Reviews// Jazzpunk

Posted 24 Oct 2016 17:53 by David Turner

Laughing while playing games is far too rare. If you think back to the last time you laughed during a game it's probably not down to the material itself, it's probably because your mate said something over your headset or a something glitched out and it made your on-screen character walk in a weird way or something.

Games vary rarely set out to be a work of comedy. There are a few exceptions of course, Monkey Island, South Park: The Stick of Truth and some might even argue that Portal 2 falls into the genre, but it's hard to nail down a string of games thats main intention is to get you chuckling.

Jazzpunk makes things clear from the get-go. It's a first-person adventure game filled with so many gags that it'll make Tim Vine nervous.

You play as Polyblank, an international spy shaped like a men's toilet sign and are sent on missions by your eccentric boss who has set up base in a fake underground train. From the moment you walk into his office you'll be flooded with things that try to make you laugh. From the obvious porn parody magazines to the childish whoopee cushions, everywhere you look there's a joke. Everything you click on will lead to another.

It's intense and doesn't drop the pace throughout it's two to three hour playtime. The more you walk about the various locations the more side gags you'll find. Some may be one liners from an NPC while others will take you away from what you were doing completely and offer a mini-game that pokes fun at a much-loved series.

The comedy is mainly surrealist, with most jokes getting a "huh?" just before a chuckle, but it doesn't settle on one type of humour. Parody, Satire and Slapstick abound. Jazzpunk tries the scatter effect and although it's filled with gags that fall flat, there are enough that hit home to make the full experience a worthwhile one.

Comedy is a tough one to judge. It's extremely subjective and what hits home with me might have others rolling their eyes and vice-versa. What can be assessed is the delivery, and Jazzpunk's developers have managed to create a game that can present funny moments with timing perfection and intelligence. For every fart gag there seems to be something more fitting for Monty Python, as well as moments that are directed in a way that makes you feel like you've stumbled across something rather than been led down a path.

These moments are special. For example, later in the game you stumble across a woman covered in bugs. She's screaming, asking you to knock them off of her. You do, she thanks you and walks off. However, when you turn around and see her walking away you'll notice a huge bug on her back.

This might seem like obvious and almost child-like humour, but the fact that you'd have only seen the punchline if you'd have turned to see it makes all the difference. You haven't been told the joke, you've discovered it and that somehow manages to raise a smile where one would never have been under different circumstances.

As Jazzpunk's main intention is to get laughs, it's understandable that gameplay might not be its strong point. You mainly wander around the cartoon-like worlds clicking on objects and moving on. To progress there's usually an objective to work towards but nothing takes anything more than just activating a few trigger points.

When the game does let you off the leash, things can slow down a little too much. During one particular level while Polyblank takes a holiday I found myself walking around without any real idea of what I needed to do next. Although this lead me to discover some funny moments that I would have otherwise missed, I can't help but think that it slowed the pace down too much and I ended up seeing the same jokes too many times, spoiling their initial impact.

But it's the only part of the two hour experience that felt like a small miss-step. For the most part Jazzpunk is a game that achieves what it sets out to do and by the end of it I wanted more.

The only real issues I could find here are strictly down to the player. It's not the player's fault, but that's the problem with comedy - you'll either find something funny or you won't. Some will come away from this wondering how anyone could laugh, while others will be failing to explain to their friends bits of the game that had them rolling on the floor.

What is worth noting though is that Jazzpunk manages to find new ways of performing a form of comedy that we never get to see. It stands by its guns and doesn't let up and I found it to be an experience that was well worth my time.

With its shift to PS4 this year, I'm hoping that developers Necrophone Games have seen this experiment as a successful one. After all it fared well with critics and players alike when it hit the PC in 2014. Whether we see a sequel or not isn't important, what is is that they take what they've done with Jazzpunk and work on something that focuses on comedy in a similar way.