Jack the ripper ds game review

The seedy side of New York, On top of that, there's really not much to do in Jack the Ripper. You mainly just talk to the same group of characters choosing from three conversation topics at most , occasionally receive an inventory item like a key, and visit about a dozen little locales. Usually the only decisions you make are where to go next and whom to talk to next, and usually that's clear from the context.

Outside of manipulating a few objects, like a telegraph machine, you'll encounter only a few puzzles in the whole game, and they're mostly very simple. If you run into difficulty, it's probably just from overlooking a few small but vital objects.

At least the puzzles are directly relevant to the story and sometimes let you compare and analyze some of the evidence yourself, which is a fun touch. You play Jack the Ripper from a first-person perspective, viewing the world with a degree rotating camera. To move or interact with things, you use a straightforward point-and-click interface with a context-sensitive cursor.

It's simple to learn, though prone to quirks and bugs: Sometimes the movement cursor won't appear when you can move to an area or will appear when you can't. In fact, the game as a whole could have used a lot more quality testing: Sometimes characters will repeat the same dialogue over and over, events will reoccur in exactly the same way whenever you reenter a building, animations won't start, or characters will totally freeze up.

Twice, major bugs prevented us from proceeding; we had to restart from saved games and work forward again to bypass them. The game's camera system is also a little screwy: When you move the mouse just a bit, the screen will often compress and expand ever so slightly, as if it were made of jelly. It's disconcerting, though it doesn't affect the gameplay.

The visuals themselves look pretty impressive. It's true that the character models are very blocky, the animations stiff or unrealistic, and the lip-synching prone to disjunctions with the dialogue. But the gameworld itself is finely detailed, with period posters and signs, antique slot machines, a gaudy brothel lined with bric-a-brac and racy paintings, and other memorable touches. The backgrounds tend to look pretty blurry, though, and you'll find one big artistic failing common to most adventure games: Areas that should be filled with people are mostly deserted.

Jack the Ripper on the loose or not, you'd expect New York's streets to be bustling in the daytime and not to look like deserted wastelands. For that matter, the few people you do see are usually in the exact same position day after day.

The realism of the scenes and the accuracy of the storyline will fascinate all ages from young teen to adult. Travel back to s London to help Scotland Yard's detectives solve the crime of the century. Visit world-famous landmarks such as Piccadilly Circus and Buckingham Palace. Search crime scenes and solve mini puzzles in your hunt for clues. Was Jack a doctor, a royal prince, a barber or something else?

Was he mad? This game will tell you. Enjoy hours and hours of game play in this truly absorbing game. Whether you are an experienced player or a newbie, once you start your investigation, you will be on an adventure you won't want to stop - until you discover Jack the Ripper's true identity, that is.

Critic Reviews. Score distribution:. Positive: 0 out of 4. Solve a murder mystery by finding flying fish. By Lucas M. Thomas Updated: 8 May pm. Like Where's Waldo? You might be given an exterior shot of a large church building, for example, and asked to find such out-of-place things as a fish, an umbrella and a pair of needlenose pliers somewhere within the image -- and, sure enough, they'll be there, hidden underneath an overhang of the architecture, or blending in with the skyline.

You track them down, tap them with the stylus and try to find every object on your list before times runs out. An optional Rookie Mode makes things easier by removing the countdown clock, so anyone who just wants to play through the story will be able to at a leisurely pace -- the plot follows a couple of detectives in late 's London trying to solve the mystery of the infamous killer Jack the Ripper , discovering clues and finding suspects.

It's a little ridiculous that you have to find the image of a floating fish in the sky to make progress in a criminal investigation, but what the heck -- it's a video game. You'll also occasionally have to complete some smaller challenges to move forward, like sliding block puzzles.

These work pretty well and break up the monotony of just staring at the screen and tapping things, so they're a welcome addition. Verdict Maybe the most important thing to mention about Jack the Ripper is its price, though -- eight bucks is pretty steep for this kind of experience.