Jack the Ripper: The White Label Murders

Review

The White Label Murders

by J Nash (November 15th, 2010 at 11:02 pm)

Game: Jack the Ripper — Letters From Hell. Publisher: Anuman. Authors: Martial Brard (design), Nicolas Solan (code), Eric Bellanger, Pierre Berger, Yan Jouan (graphics), Dan Foster (terrible music). Price: 59p/€0,79/99¢. Buy the game.

I’m not exactly sure what made me download this recently discounted charlady sim; probably something to do with wondering how far a Jack the Ripper hidden object game could conceivably go. (“You find a corpse! Indicate 17 mutilations,” etc.)

Fortunately FOR YOU the game skirts the edges of the crimes instead, and suddenly became enormous fun when I realised the incredible secret of Jack the Ripper.

Hidden object games are one of those genres I have no interest in, along with, for example, tower defence and everything you like; and Jack the Ripper starts with typical awfulness. You’re a reporter who decides to boost circulation by manufacturing some Ripper panic and before you can leave your office it is vitally important you find some objects, some more objects, a map and pin that map to the wall.

Hngh.

Luckily, for the second scene you’re kicking around at the bad end of Whitechapel for research when you decide to count all the visible sheep. This bursts out of nowhere and sets the tone for the rest of the game (the police arrest you unless you can provide 15 witnesses, ie rats; you hit on the scoop of the century when you find 20 Ripper graffiti signatures and then painstakingly erase them; etc etc) and revealed THE INCREDIBLE SECRET.

Everyone in Jack the Ripper is drunk.

Immediately the entire game makes perfect sense, from your reporter forging Ripper letters then losing them in the same room, through the police stumbling over you near every murder but letting you off if you can tell them the shop number in the previous scene, to the bit where you try to photograph a demonstrative hellhole of Whitechapel slummery to sell to your paper but decide to clear up 15 piles of rubbish first.

Also the scene where the police find your photo of the graffiti-less square and you have to draw them all back on.

And the gimmick of the charlady genre itself, ie swimming your head round the room with peering concentration trying to find an arbitrary list of items that only makes sense to you.

I couldn’t put Jack the Ripper down until I finished it, which according to the game clock took 58m 48s. (As usual with charlady sims you’re not ordinarily penalised for feverish guess-clicks except for the screen dimming for a few seconds in a sort of electric frown. There’s also a timed mode, but I didn’t bother with that.)

The designers are clearly aware of how ridiculous they’re being, which inspires them to furtherly ludicrous heights. The climax is entirely fantastic, as the police have you demonstrate you didn’t post the forged letter that you in fact posted (“Phew! It’s not easy disproving your own handwriting!”) and then themselves scatter around incriminating evidence for a joke.

There are a couple of slightly clever-cum-annoying variations on the charlady theme where you run a brief sequence in the correct order (eg, developing a photograph) and have to start again with every wrong click. The traditional genre clunkiness is present: scale is crazy, with knives like broadswords and the graffiti sequence closely resembling the bit in Life of Brian; and there’s inadequate visual difference between the blobs you want and bits of scenery BUT APPARENTLY THAT IS THE FUN OF IT.

The ending implies you get killed by a Ripper infuriated you’re stealing his thunder (Spoiler! Oh), but I like to think you settled your differences over another bottle of delicious scotch and we can look forward to a sequel where Reporter and Ripper become private detectives.

“Can you help me? I’ve lost my dog. Here is a photograph.”

“LOOK OUT RIPPER, that woman’s carrying a thin gun. Quick, grab a couple of anachronisms and the vodka and let’s leap out of this window.”