Super Jazzman PC Game Review

Super Jazzman is a real homage to the classic 2D Adventure games popularized on the PC in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. It offers a great adventure experience if that’s a genre you enjoy and have missed, but has a few flaws that keep it from greatness. In the end though, if you like adventure games and feel the need for one and a charming one at that, then Jazzman is for you.

Gameplay: 9/10
Pros: The same mind bending puzzles and click interface make it into Jazzman. Click to use, look at, move, etc. standard move set/controls in a game genre long forgotten. Anyone remember Lost Secret of the Rainforest?...just checking
Cons: The excitement of these games is never in the gameplay, but rather figuring out what to do. There’s also no replay value in these adventures since once you figure it all out and get the story, you’re ready to move on since figuring out the mystery and what to do next is the whole point of the game.

Graphics: 7/10
Pros: The graphics are well animated and have excellent sprite and pixel work…\
Cons: …the problem is that the game window is incredibly small…like 320 x 200 pixels or something. It’s really hard to see the object you need to pick up when it’s a whole 10 pixels.

Sound/Music: 8/10
Pros: The sounds are all done really well and fit the mood of the music. I love the walking echo.
Cons: There’s not really any music and the sounds are somewhat minimal. It is nice to not have elevator music repeating over and over as you are trying to figure out where Jazzman should fly to next.

Lasting Appeal: 8/10
Pros: This is hard one for me to judge since I haven’t played the whole adventure, but so far it’s been a charming story that works well.
Cons: As stated earlier, the nature of these games is the initial puzzle solving and figuring out the story. Like most books, you’ll read it (or in this case: play it through) once and be done with it.

Average: 80.00%
Tilt: +/- 0.00%

For my little closing, I would like to point out that Herculean Effort is very paranoid about piracy. Super Jazzman has the most ridiculous protection I have ever gone through with an Indie Game. Even after downloading the full version, getting a password to unzip it and install it. You still have to put in a code when it boots up and then it’s only registered on one computer. A little overzealous if you ask me, but again it doesn’t really effect gameplay. I just thought it was an interesting factoid.

Verdict: 80%