Overview:

"Jack Orlando" from TopWare (I belive a Polish game company) is a detective story set in an unnamed coastal US city just after the end of Prohibition. The game is a 3rd person 'point & click' adventure. Jack Orlando was once a top detective, winning many awards and praise as shown in the opening sequence. Since then, Jack has fallen on hard times, and now frequents the very dives he used to bust during Prohibition. The story begins with your character, Jack, witnessing a shooting, and getting blamed for it. Your job is to find the real killer before you have to take the rap.

[img]http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/Jack_Orlando/jackorl_02.jpg?19,18[/img]

Game Play:

The game is typical point & click, with lots of inventory items available, but many are 'red herrings' and never get used. There are 3 or 4 major settings, such as Jack's apartment and neighborhood, Downtown, the Harbor, etc. But most are quite large and have lots of locations to explore. A good part of the game is spent Downtown, and it's a fairly large one, with many streets and buildings. There are several 'action' icons you use to control your character, an arrow to move, hand to pick up objects, magnifying glass to look at objects, and a fist & gun for when Jack has to get rough! (yes, you sometimes have to rough up some guys, and once or twice pull your gun, but these parts are fairly easy. You just click the fist or gun icon on the person you want to hit, and you pretty much can't miss).
One drawback, there are some 'dead ends' where you can get into a situation you can't survive, because you didn't pick up some item earlier in the game. (oh, did I mention you can die!). The 2 times this happened to me, I had to restore and replay about 10 or 15 minutes of the game, so it wasn't a big deal.

Graphics:

The animated backgrounds are very well done, sometimes colorful, other times drab as fits the environment. When speaking to characters (and there are quite a few you can talk to) a close up image of your character and the person you're talking to appear in the upper corners of the screen. When moving from one location to another, the animation of Jack getting into his car and driving off are very well done.

Sound:

The game has a good musical score, and a song that was written for the game sounds like an old classic. For some reason, the sound sometimes got staticy, and occasionally would get real loud and freeze my game, forcing me to re-boot. A real bummer!
Voice Acting was not bad, especially Jack's character. He's a typical wise cracking detective, and the voice acting fit the part. I should note however, there is some rough language used in the game. One funny thing, I found two spots in the game where Jack is talking to a female character, and she will reply in Jack's voice!! Somehow there were a couple of lines given to the wrong voice actors!

Technical Problems:

The biggest drawback with this game are the technical problems. This is a DOS game, and uses VESA drivers. I couldn't get this to run under Windows 98 on my computer, and under DOS, it ran okay, but I never was able to get the sound configured correctly. I ended up playing on a laptop from work. (it was running Windows ME, and for some reason , had no problem, other than the sound static problems mentioned above.

Conclusion: I really enjoyed this game. The setting, characters, and story were all fun. There's just the right amount of humor as well. It's too bad the technical problems got in the way sometimes. One strange thing about this game, the box and manual are printed in Hungarian, and there is no indication that the game is in English. (well, I can't read Hungarian, so maybe there is!). I don't understand how they expected to market this to an English speaking audience. They went through the trouble of getting English speaking voice actors, but apparently never marketed the game in the US or UK.

Get it at:

http://www.playinggames.bigstep.com


System requirements:

Pentium 166 or higher
DOS 6.0 / Win 95
32 megs RAM
8X CD ROM drive
SoundBlaster Pro 16, AWE 32
4 meg video with VESA support

Boy Nolalou - that was fast. Really nice work on the review. That was a great screen shot to use at your open.

This game was next to impossible to locate for a long time. I finally got one a while back courtesy of Zolie - mailed out of Hungary.

I would urge folks if they think this game would appeal to them - to take advantage of Playing Games stock pile. I believe once it's gone - there won't be a way to get this game with any ease if at all.

It doesn't like DVD/CD rom. It played wonderfully on my son's Win98 though. I guesss his PC doesn't have the driver conflict. It is as Nolalou says a great little detective game. I really enjoyed it myself.

