Southpark 64 for the modern player
Jazzpunk is a comedy in the burgeoning sub genre of first person games like Gone Home or Thirty Flights of Loving that seek to tell a linear story in a non-linear experience by shepherding the protagonist with incentives. This review is the hardest review I've ever attempted to write. Being a comedy, and a video game, many of the jokes are deadpan and are uniquely structured to the levels of the game. Because of that there were levels that hit the mark, such as Wedding Quake were hilarious. Often times though there were jokes in levels that matched that were nearly identical to each other in structure, cadence and delivery right after each other that were not only not funny but actively served to make subsequent new jokes in that level less funny.
This fault of the game seems to be a result of the non-linear structure. Due to it being a non-linear game there are many chances to miss things. Due to this they would reuse minigames and even types of jokes. That said reused jokes can be funny. There are multiple instances where you are sent through a zombie pizza hut minigame trifle, and each time it gave me goosebumps and it would cause uncontrollable laughter. Most of the jokes are not given as much car as the pizza hut gag or Wedding Quake and are mere stand-up routines. There are instances when multiple non-player characters in levels will give similar routines but not quite the same, and these jokes fall flat.
Jazzpunk in many ways is a stark realization that game developers growing up playing Nintendo 64 games are now making games of their own. It’s a weird artifact from an era that went in a different direction, when minigames dominated and there were a torrent of incentives deployed at the player character to get them to complete a non-linear environment in a linear way. In the end, what this boils down to is a unique refreshing experience that's comedy doesn't hack it the whole way through.
