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Jack Keane Review
PC Review by John Walker
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Push your finger here. No, it's ok. Just give it a little poke. That's my soft spot for Ankh. German developer Deck 13 showed a genuine love for the classic 90s adventures, and for once demonstrated an understanding of how they worked. It was imperfect in many ways, but for a bright, cartoon point-and-click adventure, it stood out from the crowd by not sucking out loud. We got a slightly inferior sequel, and now we have Jack Keane.
Maybe it's over-confidence. Maybe we celebrated Ankh's not-awfulness too much. But Jack Keane is a depressingly poor game. A big, elaborate, beautifully drawn game. But one that just doesn't make a satisfying result.
Jack Keane is an Indy-style adventurer (with a bit of pirate thrown in), who begins his adventure tied to a chair in the clock room at the top of Big Ben. That's a bloomin' brilliant place to start an adventure game! He has to talk his way into being punched until he can reach his handy penknife. That's a really good puzzle! He then has to go through a series of incredibly dull procedures to clean some bird poo using a rag and a bucket in order to, er, get his knife again, and then escape by making Big Ben strike 3, which would be a superb puzzle if only you realised that was what you were doing before it happened... It starts to crack.
Fishing for a plank with a woodworm as bait: Good puzzle.
Jack is then charged with the task of aiding a British spy in making his way from Capetown to an obscure Indian island, which all leads to a peculiar story about saving the world from tea-eating plants. Describing it like that, it all sounds rather good. It really could have been. But, well, it isn't.
A big part of this is due to the puzzle structure. There are two types present. The one where you've got a key, and a keyhole, and the puzzle is to figure out which to put into which. And then there's the ones where you're supposed to know that if you use the knife on the clock you'll remove the hands which can of course be used to pick the lock on a wardrobe.
Then there's the voice acting. Jack's voice isn't too bad. He sounds a bit like Bruce Campbell, and delivers his lines with gusto (but when he gets drunk - oh boy, it's awful). But he sticks out from a dodgy crowd. This is made far worse by a clear lack of voice direction, and lines recorded in isolation. You get those really awkward moments where someone's intonation is completely wrong. A moment that was supposed to go,
"I eat goons like you for breakfast."
"You're about to LOSE your breakfast, mate."
Comes out as,
"You're about to lose your BREAKFAST, mate."
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Comments: 1-22 of 22 in total
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I ask myself why publishers of english-speaking markets have so much problems to translate adventures properly.
Probably they think that it is a niche genre anyway, so why should they bother. When such a bad review is the result mostly because of bad localization and annoying bugs, then you should think that those people would make it better next time. Yet Dreamcatcher for example seems never to learn. You have to question if their business is really running so well that they don't have to care. So on one hand they don't care much about the games, the localization is mostly atrocious, but they publish them anyway. Bad quality won't lead to great sales, so they hurt themselves. Just stupid. In Germany the market isn't too big either, but the synchronisations are mostly good to great anyway. |
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What upsets me the most is how easily it could be solved. You have a voice director present at the recordings. And you have the game tested by someone who speaks English as their native tongue, and preferably who knows no German. This way they would not be sympathetic to Deutsch grammar, and recognise all that's wrong.
A cartoon point and clicker is never going to keep up with an FPS, but it would be so great if the devs/pubs would give them a fighting chance. I could tell that Jack Keane, while not stunning, would have been a fun game in the original German. But it just wasn't by the time it reached England. Although some of the puzzles would still be unutterably shit in either language. |
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dominalien
24/03/08 @ 12:48
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That's really a shame. The world could use a good adventure game.
Ankh was enjoyable, but you could see some of what you're talking about here - mistranslations, awkwardness, etc. Still, it seems like they had done a better job than here. |
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Having played the demo, I can really see what Mr. Walker is on about. I had hoped that it was just because it was out early it was unfinished in some way. Ah well.
And I still feel that you're wrong on the Samnmax front, they're great. All of them. Perhaps Mr. Bramwell will let you review the next episode though? A contrast to the other view points put forward. |
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Yeah, make no mistake, Jack Keane isn't a masterpiece in german either.
I don't like it that much, the humor feels usually forced and overall it's too "inspired" by Monkey Island. There are some very interesting looking adventures coming out soon, though. A Vampyre Story Gray Matter So Blonde Mata Hari ... |
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convercide
25/03/08 @ 07:53
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@Pirotic
Perhaps they were Jack Keane off too much over internet filth to bother with a good conversion? /hat /coat |
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kangarootoo
25/03/08 @ 10:10
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Damn thats a pity. I'd seen the odd ad for this and thought "ooh, haven't played something like that in ages".
As for the poor translation issues, it unfortunately is usually down to cost. Not enough weight is given to getting that sort of thing done properly sometimes in titles with smaller dev budgets, which is a shame (especially in a game like this) as it can often prove to be false economy and a potential game killer. |
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kangarootoo
25/03/08 @ 10:25
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Good list Kluff. I'd heard of A Vampyre Story but the others are news to me. Some really nice looking stuff in there.
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BradMillette
25/03/08 @ 12:25
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I think with the rise of Steam and viable digital retail, we may be on the cusp of seeing a new minor renaissance in forgotten genres, like point-and-click. I hope they turn out better than this one seems to have fared, though.
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Comments: 1-22 of 22 in total
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