Jerry McPartlin: Rebel with a Cause
Bluebox Interactive
This is the Steam description:
This couldn’t have been everything. Plain, humdrum and ordinary. This is
life in Barnett Springs. Jerry has imagined his life completely
different. A Rockstar! That is Jerry’s ambition. Leaving Barnett Springs
and living the Rock’n’Roll life to the max. Seems like destiny had other
plans though.
Since his parents’ disappearance years ago, nothing is going as planned.
A record label’s Big Boss has taken over the city; Jerry’s rival (and
former boyhood friend) Jimmy Lash can be heard hootin’ and hollerin’ on
every radio; and his relationship with Luna-Lee, owner of the local
diner, is going nowhere.
Leaving Barnett Springs and dedicating his life to Rock’n’Roll – that
was the plan. And that’s exactly what Jerry has been trying to do. But a
cryptic letter and an apocalyptic vision pull Jerry off the road and
back to his hometown.
Discover the sinister secret of Barnett Springs, help Jerry solve a
series of mysterious murders before a shifty FBI agent jumps to the
wrong conclusion, and prove that Rock’n’Roll is anything but the devil’s
music. Maybe you can even help Jerry to impress Luna, or at least get
the better of Jimmy Lash.
This is my description:
Couldn’t have been sillier, and
unless convoluted back and forth chore fests are your thing, you might
well want to play something else.
In more detail:
You all know these types of
games aren’t my favourite, but that doesn’t account for my description.
The first half was tongue in cheek silly, but I could go with the flow
and enjoy. But the second half just sucked all the fun out of the event,
and left me with a feeling of a wasted outing.
I get convoluted puzzles. I get
that there has to be an element of artificiality in solves to make them
more challenging. Unfortunately this just seemed like back and forth
tedium for the sake of it. The inordinately convoluted effort to get
from one end of the school corridor to the other said it all.
Many solves are opaque to say
the least, made all the more so by some that have signposts all over
them. A lot are just overly complicated in order to be so. Some are just
obtuse – I had to find a key for a locker and the number was wrong. Some
triggers are pedantic, and if you miss them (make sure you right click
now and then) you will be stuck.
The less said about the plot the
better. It too just went downhill after half way. I didn’t find it funny
so that didn’t help.
It is all point and click, third
person. You don’t die. There are no sliders, no timed puzzles, no colour
puzzles, no music puzzles. Space reveals hotspots. Save at will.
I hate being overly negative and
try hard not to be. But really, there are a whole lot of games like this
you would play before you played this. Nothing resonated with me.
The most fun I had was on a
Youtube walkthrough with SomeGuy. It’s a hoot.
Grade: D
I played on:
OS: Windows 7
Processor: Intel i7-3820 4GHz
RAM: 12GB Ripjaw DDR3 2133 Mhz
Video card: AMD Radeon HD 7800 2048MB
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October 2015
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