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Giant Bomb Review

78 Comments

Jazzpunk Review

5
  • PC

Jazzpunk is beautiful, beguiling nonsense.

It's a rare, but fantastic thing to find a game that feels like the result of a singular artistic vision. To find one that also happens to be a genuinely comic vision is like tripping over a unicorn. Playing Jazzpunk, from developer Necrophone Games, was like tripping over a unicorn who just happened to share my particular appreciations for goofy puns, technological ephemera, and Saul Bass. This is a clear and coherent vision of absolute nonsense, a work of pure absurdism glued together by a consistent, deadpan delivery and a perfectly curated visual style. It signals from its opening minutes precisely what's in store for the player, yet still finds ways to surprise and delight you through moment after moment of concentrated ridiculousness. Put more succinctly, Jazzpunk is probably the funniest game I've played in a long time.

Jazzpunk is one serious acid trip of a game. The good kind, I mean.
Jazzpunk is one serious acid trip of a game. The good kind, I mean.

In it, you are Polyblank, a sort of freelance spy for an agency that runs espionage jobs for just about anyone, it seems. Your shifty drunk of a boss feeds you Missionoyl pills to send you out on assignments that always sound like spy game boilerplate on paper, but descend into complete and utter insanity almost instantly upon your arrival. Describing that insanity is challenging, because so much of Jazzpunk's comedy comes not from individual conversations or situations, but from the breakneck pace at which it fires off the stupidest, most unpredictable happenings it can muster. Think of the rhythms of comedies like Airplane! or The Naked Gun, but with a far more brazenly psychedelic bent.

What's impressive about Jazzpunk's unusual brand of comedy is that it actively lets the player participate in the nonsense happening around them. Funny things aren't just said and done in front of you. You are invited to poke and prod at every strange piece of this world until every ounce of funny has been extracted. In some respects, Jazzpunk resembles something like Gone Home, or Blendo Games' Thirty Flights of Loving. It's more about exploration and interacting with the world than straight-up task achievement. Each chapter of the game has specific objectives that must be met to proceed--steal back tech stolen by the Russians, acquire a cyber-kidney currently embedded in a mark, steal a briefcase from a vacationing target, and so on--but just going straight for those objectives misses the larger point of the game.

In the first mission, I spent nearly 30 minutes just talking to the many crazy idiots that populate the world, performing bizarre side jobs for them, uncovering unseen minigames, and trying to touch every single touchable object to see what strange thing would pop out of it. What does pop out could range from one of a long list of peculiar lines of dialogue, to a playable, matrimonially-themed first-person shooter called Wedding Quake. Jazzpunk throws non sequiturs at you from every which way, and does so at such a rapid clip that there's scarcely ever time to process what you've just wandered into.

And yet there is, astonishingly, a cohesive feel to all of this. Throwing a million silly gags out every which way is no surefire way to create successful comedy, but Jazzpunk manages to keep things unpredictable while retaining a sense of pace and rhythm. There is a consistency to its delivery, an unexpectedly focused style that makes all this more than just a bunch of thrown together funny-sounding words and visuals. Its aesthetic is coherent, if entirely odd, mixing together Cold War-era pop culture imagery with belligerently delivered spy movie tropes, and characters who all look like gender designations on restroom signs. It's all completely nuts, but in an extremely, amazingly specific way.

Whatever Jazzpunk lacks in complexity, it more than makes up for in white-hot weirdness.
Whatever Jazzpunk lacks in complexity, it more than makes up for in white-hot weirdness.

Perhaps because it involves the player so heavily in its punchlines, Jazzpunk mostly keeps things very simple. Those minigames? Never terribly difficult, nor deep. Those mission objectives? Usually quick and easy to accomplish. Also, you can't lose the game under any circumstances. That simplicity prevents any joke from being kneecapped by frustrating gameplay, but it also makes progressing through it a breeze. Playing with an eye toward finding every gag will probably take just a little under three hours, but it's not too likely you'll find all of them on your first play through. I happily went through Jazzpunk a second time, and found at least a half-dozen things I'd completely passed by the first time around. Even more importantly, I didn't mind playing through the jokes I had already seen a second time. Even without the surprise factor, they were still funny. That's a mark of any great comedy, regardless of what medium it originates from.

To describe any more of Jazzpunk would be to its detriment. It's best experienced unawares, so that the full weight of its weirdness can be imparted without the burden of expectation. Suffice it to say I think just about everyone should play Jazzpunk, though I'll concede that its specific brand of humor might not jive with everyone's sensibilities. Frankly, you can watch just about any two minutes of Jazzpunk and probably know right away if it's for you or not. Every individual gag is its own bizarre thing, yet still feels like an accurate encapsulation of the greater whole. It takes a strong, creative, thoughtful comic voice to pull something like that off. In Jazzpunk, Necrophone Games has demonstrated that it has that voice, and it deserves to be heard.

Alex Navarro on Google+

78 Comments

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seannao

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Edited By seannao

My favorite part was the goldeneye 64 reference.

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The_Nubster

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Bought it! Thought the Quick Look was funny, but I don't know if it was the game or Vinny's enthusiasm. Regardless, I have no problem supporting such a wonderfully wacky game, and I hope it does well for the developers.

