Jack the Ripper

aka: Jack L'Ă©ventreur: New-York 1901, Jack el Destripador, Jack lo Squartatore
Moby ID: 11908

Windows version

The Game That Wasn't There

The Good
Jack is back?

New York City, November 17, 1901

With the second vicious murder of a Low Side prostitute, Jack the Ripper is on the tip of everybody’s tongue, but is this a copycat or the real deal? Tired of being the editor of the number two paper in the Big Apple, Mr. Bur assigns Jimmy Palmer the Ripper case and tells him to return with a new story every day. Ripper headlines sell papers and cracking the Ripper case won’t hurt sales either. So it’s up to the up-and-coming reporter to investigate the dens and alleys of New York’s seediest section and its inhabitants. Unfortunately the closer Palmer gets to the Ripper, the closer the Ripper gets to him.

Jack the Ripper plays out from a first-person perspective, using a familiar point-and-click interface. Every location offers a 360° panorama adding a pseudo three dimensional experience and an extra layer of immersion. The mouse cursor is context sensitive, changing into an arrow to move, a hand to interact, an ear to overhear or a speech bubble to talk with someone. Right-clicking pulls up a map of Low Side, showing available locations, inventory items and clippings Palmer keeps about the case.

Every adventure game struggles with the amount of freewill to give to the player. There’s an underlying story to tell, but players have to feel like they are a part of the story, rather than watching an interactive movie. Jack the Ripper is heavily scripted, only has two real puzzles (perhaps a matter of opinion), and is mostly played out by clicking on a character, exhausting the conversation options, and infrequently using inventory items.

If you are looking for good game play, don’t buy this game. If you are looking for a good story… well… read on.

The story behind Jack the Ripper is its sole driving factor. While the Low Side District isn’t particularly large or well inhabited, there are many areas to explore and a fair amount of people to speak with. Within the game’s span, Palmer runs afoul of Chinese opium dealers, has a sinister encounter in a morgue, spends time at the Red Chapel cabaret watching Edison’s Kinetograph and listening to the luscious Irish Nightingale and engages the services of the Pinkerten (sic) Detective Agency.

Jack the Ripper has a good cast of characters and strong voice work. Some professional reviewers say that Jack the Ripper has a poor cast with questionable voice work, but I think they were upset about the game play. Standing out among the many memorable characters is Jason, a bum who spends most of his day chasing the dragon, but also serving as a one-man Greek Chorus, providing insight as the tragedies mount. Palmer is also assisted by Paul, fellow newshound, who covers the sports and entertainment in the city, Patrick the newsboy and several ladies of the night.

The panorama engine doesn’t provide sharp graphics, but the washed out, somewhat blurry visuals could pass for atmosphere. Character models look good, but there are few extraneous characters—and these can be removed at the option screen to improve the game’s performance. Jack the Ripper is stronger when it comes to audio, having eerie ambient music and effects as well as a few performed Irish ballads. There are a few brief but poorly integrated cinematics too.

Jack the Ripper, with the exception of the questionable spelling of Pinkertens and the inclusion of fingerprints, is well researched. Ripperologists will recognize names and will appreciate the use of real Ripper documents and photographs. Edison’s Kinetograph also provides a nice diversion, using what I can only believe to be actual footage from Edison’s film library (since it would be far too much effort to fake the footage). There’s one particularly frightening film of a train, which looks like it might come through the computer monitor killing the player.

The Bad
Jack the Ripper has a wide variety of problems.

The manual notes “As Jack the Ripper is a challenging game, we recommend that you save your game often,” which reads better than, “As Jack the Ripper is an unstable game, we recommend that you save your game often.” The most common problem is that the correct cursor won’t kick in, so you either can’t move or interact with something.

I usually play games with subtitles enabled. The subtitles here are close to being illegible, contain numerous spelling errors or differ from what the character is saying. However, when the audio drops out, it’s nice being able to follow the conversation rather than reloading.

A worse audio problem occurs when a character has a default line of dialogue which is delivered unprompted to Palmer. Example: Palmer goes to the Blue Velvet and the Madame tells him, “I got nothing to say, newsie.” For some reason the dialogue gets stuck, so she endless repeats, “I got nothing to say, newsie” until Palmer flees the building.

The game progresses when Palmer has exhausted all his options for the day and returns to the newsroom to write his “chronicle”. Frequently it will seem like you’ve done everything, but you won’t be able to “use” the typewriter. This is because the event trigger system is wonky. Expect to visit and revisit locations repeatedly to see if anything—or one—has changed. Sadly, using the world map commonly bypasses triggers.

Clicking on a location on the world map automatically warps you to that location, regardless of where you are (except if you haven’t done something, like returning a key to its home). So if you accomplish something inside a building but don’t exit the building, instead warping somewhere else, you may miss something. Not that you can really miss something, since the game is linear and you have to do everything to continue.

My final complaint is about the ending. I was prepared for the game to end a few different ways. I was ready for any one of several suspects to be Jack the Ripper. I was ready for two possible twist endings. I wasn’t ready for this. The game ended and I immediately thought, “Great, I got the bad ending. Let me check a walkthrough and see what I should have done.” There’s only one ending folks and it’s crap. The last game I played had a crap ending too, but at least Holmes’ twenty minute lecture wrapped up every damn plot point. I won’t give the ending away, but if you really want to know how I feel, give someone $20 and let them slap you.

The Bottom Line
Jack the Ripper is strong on story, weak on game play, and lacks any satisfying dénouement. It’s a shame, since the story is enough to stimulate most gamers. With an ending (any ending), this game would be worth playing, but as it stands, it’s an insult.

by Terrence Bosky (5397) on October 24, 2004

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