The Collection Chamber: REDJACK: REVENGE OF THE BRETHREN

Pursued by murderous assassins you embark on an epic adventure of honour, betrayal and revenge. Set in the golden age of piracy, this swashbuckling and bloody tale takes you from picturesque England, though the lawless Caribbean, to the Spanish Main on a quest for justice and the hidden treasure of RedJack.

Features
Exploration-based narrative adventure featuring both first person and third person action and gameplay.
Stunning 3D environments in spectacular 24Bit colour allowing complete 360° freedom of movement in real-time and without delays.
Varied gameplay modes including first person fighting, puzzle-solving and exploration.
More than 20 interactive characters with advanced AI, enabling them to remember past encounters and to react accordingly.
Over 40 challenging puzzles and mind-bending problems to solve.
Vast non-linear storytelling offering the player a variety of different outcomes on each decision taken.
Spectacular cinematic cutscenes and original musical score draw you deeper into the story.
Easy, intuitive game interface.

~ from the back of the box

It's dangerous to make an adventure game about pirates. Inevitably you will be compared to some of the best games in the genre - the Monkey Island series - and will likely be left wanting. But what if we scrape those classics from out mind and view CyberFlix's 1998 release RedJack: Revenge of the Brethren with fresh eyes? Will it still be a good game?

Coming from the folks behind Titanic: Adventures Out of Time and Dust: A Tale of the Wired West, you can expect an element of quality from the storytelling and presentation department. The graphics are colourful and expressive, with well realised locations and distinctly spirited characters that inhabit them. The cast is so well written and executed that you, the main character, is a dullard by comparison. You play a young lay-about named Nick Dove who lounges about doing nothing with his life. His big brother - and only family member - is sick of this and demands he go get a job. And so does everyone in the tiny village, including his proposed love interest Elizabeth. Luck would have it that a pirate ship has docked at the port, and it's decided that joining the crew is the best choice all round. But first, you'll have to pass some tests. Pirate tests.

Finding a sword and pistol; an ominous omen of what's to come (left).
Use an item in your inventory by dragging from the ever-present treasure chest that is your inventory (right).

Sound familiar? Well, I was thinking the same thing when I booted it up but we're not allowed to go there. On its own merits, this is a good set up. Dove may be a nothing of a character but given the first-person perspective it can be argued that he's a player insert whereby you project yourself on to him. If that's the case, how dare they accuse me of being a lazy bum! If not, at least the rest of the cast make up for it. Without exception, each person you talk to is distinct and memorable, with some impressive voice work and a commendable attempt at lip-synced animation. You want to go down every branch of the dialogue tree just to hear what they say, and while the pre-rendered graphics may be primitive by today's standards, they still hold up from a visual design perspective, almost looking like something out of an Aardman or Laika stop-motion movie.

This is where my high praise for the game ends. While story and presentation are enough for me to see this through to the end and recommend it for adventure-game enthusiasts, I'm a little more lukewarm on the puzzles. The game's engine doesn't allow for much complexity in puzzle design, and what's here is simple enough for even a genre newbie to breeze past without much issue.

Access to your inventory is forever present in a translucent treasure chest on the bottom left that takes up a large chunk of the screen. Click on it once, and it'll open up to reveal the opaque contents. You can drag and drop items from here, but if it doesn't get used and you don't drag it back, it'll float forever on your screen. While this implementation could be good in some instances - keeping a treasure map in view at all times, for example - it mostly just gets in the way. Looking to your right in the 360° panoramic nodes is unobstructed, but this chunk of a chest limits how you turn left. The space available inside is also rather small, meaning you will never have an inventory larger than about five or six items - and two of them will always be your knife and musket. As such, the puzzle design is capped in complexity.

Sword fighting is awkward and annoying, and will result in many deaths (left).
Avoid obstacles by imprecisely swinging the mouse (right).

But inventory puzzles aren't the only obstacle; you will also have a tiny amount single-screen ones. Again, these are mostly unchallenging variations on familiar tropes, such as pressing buttons to raise or lower platforms or lever flipping. You will not be stumped by these. And I will be questioning your intelligence if you are. No, what will truly try your patience is the bane of any adventure-game fan - action sequences.

The game is filled will twitch-based mini-games that for the most part are truly awful. You will first encounter sword fighting as one of the challenges you have to pass to become a pirate. Your opponent will swing at you either from the left, right or above and you must move your mouse in that direction to block it before clicking to swing back. Apparently, the opponent will hint at his actions with his eyes but I was rarely able to react in time and winning felt like luck more than anything. You will encounter this mini-game multiple times throughout the adventure, and each time my heart sank.

The shooting gallery sequences are okay when looking in one direction (left)
but when you have your entire surroundings to pay attention to, you'll be lucky to live through it (right).

On top of this, there is also the gallery shooter segments. Some of the more limited ones work quite well, like when practising aiming with the cannon; the targets are never far from being right in front of you. When you have the full 360° environment as your backdrop, it becomes impossible to keep track of where the enemies are coming from. Your turn speed is also so slow that you might lose a chunk of your life just looking around figuring out where the shots are coming from. These sections are often long and take place among several screens with no way to save during them, making them more of memory game than game of skill.

These are enough to trigger an intense dislike in an otherwise pretty good adventure game. It is also very short, clocking in at around three hours to see everything the three disks have to offer. When most of that is made up of sword fighting and gallery shooting, we have a major problem in its overall design. If doesn't help that it will forever be compared to one of the best games in the genre (it even ends in an amusement park of sorts complete with a wooden rollercoaster). On its own merits, it's a complete misuse of the obviously great talent involved. Compared to Monkey Island it is a travesty. Play for the well told story, memorable characters and impressively realised graphics, not for the simple puzzles or dire action sequences.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses dgVoodoo with IMG Drive Portable to run the game on modern systems. Manual and Strategy Guide included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information (particularly about saving). Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 1.82 GB. Install Size: 2.17 GB. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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