventure Company. It follows on their established credibility in this Arena. It comes to be what the public expects from the Adventure Company. The quality is there from the previous titles, but so are the flaws.
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The player controls the title by use of the mouse. This title is exclusively click driven. Clicking on a menu or on a part of the scene, like a character or a picture, is how the game is controlled. The game is very easy to control. By making the game easy to control, the lack of control in the title might infuriate the player.
Being part of the Graphical Adventure Genre, it is all about the story and the puzzles. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no replay value to the game. Being so story driven, there are no surprises the second time finishing the game. There is also the 'oh-my-god-did-you-see-that' factor to the game. I found that there were things that I was interested to look at in the game. Sometimes, the developers did not think that some of the stuff I was interested in was that important to look at. With the graphical implementation of the game, this could be annoying, but more on this later.
The story in Jack the Ripper is a bit of a reach. I could still see the famous Serial Killer coming to New York to sink his teeth, so to speak, into the Big Apple. It is my personal opinion is that Jimmy's editor doing the murders. He needs to sell papers. Hey, NBC did it for Dateline. (Search on Dateline, Car, Explosions, and Fraud for a history lesson.) I will not expose too much of the story since the game is all about the story.
The game is accurate for 1901 New York. They hit some of the high points of history at that time. The accents are correct and so is the dress. The developers did some homework, or at least watched the History Channel.
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Graphics are decent quality. Everything looks amazing. The only problem is that the background is slightly out of focus. This is the reason for the aforementioned annoyance with the graphics. This also gave me a splitting headache. I found that is was best to play in 45-minute increments with 15-minute rest intervals for my eyes. That and good eye drops. This seems to be the issue with many of these games. It makes game play tiring. That makes game play annoying.
The sound scheme is fantastic. Wearing headphones makes the player feel like they are actually in turn of the century New York City. The newsroom clicks with the sounds of typewriters, the streets sounds with traffic, etc… The music is amazing. The ending credits, which took a little too long to load, has this great little song with it. I watched the credits to hear the song.
Cinematics in the game are serviceable. I found the opening movie interesting at first, but afterwards, it was not a big deal. We are not talking Diablo or Warcraft quality here. The black and white aspect of the opening movie did suit the time period.
Characters in the game are very stereotypical. We have the Irish Desk Sergeant, the Editor looking for the Gory New Story, the Damsel in Distress love interest, so on and so forth. The acting can be hokey at times, but it is not too bad. I love the Irish Desk Sergeant. The accent just cracks me up. There is no real character development so to speak. The characters could be out of a turn of the century dime novel.
A graphical menu handles transitioning between areas. A map displays the Lower Side District of New York, probably meaning the Lower East Side. Pushpins show the locations that the player can go. To access the pushpins, the pushpin must have the correct item dragged on top of it. A newspaper is a good example of an item used to link to a location. I had issues trying to find the correct hot spot on a number of times. I became frustrated at times with this. I did like the pictures of the locations when the mouse passes over a pushpin. This made it easy for me to decide where to go.
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When at a location, the character moves around by clicking on areas showing a move arrow. To leave a location, the character must find an exit location. I would have found it better if the player could just select an option on a menu. Certain locations are maze like and I got lost. The maze like quality of some locations really makes finding the exit point hard. This does give a good impression on the maze of streets that New York is.
There is not much of a note taking system. The game allows the player to click on certain selections on the 'note pad' to ask the character the player is talking to some questions. I had to take manual notes throughout the game so I would not get confused or forget something. I wrote about 10 pages of notes. I found that to be a handicap in the game. The ability to keep important notes would have made the game more manageable, if not easier.
Jack the Ripper is a typical 'Graphical Adventure' title. It is good for the genre and is a fine game for the fans of these types of games. There is a decent story to the game that is not too much of a reach for this type of game. There are some problems with the game in my opinion, but most of the genre has the same problems. Because this is a nitch game and there is no real replay value, let alone my splitting headache,
Score : 6.4/10
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