Jazz and Faust Preview

PC gaming has always lent itself best to certain genres. The shelves of your local software store are at this very moment lined with untold copies of the latest first-person shooters, simulations, and real-time strategy games. Those of us who have been playing PC games since the good old days remember another genre that once dominated shelf space: the hallowed point-and-click adventure game. In the halcyon adventuring days of the late '80s and early '90s, good adventure games were a dime a dozen. Even now, the mention of favorites like King's Quest, Maniac Mansion, and Loom can still warm an old adventurer's heart. In recent years, however, the flow of adventure games has slowed to a mere trickle. What's an old adventure-game fan to do?

Jazz and Faust has you visiting many exotic ports of call.

Enter Russian software maker 1C Company. Previously unheard of in the Western Hemisphere, 1C will change that soon with the release of developer Saturn+'s Jazz and Faust, a game that returns to and upholds the tenets of the old-style adventure genre. Is Jazz and Faust the unlikely savior of adventure gaming? It may or may not rejuvenate the PC audience's lost demand for adventure games, but at the very least, Jazz and Faust will serve as another refreshment for the thirsty adventurer.

Jazz and Faust casts you as either of the two title characters--you're allowed to choose which one on starting a new game. Your choice of character determines more than just the player model you'll be pushing around the screen, however. Each of the game's main characters takes part in the same overall story arc, but their two adventures are mostly divergent. When you play as one character, you'll meet up with the other at various points throughout the story, and thus when you play as the second character, you'll witness the same events taking place from a different perspective. Despite the amount of time the two main characters will spend together, both Jazz and Faust have entirely unique paths to follow and puzzles to solve, so playing through with both characters will be a must if you want to see everything the game has to offer.

The game's world is full of inhabitants to interact with.

Jazz and Faust opens for both characters in the same place, the city of Er-Elp, and at about the same time, but each one finds himself in a unique predicament. Jazz, the profit-minded smuggler, has landed himself in jail, and he is granted a three-day reprieve during which he must collect enough money to pay off the court and win his freedom. Faust, the noble seafaring captain of the ship Invisible, is waiting for a strange and nameless passenger who needs quick transport away from Er-Elp. The man never returns from his brief errand, though, and both Jazz and Faust soon find out about the grisly murder of two foreigners that has occurred during the night. The police close the city's port while an investigation takes place, and Jazz and Faust both set out, independent of each other, to uncover more information about the bizarre goings-on. Of course, they soon become embroiled in a larger and more elaborate plot that will take them to a variety of exotic locales.