Jazz and Faust, from Russian developer 1C is a traditional third-person point-and-click adventure game with an innovative twist. It's really two games in one. To successfully complete the game, you must play through it twice, once as Jazz and once as Faust. Don't worry, it's not repetitive. Well, not terribly repetitive. Though the two characters' storylines dovetail into each other a bit here and there, each has a very different set of problems, obstacles, and adventures.

The game begins with a one of those cheesy cut scenes that is simply a compilation of bits of cut scenes from within the game. Kind of like an overture from an old-fashioned musical comedy. The snippets are awfully attractive, however. Then you see out two heroes, small-time ship captains both, playing dice with each other. Roll your cursor over each one of them and they'll wave to you. Isn't that special? Click on one and you're off and running on his story.

I don't want to over-sell this game, which has a lot of problems. But I will say that it has its charms and it's pretty fun to play. It rather reminded me of those "Sin and Sand" miniature epics from Universal Studios in the 40s and 50s. You know, the ones that usually starred the likes of Maria Montez, John Hall, Tony Curtis, Yvonne DiCarlo, and almost always the dependable Sabu.

Why did I enjoy the game? Because it takes place in fun, exotic locales, is great looking, and is fun in a trashy sort of way.

Let's talk about graphics first, because it's the graphics that are this game's best feature. Every environment in the game is attractive, but the renderings of far-flung exotic cityscapes are ravishing. At moments the game's look will remind you of The Longest Journey. (Calm down, I said the game's look - the actual game doesn't have a hint of the great TLJ's depth and complexity.)

In the puzzles and game play department, the game gets the job done, but won't inspire many awards. It's all the traditional, use-this-inventory-item-on-this-hotspot type of problems to solve. There's only one traditional, Shivers-type puzzle, a jigsaw with a gravestone, and it's not bad.

The gimmick of the game - two characters exploring different edges of the same larger story - actually works surprisingly well. The first time through the story, it's fun to run into the other character here and there, and when you play through the second time, it's fun anticipating those intersections. There's even a wonky plot trick that justifies slight changes in the details of the story the second time through, which helps keep things interesting.

Unfortunately, just about every other aspect of this game is downright bad. The voice acting is among the worst in recent games, right up there with the dreaded Mystery of the Druids. The lead character of Faust is particularly bad. He sounds like Carlton the Doorman after two too many Quaaludes. Add this to the lame translation from the Russian and the overall effect is ridiculous. Luckily, the actor who gives Jazz his voice is much peppier and more professional. For this reason, I strongly recommend that you play through Jazz's story first.

The translation provides some unintentional comedy, as the translator confused the Cyrillic equivalent to our letter K. The translator uses R instead, and so characters are constantly saying to each other things like, "You want me to meet you there? O.R.!" The effect is made even more absurd by the terribly illegible font that was chosen for the speech subtitles. MESSAGE TO ALL GAME DESIGNERS: CLARITY IS A VIRTUE.

The story of the game is also a bit insane, as characters cheerfully do outrageously immoral acts in pursuit of petty goals. Need a net to give a starving fisherman? How about casually burning down an entire warehouse to get it? Need to capture a fearsome monster? How about cavalierly using a poor innocent puppy dog as bait? As long as you accept this kind of behavior as part of the crazy overall logic of the game, you might not be too terribly put off by it. Or maybe it's just a Russian thing . . .

The game is rife with bad adventure programming as well. Characters will respond to one inventory item with information that's appropriate for a completely different item; both Jazz and Faust will regularly make declarations about certain hotspots that completely anticipate story developments; what's more, much of the plot just doesn't make much sense. Even worse, sometimes the game is just lazy. There's a point at which Faust steals the clothes from a large, fat man. Faust, who is trim and buff, looks exactly like the other man by virtue of simply putting on his clothes. I mean, same face, same fat. It's just stupid.

However, despite all of these problems, the fact is, I enjoyed playing Jazz and Faust. It's not going to go on any Top Ten list of mine, but it was a breezy, short, colorful diversion.

Final Grade: C

System Requirements:

PII 300 or equivalent, 32 MB RAM, 8X CD-ROM, 3D Accelerator, 4MB VRAM, 778 MB disk space, mouse, sound card, DirectX v8.0

This review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link back to Just Adventure.