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SirOptimusPrime

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Edited By SirOptimusPrime

I have never watched a QL, immediately closed it, then bought a game like I have with this. It's fucking incredible.

Great review Alex.

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marblecmoney

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Edited By marblecmoney

My only complaint about Jazzpunk is it only took me 90 minutes to beat, and I wasn't even just mainlining the objectives. I'll probably play through it again and really explore the levels more to find to find the stuff I missed.

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mdmac92

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Great review Alex

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saddlebrown

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Edited By saddlebrown

I didn't read or know almost anything about the game other than to watch the first two minutes of the Quick Look. The moment after the intro ended and Vinny said "if this looks like your thing, turn off this Quick Look," I turned it off and got it for myself. It's a good game, but it didn't strike a chord with me the same way it did for Alex. It's definitely good enough that everybody should just check it out for themselves and decide.

Also, @alex, quick typo note: the minigame is spelled "Qake" not "Quake." I guess to be extra non-copyright infringing.

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DerekDanahy

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Thanks for the review Alex.

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homewrecker

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I thought it had some great moments and genuinely surprised me at a number of points, but most of the time I was just rolling my eyes. Overall I think it tries very hard to be funny but a lot of jokes just fall flat, so I have to respectfully disagree with Alex's verdict.

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internetpizza

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This game is composed of "HEY REMEMBER THAT THING THAT WAS FUNNY HUH!?" and "LOL ITS SO RANDOM HAHAHA ITS HILARIOUS RIGHT MAN!?" Wasted my money.

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Moonshadow101

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Played it, beat it in a couple of hours. Loved every second!

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Cybexx

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Sat down late last night to try it out and played through the entire thing in one sitting despite the nagging feeling in the back of my head that I should have went to bed hours ago.

It is like a much longer Thirty Flights of Loving mixed with some of the bizarre interactive craziness from LEGO Island.

Will definitely comb through it again for more jokes and mini-games that I missed.

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TiE23

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Edited By TiE23

Bought it Saturday night, played through it Sunday afternoon... This was definitely not a 5-star game. I've been somewhat disappointed by these <2 hour art indie games so many times, yet I still buy them and play them (Dear Esther, Gone Home, Stanley Parable). I think it was a solid 3-out-of-5 game.

I gotta build a PC

You're gonna be real bummed if this game is literally the only one you're hoping to play.

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Phished0ne

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No Caption Provided

Well...that happened....

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oueddy

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@tie23 said:

Bought it Saturday night, played through it Sunday afternoon... This was definitely not a 5-star game. I've been somewhat disappointed by these <2 hour art indie games so many times, yet I still buy them and play them (Dear Esther, Gone Home, Stanley Parable). I think it was a solid 3-out-of-5 game.

@straightgrizzly said:

I gotta build a PC

You're gonna be real bummed if this game is literally the only one you're hoping to play.

If definitely not a 5-star game, I have to ask what is a "solid 3 out of 5 game"?

I suppose everyone has their own impressions of what GB means by the ratings system, depending on the reviewer. Just don't be one of those objective review crazy people.

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Gordo789

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really want to play this. I don't usually go in for these types of games but what I watched of the quick look makes it seem like it would be right up my alley. Nice review, Alex, now get back to toiling away on shitty games.

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Bombzinski

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Not seeing the Airplane connection at all. Not sure why everyone keeps referencing Airplane. Glorious game, regardless.

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OrangeLadBoy

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Beat it in 2 hours, liked it a lot. Really remind me of NORMALITY, http://www.giantbomb.com/normality/3030-3675/

Normality would make the most incredible endurance run. Very strong emphasis on endurance (voice work by Corey Feldmen)!

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Y2Ken

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Edited By Y2Ken

Played through this last night and oh boy do I love it.

The whole thing manages to be so cohesive an experience while throwing curveballs and oddities galore. There's just so much depth of content on offer here, and it all feels fresh. They just keep throwing out new ideas, and whether it's a dumb one-liner or an overblown referential gag, they play it just long enough so as not to wear it out - and then stick something extra silly to the end that pushes you over the line into breaking out loud laughing.

I really hope I, and others, don't forget about this by the time GotY rolls around in ten months time - because I can't see any plausible way way this wouldn't qualify for recognition in my books.

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brewster

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Edited By brewster

I thought it had some great moments and genuinely surprised me at a number of points, but most of the time I was just rolling my eyes. Overall I think it tries very hard to be funny but a lot of jokes just fall flat, so I have to respectfully disagree with Alex's verdict.

Don't necessarily disagree with Alex in the sense that he may just have the sense of humour that this tickles him, but I agree that most of the jokes fall flat. I also don't see the Naked Gun/Airplane stuff here. Glad to see a game like this being made, but it wasn't for me.

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MelissaPeterson

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Thanks for the review, the game sounds interesting and I already have it on my Steam wishlist so I'll remember to get it when I have a chance.

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comfy

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Took awhile for me to get to this with my steam backlog, but it's def worth a play through when you want to bite into something that has its own unique flavour