Recent reviews by moaiou

This is a disappointing tech demo. While the photogrammetry-produced human models ARE impressive, they don't do much. The four minute-to-two-minute-long vignettes are all basically the same; the gladiator scene has an actor standing around, the wasteland scene has an actress standing around, the mountain scene has an actor crouched down, and the boxing scene has two (!) actors standing around. A fifth scene is present in the trailer but is not in this demo; featuring a model during a photo shoot, I can't imagine I'm missing much. For such little content, it takes an absurd amount of space (8 gb at the time of this review, so roughly 1 gig per minute of content).

The boxing scene is perhaps the most disappointing as it's the featured scene in the trailer. The coach repeatedly phases in & out of scene (likely due to multiple takes), and they use different footage from his audio track in the second half, breaking the immersion. Speaking of breaking immersion, this should be a seated experience as walking away from the center of the play area makes it look like the coach is talking to an invisible person and the boxer is fighting a ghost.

Jazzpunk is one of the funniest games I've played in a long time. Its humor is irreverant, often bizarre, and is reminiscent of films like Airplane! or Blazing Saddles. Much of it is random, but in a an unexpected "why the hell is this happenening," way rather than the tired "throw in anything and hope its funny" way. Checking out a pile of rubbish has the game throwing confetti at you and congratulating you for checking said rubbish, taking a random bottle of pills could turn you into a horse, or inspecting a wedding cake could treat you to a short game of Wedding Quake.

The premise is simple: you're a freelance spy sent to recover sensitive material. Each of the game's four main missions brings you to a new area populated with strange characters that all have unique, funny dialogue.

The game is short; clocking in at just over 3 hours for me. It's even shorter if one ignores the side-stuff and just does the main missions, but that would be missing the point of the game. At its core, Jazzpunk is about exploration and finding just what weirdness lurks in the nooks and crannies of the game. Personally, I don't see much difference between spending $15 to see a comedy in a theatre or spending the same amount for a comedic game of a similar length. Regardless, even if you have to wait for a sale, Jazzpunk's oddball humor is not to be missed.