Too Long; Didn't Play: Jazzpunk

Sponsored By:A humble bundle, I think

Requested By: Danopian

Time… Spent?: 51 minutes

Jazzy Review

Hey Jazzpunk. I played your game. What happened? [ /billmurrayvoice]

Punky Review

Who remembers Gravity Bone? I do, mainly because I hated it so very much at the time. Looking back it’s hard to remember exactly what my beef was. But even if I don’t think I’d have the same opinion of Gravity Bone now that I held then, playing Jazzpunk reminds me of why I might have felt that way.

The thing about Jazzpunk is that it never seems to feel like you’ve actually started the game. Have you ever had that experience? You play the game for an hour and clear the first few levels, but you still feel like the real game is bound to start soon. That’s where I am with Jazzpunk, and that’s why I didn’t like Gravity Bone.

The difference between the two is that Gravity Bone was an almost painfully short experience. The game ended while I was still waiting for it to start. (It didn’t help that I didn’t care for the ending, but that’s another story). Jazzpunk, on the other hand, is much longer. I’m still waiting for it to start, but the waiting is going on longer.

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what gives me that vibe. It might be the fact that it’s essentially a very stylish walking simulator, but the story is that of an international spy. As a result, I’m waiting for the part where the game starts making me shoot things from behind chest-high walls, and that moment never comes. That might explain why I feel like the game is still teaching me the controls after an hour, but I’m willing to concede that this experience is unique to me.

I’m on record as stating that "walking simulator" is not a synonym for "bad game," and Jazzpunk is not a bad game. What makes a walking simulator a bad game is having nothing to do in it while also failing to give the player sufficient reason to care about exploring. Jazzpunk crams a whole lot of stuff to do in a little package. In addition to the light puzzles associated with your character’s missions, there’s a ton of side-content that is absolutely pointless while remaining worthwhile.

For example, there’s Wedding Quake, which is an easter egg you find early on. It’s a first-person shooter where the weapons are wedding themed, such as champagne-cork sniper rifles, wedding-cake gatling guns, and the shield buff is a prenuptial agreement. You run around an elaborate chapel shooting other players in a bot-controlled death-match round. The nifty thing is that once you’ve found it, you can load it from the game’s main menu at any time, which is considerate of the developer.

The writers earned their salt with Jazzpunk, I have to say. There’s a lot of comedy to be found just wandering around, overhearing the ramblings of non-player characters. It’s also fun to read the subtitles, which are different from the spoken words in a delightful way. Without delving too far into spoiler territory, there’s a completely inconsequential character who speaks at great length but says very little, and the subtitles are written as if the person doing the captions wishes the speaker would just get to the point.

In case that wasn’t clear from what you’ve just read, Jazzpunk is a difficult game to sum up. Much like a game of pick-up sticks, all of the elements of the game just lie there in a great big mess, and picking any one of them up disturbs the others. I can talk about the puzzles, but not without talking about the humor. I can talk about the humor, but not without talking about the various side-activities littered throughout the world. Everything is so blended together that it’s almost impossible to describe any single part of it.

I believe this is what reviewers mean when they describe a game that “gels.” Of course, “gelling” is mainly something that games don’t do. You almost never read a reviewer talking about how well a game gels, usually it’s all about how a game doesn’t. Like “spring chickens,” it’s a term used mainly to describe what something isn’t. Well, Jazzpunk gels. It gels so well that it’s almost impossible to talk about.

I once read that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Jazzpunk is like music, in that regard. It’s better to go experience it for yourself and make up your own mind.

Maybe that’s why reviewers don’t talk about it.

Keep … doing whatever it is I’m doing?

My problem is that I still haven’t quite made up my mind about Jazzpunk. I guess that means I have to play some more. "Oh darn," he said with tongue planted firmly in cheek that it sounded like “lo dlarln.”

Is it the Devil Daggers of its genre?

The thing about walking simulators is that they aren't difficult. It's their main defining feature. Usually the hardest part of this sort of game is maintaining interest in the face of aggressive ennui. Jazzpunk doesn't even have that, because the game is constantly giving you reasons to move forward. Sometimes it's to get the next joke, sometimes it’s to find the next Easter egg, sometimes it's even to solve a puzzle that progresses the delicious mess that is the story.

