Playing A Game Jazzpunk PC

The thing about Jazzpunk is ... hm. I mean, there's definitely a "thing" about Jazzpunk. It's just that it's hard to describe, or even really to understand. Maybe that is the thing about Jazzpunk. ... I don't know.

Jazzpunk is a radical piece of post-modern-videogame art. It's a love letter to classic games, to sci-fi movies, and to electrical engineering puns. It's the interactive version of a Leslie Nielsen movie. It's a two- or three-hour long comedy act at a nerds-only nightclub. It's an outlandish excuse to parody everything from Frogger and Quake to Fruit Ninja and Twister. It's unapologetically weird, and couldn't care less if the player isn't interested.

But while it succeeds in bringing together a lot of disparate and esoteric elements, Jazzpunk fails to establish a real identity of its own. There is no overarching story, or if there was I certainly didn't care about it. There's no sense of a world or universe at all, except for a prevalence of humorous cybernetics. Characters, in the rare circumstance they're clearly identified, exist only as the means for telling disconnected jokes. Nothing really feels like it fits together in Jazzpunk; it's just a jumbled collection of random gags.

Those gags are crafted well-enough that I wouldn't necessarily call Jazzpunk a "bad" game. But the thing about Jazzpunk is, it really isn't much of a "thing" after all. It's an excuse for a bunch of funny, unrelated moments.

Better than: Dear Esther
Not as good as: Gone Home
Not as funny as: Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Progress: Finished the story

Rating: Meh