Paradise Cracked - The JAVE

Point-n-Click, Sci-Fi Adventure/RPG

August 2003
March 2004 (UK)

Buka Entertainment (Developer)
Tri Synergy (Developer)
JoWooD Productions (Developer)
Oxygen Interactive (Developer)
MiST land (Publisher)

Note: This game's original language is Russian; it was subsequently released in other languages.

Third Person

"Welcome to the world of Paradise Cracked. Come on in, and bring all of the patience you can muster. You’re going to need it.

"There have been lots of games with clunky controls. Outcast, while a great game, was a bit cumbersome to learn. Gothic, a truly interesting 1st-person RPG, had controls which could practically defeat the casual player...But nothing I’ve ever wrapped my fingers around prepared me for the Coit Tower of Clunk that is Paradise Cracked.

"Let me start by saying that, buried underneath the baffling miasma of its controls is what may very well be a good game, yearning to get out. While the story is not wildly original, it’s a solid, dystopian, Blade-Runnery, William Gibson-influenced cyberpunk story set in a dark, grimy city full of lots of crime and not much law.

"BUT -- and this is a big, honkin’ 'BUT' -- the designers made a fatal flaw. They trapped their well-intentioned cyberpunk RPG in the clothing of a squad-based, turn-based strategy game...This 'everything-is-turned based' model does NOT work in an RPG setting at all...It’s one thing to switch into turn-based mode for combat in an RPG, but to stick the whole game in it is a catastrophic mistake.

"So . . . we’ve got here a good premise for a game, a promising story, very decent 3D graphics, 3rd person with decent camera control -- all put in peril by a the double whammy of a terrible interface and a devastatingly wrong-headed game mechanic. Either one of these flaws would be enough to sink a good game. Put them together and you’ve got the Titanic."