Jazzpunk has a lot of things to recommend it, but a challenge isn't one of them. Call it a "one out of banana" on the Devil Daggers scale.

Comments

My problem is that I still haven’t quite made up my mind about Jazzpunk. I guess that means I have to play some more. "Oh darn," he said with tongue planted firmly in cheek that it sounded like “lo dlarln.”

I guess you don't have to know what you're eating to know that you enjoy eating it.

wordsmythe wrote:
My problem is that I still haven’t quite made up my mind about Jazzpunk. I guess that means I have to play some more. "Oh darn," he said with tongue planted firmly in cheek that it sounded like “lo dlarln.”

I guess you don't have to know what you're eating to know that you enjoy eating it.

As a fan of wursts, hot dogs and dodgy Chinese buffets, I can endorse this statement completely.

I'm glad you vaguely enjoyed experiencing this piece of digital media!

edit: spelling, and to agree that Wedding Quake is the best.

I enjoyed the experience of playing this game when I did earlier in the year, or maybe it was last year. I don't think it's meant to have a real throughline for the plot, which both works and doesn't. Once I realized it was just a big toybox with a few things you had to do to get to the next toybox, and it was just fun finding all the ridiculous crap all over the levels, it became far more enjoyable. Some levels had some frustrating bits, not communicating what those required things were, but for the most part, those were so little that you'd do them and keep exploring.

Jazzpunk is amazing.

Jazzpunk was filmed in front of a live studio cobra.

Jazzpunk stands alone in that it simultaneously accomplished two very, very rare things in games.

1: It made me giggle like a schoolgirl, time and time again.

2: it made me want to puke all over my keyboard.

Very few games are genuinely funny like Jazzpunk, and very few games give me motion sickness like Jazzpuke.

Final note, laughing uncontrollably with prescription-grade nausea is a weird experience, which seems quite apropos.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

As a fan of wursts, hot dogs and dodgy Chinese buffets, I can endorse this statement completely.

Have you had scrapple? You should come down to Philly and I'll introduce you to scrapple.

ccesarano wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:

As a fan of wursts, hot dogs and dodgy Chinese buffets, I can endorse this statement completely.

Have you had scrapple? You should come down to Philly and I'll introduce you to scrapple.

If you do, DT, please write an AAR.

Jazzpunk was a really weird one for me. I played it through to completion and while there were a few clever laughs to be had it felt a little too self-aware and... I think smug might be the word I'm thinking of? Like all the vignettes were riffing off the same general theme but they expected the same laugh track intensity the whole time... I felt like I was square in the target audience but it just ended up leaving me with a vaguely sour feeling once I'd completed it.

I do like that it's out there and we could do with more absurdist insider/pop vulture humour in games, but I think I'd prefer it sprinkled more sparingly over something more satisfying.

DC Malleus wrote:

Jazzpunk was a really weird one for me. I played it through to completion and while there were a few clever laughs to be had it felt a little too self-aware and... I think smug might be the word I'm thinking of? Like all the vignettes were riffing off the same general theme but they expected the same laugh track intensity the whole time... I felt like I was square in the target audience but it just ended up leaving me with a vaguely sour feeling once I'd completed it.

I do like that it's out there and we could do with more absurdist insider/pop vulture humour in games, but I think I'd prefer it sprinkled more sparingly over something more satisfying.

Pop Vulture would be an amazing name for a TMZ style website.

Definitely with you on this one. In a way that's hard to describe, I could tell that Jazzpunk was more than the sum of its parts, but the intense 'game about games' gameplay in a lot of it was difficult for me to chew. I've handled it in lesser degrees (The Stanley Parable), but It might have just been enough to fly completely over my heard.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Pop Vulture would be an amazing name for a TMZ style website.

Ha! It was the name of a column in an old magazine over here and it's just such an apt term for this sort of cultural meta-commentary I'm surprised it never entered wider use, so I try and do my bit to remedy the situation when the opportunity arises.

Jazzpunk was really weird, and I never got it, even a couple hours in. In fact, it's one of the few games I can say I disliked. Because it was weird, obtuse, and gave me major motion sickness. Bleh.

But your write up was fun to read!