Pumpkin Jack Review

 

I've mentioned this before, but I'm a big fan of Halloween. I've always had a strong affinity for the spooky, macabre energy of that holiday. Halloween is also my birthday, but honestly my love extends beyond that. I've just always loved the general spirit of the day, and the wider season around it. The skeletons, ghosts, jack-o'-lanterns, bats, witches, all of it; I get so excited for Halloween every year. And here at Netto's Game Room, we do our annual Trick or Treat series of articles that are all centered around Halloween, so I get to write some articles themed around the holiday.

 

Weirdly enough, there aren't all that many video games themed around Halloween. I wrote about Costume Quest last year, which is an adorable RPG series set during Halloween. Batman: Arkham Knight is technically set during Halloween, which provides some fun environmental dressing to the gloomy streets of Gotham City. Then there are games with Halloween-themed levels or stages, like Halloween Town from Kingdom Hearts or Pumpkin Hill from Sonic Adventure 2. Then I heard about Pumpkin Jack, a game that doesn't necessarily take place on or around Halloween, yet is absolutely steeped in Halloween imagery.

 

Pumpkin Jack is an indie 3D platformer that is crafted in the spirit of PlayStation 2 games, with a more direct connection to the gameplay of Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. If you enjoyed the original Jak and Daxter, chances are that you'll enjoy Pumpkin Jack. The game feels exactly like a PlayStation 2 game, for better and for worse.

 

  

The world of Pumpkin Jack is in turmoil. Humanity has been living for years under the thumb of the Devil and his hordes of monsters. They find a champion to fight on their behalf, an extremely powerful Wizard who is inexplicably just as powerful, if not more so, than the Devil himself. The Devil, concerned that the Wizard can overthrow him, enlists the help of Stingy Jack. Jack is a trickster, and has a cursed soul, damned to exist forever, with no hope of entering the afterlife. The Devil offers to wipe away Jack's sins and give him a chance to reach the afterlife, if he can eliminate the Wizard. He places Jack's soul into a pumpkin and the journey begins.

 

 

Jack's quest takes him through six different appropriately spooky stages; like a haunted mine, a fetid swamp and some eerie farmlands and fields. As I was navigating my way through the game, I was reminded a lot of the tone and style of the original PlayStation game, MediEvil. It has that sort of cute, yet dark spirit to it. The world design is great. There are fun, creative platforming sequences throughout the game and some environmental puzzles to add a little bit of depth to the core gameplay loop. There are loads of enemies to fight as well, with a somewhat lackluster combat system that I'll explain further in a moment. These aspects of the game all come together to create a fairly breezy experience, though not completely devoid of effort on the player's part.

 

 

Each stage features a boss, and none of them are particularly difficult in any meaningful way. They have fun designs though, and behave differently than the random enemies that you encounter out in the world. There are also these lame "auto-run" sequences that are in every level, where Jack is put on rails and quickly taken to another section of the level, and you have to dodge and jump over obstacles and guide him on correct paths. The inclusion of these "on-rails" segments felt like the developers just wanted to include another mechanic to break up the monotony of some of the moment-to-moment combat and platforming.

 

 

My chief complaint with Pumpkin Jack is in regards to its combat. Again, mechanically, it feels similar to Jak and Daxter, but Jack has access to several different weapons in this game. As you knock out bosses, Jack obtains new, distinct weapons like a scythe or a rifle. That sounds awesome, right? Well, the weapons don't really seem have any significant differences from each other, in regards to damage output or abilities. They do have different movesets from each other, and you can experiment with those differing attacks, but they don't really seem to matter in regards to using one weapon over another. When you unlock "x" or "y" weapon, you assume that it'll likely be better than whatever you've had access to up to that point, or that it'll give you a new power that makes it important to the next stage. From what I could tell, none of this is true. I think they could've added some very minor upgrade trees for each weapon and it would fix this problem. Just give us a reason to use this weapon over that weapon, or abilities that you gain by upgrading a weapon.

 

 

I know my review hasn't exactly been glowing, but I still recommend checking out Pumpkin Jack. If you like PS2 games, or you're looking for a nice, brief little Halloween game, I think you'd enjoy this. I beat it in a single afternoon. If you can get it on a sale, and go into it knowing that it's far from a perfect game, I definitely recommend trying it out.

 

VERDICT: Recommended
Reviewed on PC