Jazzpunk review.

Jazzpunk Review.

Developed by Necrophone Games and published by [Adult Swim] Games, Jazzpunk is almost certainly unlike anything else you’ve ever played, for better or worse. The best way to describe Jazzpunk is as a first-person adventure/exploration game; the adventure aspect relates to the games primary story, you play as a secret agent who is tasked by your director to carry out missions like infiltrating a consulate and stealing a data cartridge. The secret agent profile is definitely more Austin Powers than James Bond however.

It might not look it, but this man is The Director and his office is in a train.

The exploration factor is the real meat of the game however, you can easily just follow the path the game gives you and complete the objectives until you see the end credits, but if you explore you’ll find so many objects and people to interact with, they might give you side-quests, talk nonsense to you or in some cases even take you into a new game entirely. Side-quests include tasks like shooting pigeons out of the sky with an electromagnetic device, beach combing with a metal detector and even squeezing cheese into a billionaires mouth; however these quests don’t have a direct impact on the storyline and usually serve as nothing more than a distraction, but nevertheless they are really good fun.

That doesn’t sound like a very good time. Unless you’re into that sort of thing.

The graphical style of Jazzpunk is very colourful and bold in regards to its character portrayal. NPCs you can interact with have details like eyes/clothes/facial hair etc. while other NPCs are essentially shadows that seem to only be there to fill up space. When you talk to an NPC white subtitles will appear in front of them explaining what they are saying, although they may actually talk for quite a while longer that you anticipate. The environments again are a breath of fresh air with its vibrant colours and cool settings. The music, while not what I’d call jazz punk, captures the mood of each location perfectly.

Well, at least you’re open about stealing them…

Depending on whether you fully explore the environments, Jazzpunk will take you around 2-3 hours to see through to the end. That might seem like a raw deal to some people, seeing as though the game is $15/£12 (or $11.99/£9.59 for its opening week sale) and I will agree that the price is maybe a bit steep for what you get in terms of length, the content and comedy you get from it alone will make it a good purchase.

However I might suggest if you are interested in picking this game up, try and refrain from watching gameplay videos before you buy it as it will almost certainly ruin the experience for you. In this regard Jazzpunk is similar to The Stanley Parable. In that game, the player had to make choices to progress, whether it was to win the game or break it entirely; the magic of self-discovery is lost if you watch something like a Let’s Play before playing it, and I think the same goes for Jazzpunk. If you watch a full run of the game before playing it yourself, you’ll know where all the jokes are and it won’t be as fun as if you’d discovered it yourself.

To summarise, I think Jazzpunk will definitely divide the crowd; some people will love its referential humour and oddball characters while others won’t be able to see the funny side to any of it. I had a great time playing this game mainly because this humour is exactly my sort of thing. The price point may be an issue for some but if that’s the only thing holding you back, just wait for a Steam Sale.

Jazzpunk is now available to buy on Steam for Windows/Mac/Linux for $11.99/£9.59 in its opening week sale, and $15/12 after that.