We all love classic adventures at their best. A good mystery, a detective
searching to rescue a long-lost love (or, in this case, his sorry little behind),
and a good ol’ happy ending. But what happens if something goes wrong? Just ask
Polish publisher TopWare, or take a look at their latest adventure game, Jack
Orlando.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Jack Orlando could have been
a great game, and in its own sense is worth a look if you can live with several
minor bugs that are littering around the game. Quite often, while playing Jack
Orlando, the screen would freeze and I’d be forced to hit the on/off button
on my computer and restart it, while risking the loss of any other work I may
have had unsaved. Other bugs, while not all that important, occur with the sound
volume at times becoming soft and almost unheard and then all of a sudden a big
blast of static sound/music would blow out the speakers. It’s a miracle I can
still hear. One other annoying bug is with the cursor. If you exit the game before
you play a round you will be taken back to the Windows desktop; however, your
mouse cursor will look like a laser beam tag that you would find on a store-bought
product. The only way to get your mouse cursor back to normal is to restart. Sigh.

One
thing to note is the music. Even with the 8-bit, static version I reviewed, the
sound was smooth and continuous and very soothing to the hear. TopWare was lucky
to snag music veteran Harold Faltermeyer to record the excellent soundtrack for
Jack Orlando. When I listened to the theme song “Close My Eyes and
Think of You” on the press CD, I fell in love. It is really worth buying
this game for the music alone, but there are other good points to consider also.

It’s
obvious on first glance that TopWare has a very talented team of animators. Graphics
are absolutely amazingly beautiful and animation, most of the time, is very smooth
and life-like. There are only a few points near the end of the game where the
animation was noticeably jerky as well as the sound.

An odd feature is the
rendered cars and door animations. Cars travel down the street as realistic as
ever, but in front of the hand-drawn backgrounds, they do look a bit out of place.
Opening and closing doors are also animated like the cars. While they do look
extremely realistic, I think TopWare should have spent the time getting the kinks
out of the game rather than rendering pretty car animations. But of course, it
still does add professionalism to the game!

Jack Orlando has a huge
game environment contained in various locations, including the downtown area,
his own apartment area, an auto shop and a military base, just to name a few.
Most of the game happens downtown, where you eventually end up at the port and
then carry on to the military base where you really find out what’s going on.
There are over 200 screens for you to fully explore, but many places have nothing
to do. No inventory objects, no characters; they are just there for looks. This
also goes for characters. Most characters are there just to talk to, and to find
something out, and many characters are used to tell you the same thing twice.
For instance, in the secret casino, there are about six characters you can talk
to, and each one of them tells you where to find the manager of the Casino in
one way or another. Come on, TopWare, you can do better than that!

Inventory
objects are plentiful, but as with characters and screen locations, some are there
just for looks. While you can pick up most of the objects you find, most have
no practical use and stay in your inventory until you progress further into the
game when suddenly all objects of no use are gone, and only those that are needed
to complete the game are kept. If that’s not weird enough, if you search hard
enough you will find some of those objects you lost before in the new location.
It really is stupid!

Jack Orlando is a private detective from the 1930s
in the United States. Once he was a hero in the town, then he began drinking heavily
and now most people just laugh at his attempts to solve crime. He has been framed
for murder, but because he’s close friends with the detective at the police station,
he is given 48 hours to get to the bottom of this all and find out who the real
killer is. You later find out it is much more complicated than just a murder.
Once you get deep into the story, you actually care about Jack and want to save
him from all of this mess.

Never before have I been as attached to a story
as I was in Jack Orlando, and to think how I felt when it was all over!
But it was not over as fast as I thought. I got more than 40 hours of gameplay
and a great feeling of completion at the end. No cliff-hangers or poor endings
here. It is well put together, and the end cut scene is well drawn and animated.

Amateur
adventurers are very much welcome. The puzzles in Jack Orlando are very
well integrated and not too hard. Don’t expect to find a maze or a sliding tile
puzzle here. Basic ask-so-and-so-about-such-and-such and use-such-and-such-with-so-and-so
work great, yet you also get the feeling of completion when you’ve completed a
puzzle. Sometimes you may be frustrated when you can’t find out what to do next,
but if you use all inventory items with everything, and talk to everyone about
everything, you will find out what to do.

Now that we’re on the subject
of conversing with characters, there’s a real mistake TopWare made. First of all,
there is usually only one thing you want from a character, and most of the time
no matter what you say to him/her, he/she will tell you what you want to know.
You are given a selection of phrases you can say to the character and then he/she
will respond and often you can reply back, etc. This is quite similar to The
Curse of Monkey Island’s speech tree but not nearly as pleasing. You will
always get the same options to pick from the same character, no matter if you’ve
already asked it before, and it can be pretty darn boring talking to them. There
is really no need to have multiple ways of saying the same thing and getting the
same answer. In fact, there are some characters that you can talk to, but you
really have no use for them. I believe there were about 10 characters in all that
I did not bother talking to, and I still completed the game successfully.

Jack
Orlando is far from horrible, but not quite great either. Bugs and mid-quality
music (in the 8-bit version at least–I’m told the 16-bit version has excellent-quality
sound and music) are unacceptable, and some things are there for no reason at
all but looks. However, strong plot and main characters as well as excellent graphics
and music help keep this game from hitting the bargain bins just yet. If you feel
like solving a good mystery, give Jack a try; if you want a great game,
keep looking.

Final Grade: C