Laura

I realize I'm a little behind the times here but I'm playing this now on XP and it's working just fine although it has me walking in circles and picking up a lot of garbage. No glitches at all.

happy trails,

Carolyn

Hi

Started a re-play of this very recently myself - and am enjoying it just as much as the first time round

Cheers.

Mad

Update, 2013: The game is available on GOG.

Thans Reenie

This game sucks in my opinion.

Cathy, what aspects did you not care for?

I'm playing this old game now. I like the game but not the gameplay. Too many long conversations and lets you do things out of order resulting in dead ends. I have been playing many hours and now have to go back and replay most of the game because I did something out of order and now there is a person I should have given something to and gotten something that I need from, and she is long gone.

I'll be replaying with the walkthrough in front of me. Oh yea, it's not very alt/tab friendly either.

A lot of nice locations though and I like the story.

Argh!!

"I'll be replaying with the walkthrough in front of me. Oh yea, it's not very alt/tab friendly either."

Exactly what I did on my re-play, oldbroad !! But only because I liked the story so much

I'll use the walkthrough to replay the downtown area and then I'll go back to playing without it... I think

Yes. I managed to play several large chunks without the walkthrough myself, oldbroad, but made sure I saved, saved, saved a LOT !!

Good luck

Hi nolalou, your review just caught my eye as this is amongst the first Adventure games I ever played. I don't remember having any problems other than finding it challenging in places but I played The Director's Cut version - is that the same? I loved the look of the game, the mood & the story so thank you for your impressions!

I don't know if your version is the same as the original, chrissie, but the original did have bugs !!

Hi Mad, I had to go back to nolalou's post to see that her review was based on Topware's publication which would have been released in 1997 which as far as I can glean was for Dos & windows 1995. I didn't even have a PC then! so the version I have 'The Director's Cut' was an enhanced one published by Jowood for later versions of windows in 2001. So I guess that perhaps the bugs had been ironed out by then? & you played the original?

I played the Director's Cut. I don't really remember if I had any bugs but the dead end kind of ruined the game for me. When I got back where I needed to be (with the help of the walkthrough) I tried to play without it but found I was leery of getting in a dead end again. Took my interest away from the game some. Towards the end I used the walkthrough again.

***Mr. Bill's walkthrough*** for the Director's Cut says

and more specifically about the dead end, from ***the web archive of the JA review***

I've only played the older Hungarian/English version (voices were in English) from Playing Games Interactive. I liked the beginning of the game, but had trouble later on and ended up using a walkthrough to finish.

Yes, the flower lady disappeared on me before I even found the vase.

It is such a long time ago I played the game so I'm not sure I did things in the wrong order in The Director's Cut to result in a dead end but at the time, if so, I probably just reloaded a previous save & took heed of a walkthrough. No, it's not very acceptable within any game for you to have to do that just because you did something in the wrong order but I know it's not the only game I've come across that's guilty of that 'bug'!

The first time I played the game was on my Win95 machine so I guess it must have been the original

The version I have now is the DotEmu release which I was able to burn to disk

It's also possible you didn't run into the bug, chrissie.
The archived JA review says

So the JA reviewer didn't run into the dead end either, and whether you get the dead end depends on what order you do the puzzles.

The worst game I know of for dead ends was Hitchcock: The Final Cut from 2001. I think it was gatorlaw who found 5 dead ends in that game.

Huh. I never finished playing Hitchcock: The Final Cut because I was playing it on my XP machine that broke down. I have a different working XP now and thought about trying to play it again but 5 dead ends doesn't sound very promising! Plenty of other games to play.

Tally Ho mentions one dead end and how to avoid it in his ***walkthrough for Hitchcock***

There doesn't seem to be an "official" Gameboomers review for Hitchcock, but there is more than one user review ***here***

Bryansmom gave some general advice for avoiding the dead ends:


So if you decide to play it, keep Bryansmom's advice in mind. It sounds like good general advice that might keep you from having to depend on a walkthrough to avoid potential dead ends.

Thanks Jenny. Could be I had hit a dead end and didn't even know it yet at the time my computer broke down.