Most people are aware with the story of Jack the Ripper; it captures imagination so much that it has been retold many times in many different mediums. Indeed, this is not the first time that the story of Jack the Ripper has been made into a video game. This time around Jack comes back after 13 years, crossing the Atlantic from London to New York, and begins his killings again in a new land. As a green reporter covering the case you have to visit the same small collection of areas, talk to the same clichéd characters, and face down some vicious software bugs on your way to an ultimately unsatisfying ending.
The game bills itself as an adventure game, but there's very little game here. There are a couple of no-brainer puzzles that feel like they were tacked on at the end of the development cycle, but the emphasis is clearly on storytelling. The story is told mostly through dialog, lots and lots of dialog. The way the game progresses is through a day and night cycle. Day only progresses into night and vice versa once you have talked to everyone and found everything active for that day. This means that each time period leads to you visiting every single location and talking to every single character until the time finally switches over. As one could imagine, this gets to be very tedious, especially since you generally only have two or three dialog options with each character and you have to go through each of them.
The writing for the game is surprisingly good for the most part, barring a few plot holes and the incredibly horrible ending. The characters could have been lifted from any period detective novel, but they do have some subtle motivations that are played out well. As time passes and your stories about the murders take the front page, Jack takes personal interest in you, and your limited interactions with Jack are delightfully creepy. The voice acting doesn't really live up to the quality of the writing, however, and sometimes it feels like the voice actors lacked direction. The biggest problem, however, is the end of the game. After going to the same places and talking to the same people over and over again, for what happens to be your pay off is just a slap in the face and bafflingly poor choice.
If the tedium and the horrible ending are not enough to put you off this game then perhaps the bugs are. The game is riddled with them, from the controls to corrupt saves. You interact with the world through a cursor that changes to indicate where you can move to a new area and what objects you can pick up or look at. However, the cursor seems to have a mind of its own at times and does not always recognize the transition areas. It also occasionally makes up an entirely new one. It's also entirely possible to get yourself into a location where it's entirely impossible to progress; no matter what you do, the time will not progress and you are stuck in an never-ending day or night. This makes frequent saves in different spots very necessary as you will more than likely have to roll back at least once.
Even graphically the game is lacking. Each area is a static, low resolution painting. This gives each area a grainy, even pixilated look that is unappealing. People and a few objects are rendered in 3D. They stand out starkly against the painted areas, so while the models are decent enough, though dated, they only serve to make the rest of the game look worse. The landscapes are littered with flyers and posters you can look at, which are a nice touch that give the world a bit more feeling, but it's too little too late. About the best thing that can be said about the presentation is that it has really nice, appropriate music.
Jack the Ripper is less an adventure game and more of a pop-up book. A lengthy pop-up book that repeats the same areas over and over again until you get to the abrupt and unsatisfying end. There's very little here to appeal to anyone, even fans of the Jack the Ripper mythos will find better takes on the character elsewhere.
