Jack the Ripper
If you’re talking about adventures you usually think about a character walking around with a easy to use point and click interface and solving all manner weird and fantastic problems. Jack the Ripper is a very serious game though, you are the detective who is charged with investigating a murder apparently committed by Jack the Ripper. The game is centered around gathering clues and evidence from the crime scene and suspects and then by logically putting the clues together you can solve the mystery.
Since this isn’t your standard adventure there is a tutorial and I recommend that you try it because it explains a lot of the techniques you need to play the game. You can interrogate people who are on the scene and some of the information you get might be usefull so you can write them down in your notebook. The same goes for things you examine like the victim or items that you find on the scene. Some of these will lead you to different places in the city where you might find more helpfull clues. In the tutorial these clues are underlined so it’s easy but in the actual game you’ll have to really look for the clues yourself so it’s not as easy as it sounds.
When you have a number of clues you can go back to your place and deduct some conclusions which might turn up some new clues or eventually you might even find the murderer. A good example of this is in the tutorial, clue 1 says the cook of a ship jumped off before the ship sank. Clue 2 says that there were no known survivors of the shipwreck. Once you put these clues up you automatically deduct that the cook is the only survivor and voilla you have a new clue which brings you one step close to solving the crime. At the start of each game items and clues are different so there is definate replay value.
Mmm in all my time playing games and adventure games in particular I haven’t seen many games like this. It’s far from the norm and you’ll really have to pay attention to the interrogations you do and the clues you find to get usefull information from them. Also the graphics aren’t really anything special and there is practically no animation and music/sound, I do kinda like the character portraits which are done in grayscale and in oldfashion style. This and the difficulty might be offputting for some people but for those looking for a challenge will find a great game with plenty of replay value which is rare for an adventure game.
Overal rating: 7.5/10
This game was released for one system here are some notes:
| DOS | Released in 1995. In dosbox the game works ok but it gives an error about mscdex not being loaded, just ignore it and continue loading. |
| Date added | May-04-2007 16:47 |
| Name | Jack the Ripper |
| Developer | Intergalactic development |
| Publisher | Gametek |
| First released | 1995 |
| Genre | Adventure |
