Contract J.A.C.K.

The Good
I'll try and keep this short: Contract J.A.C.K is to NOLF what Red Faction is to Half Life: basically, it's a mod, albeit a pretty high-standard one at that, but falls quite a bit short of its roots.

The visuals in Contract J.A.C.K are top-notch; character models are detailed, the general design is quite eye-catching and details are high everywhere. The weapon models are pretty cool, and the environments are very nice to look at. So basically, LithTech/Jupiter still works very well. Also, the in-game music is pretty nifty, and as is standard fare with LithTech games these days the dynamic music sequences really kick ass (although not to the perfection of Tron 2.0). Finally, the sound is pretty good and voice acting is on par with NOLF (which is a good thing).

Contract J.A.C.K features a pretty rudimentary story that manages not to clash with NOLF's for the simple reason that it has very little in common with it: you play Jack, a hitman who gets hired by HARM to secure a vehicle prototype, and then go after a mandatory slightly-mad Indian Dr., extracting him from the other bad guys - an Italian crime organization by the name of Danger Danger. The game has little or no surprises right until the very end, when censored. So in essence: simple-minded fun.

The Bad
For starters, the enemy AI is ridiculously bad. Admittedly I did not play the game at a high level (Normal), but the enemies still followed the same stupid pattern - wait 'till I run into a curve, yell something and then come pouring out, waiting to be shot. I haven't once seen an enemy do something even remotely smart, other than maybe stay hidden behind an object - but even then they don't seek better cover or superiour ground, they just stay put and occasionally take a shot at you.

Gameplay is incredibly repetitive, but luckily the game is so short (5 hours at best) that it doesn't really matter; potential spoiler unfortunately there is only one boss in the game, which does not lend well to gameplay (again, compared to NOLF). And, while the scenery is varied, the enemies are not - just different skins for the same type of enemy with the same type of behaviour. There is very little here to break the repetitiveness - not even the occasional side-quest or cool item usage (I think there are maybe 3 or 4 items in the game).

While the architecture is pretty cool, the level design is uninspired at best - basically just the same thing over and over again: go through the corridor, shoot some bad guys, move across the hall, find another corridor, go through it, shoot some bad guys ad nauseum. And again the game falls into the trap of being so damn scripted and linear that you'd find yourself facing five locked doors and a single unlocked one in one corridor. I don't know about you guys, but I hate having all my navigation decisions being made for me (I think Max Payne was the first game in which I ever noticed this extent of linearity).

The Bottom Line
Short and incredibly mediocre. I wouldn't bother with it unless you can find it for $10 in a bargain bin somewhere. It's not worth full price for just a few hours of unenthusiastic fun.