Jazz and Faust,
from Russian developer 1C is a traditional third-person point-and-click
adventure game with an innovative twist. It’s really two games in
one. To successfully complete the game, you must play through it twice,
once as Jazz and once as Faust. Don’t worry, it’s not repetitive.
Well, not terribly repetitive. Though the two characters’ storylines
dovetail into each other a bit here and there, each has a very different
set of problems, obstacles, and adventures.

The
game begins with a one of those cheesy cut scenes that is simply a
compilation of bits of cut scenes from within the game. Kind of like
an overture from an old-fashioned musical comedy. The snippets are
awfully attractive, however. Then you see out two heroes, small-time
ship captains both, playing dice with each other. Roll your cursor
over each one of them and they’ll wave to you. Isn’t that special?
Click on one and you’re off and running on his story.

I don’t want to over-sell
this game, which has a lot of problems. But I will say that it has
its charms and it’s pretty fun to play. It rather reminded me of those
“Sin and Sand” miniature epics from Universal Studios in
the 40s and 50s. You know, the ones that usually starred the likes
of Maria Montez, John Hall, Tony Curtis, Yvonne DiCarlo, and almost
always the dependable Sabu.

Why did I enjoy the game?
Because it takes place in fun, exotic locales, is great looking, and
is fun in a trashy sort of way.

Let’s talk about graphics
first, because it’s the graphics that are this game’s best feature.
Every environment in the game is attractive, but the renderings of
far-flung exotic cityscapes are ravishing. At moments the game’s look
will remind you of The
Longest Journey. (Calm down, I said the game’s look
– the actual game doesn’t have a hint of the great TLJ’s depth and
complexity.)

In
the puzzles and game play department, the game gets the job done,
but won’t inspire many awards. It’s all the traditional, use-this-inventory-item-on-this-hotspot
type of problems to solve. There’s only one traditional, Shivers-type
puzzle, a jigsaw with a gravestone, and it’s not bad.

The gimmick of the game
– two characters exploring different edges of the same larger story
– actually works surprisingly well. The first time through the story,
it’s fun to run into the other character here and there, and when
you play through the second time, it’s fun anticipating those intersections.
There’s even a wonky plot trick that justifies slight changes in the
details of the story the second time through, which helps keep things
interesting.

Unfortunately, just about
every other aspect of this game is downright bad. The voice acting
is among the worst in recent games, right up there with the dreaded
Mystery of the
Druids. The lead character of Faust is particularly bad. He
sounds like Carlton the Doorman after two too many Quaaludes. Add
this to the lame translation from the Russian and the overall effect
is ridiculous. Luckily, the actor who gives Jazz his voice is much
peppier and more professional. For this reason, I strongly recommend
that you play through Jazz’s story first.

The translation provides
some unintentional comedy, as the translator confused the Cyrillic
equivalent to our letter K. The translator uses R instead, and so
characters are constantly saying to each other things like, “You
want me to meet you there? O.R.!” The effect is made even more
absurd by the terribly illegible font that was chosen for the speech
subtitles. MESSAGE TO ALL GAME DESIGNERS: CLARITY IS A VIRTUE.

The
story of the game is also a bit insane, as characters cheerfully do
outrageously immoral acts in pursuit of petty goals. Need a net to
give a starving fisherman? How about casually burning down an entire
warehouse to get it? Need to capture a fearsome monster? How about
cavalierly using a poor innocent puppy dog as bait? As long as you
accept this kind of behavior as part of the crazy overall logic of
the game, you might not be too terribly put off by it. Or maybe it’s
just a Russian thing . . .

The game is rife with bad
adventure programming as well. Characters will respond to one inventory
item with information that’s appropriate for a completely different
item; both Jazz and Faust will regularly make declarations about certain
hotspots that completely anticipate story developments; what’s more,
much of the plot just doesn’t make much sense. Even worse, sometimes
the game is just lazy. There’s a point at which Faust steals the clothes
from a large, fat man. Faust, who is trim and buff, looks exactly
like the other man by virtue of simply putting on his clothes. I mean,
same face, same fat. It’s just stupid.

However, despite all of
these problems, the fact is, I enjoyed playing Jazz and Faust.
It’s not going to go on any Top Ten list of mine, but it was a breezy,
short, colorful diversion.

Final Grade: C

System Requirements:

PII 300 or equivalent,
32 MB RAM, 8X CD-ROM, 3D Accelerator, 4MB VRAM, 778 MB disk space,
mouse, sound card, DirectX v8.0

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.