After passing through all the systems of the past generation, and just in time to celebrate Halloween 2021, PUMPIN JACK comes to Playstation 5 and Xbox Series in a new version called “New-Gen Edition”. The changes that can be seen in this version I will tell you in this note.
The original version of PUMPKIN JACK is available for Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. The New-Gen upgrade is available for Playstation 5 and Xbox Series, and is free for those who already own the original version of the game.
I HATE THE HAPPINESS OF ANOTHER
In the kingdom of L’arc en Ciel everything is peace and quiet. People live happily, working, getting along with their neighbors, little birds sing and rainbows fill the sky. It’s all so perfect that it’s even… boring. At least that’s how the Devil thinks so, who has so little to do lately that he spends his time sleeping on his throne. But the Lord of Darkness is determined to spice up his boring existence a bit, so he has no better idea than to fill the entire realm with beings from beyond the grave. Demons, ghosts, skeletons, living gargoyles and more, take over the territory and “play” with the villagers. But, oh surprise, the people of L’arc en Ciel were comfortable with their monotonous life, and they had no idea of thanking the Devil for his collaboration. On the contrary, they sought out the most powerful sorcerer in the Kingdom, who had no difficulty immediately controlling the mindless infernal beings. But Satan was not going to give up. He called on his most faithful, most terrible, and smartest lackey to help him: Jack Pumpkin. Your mission: find and defeat the fearsome sorcerer, passing over all humans and controlled monsters that stand in his way. His reward, the forgiveness of all his misdeeds throughout history and a place to the right of the throne of the Lord of Hell.
IT SEEMS TO ME THAT I KNOW YOU FROM SOMEWHERE
PUMPIN JACK is a spooky-themed action platformer. While we control Jack, a demonic pumpkin that can change bodies, we will face various enemies in each level, both humans and spectral beings, performing jumps, balances and races through sections of platform, solving puzzles, minigames, facing terrible bosses and getting collectibles and weapons.
The scenarios through which we travel are the classics of this theme, such as ghost towns, dark forests, enchanted castles or swamps infested with creatures, all of them super dark and foggy. If all this sounds familiar to you (which you already saw in more than one game) and you look at the photos that accompany this note, surely you will have the same feeling as me: PUMPKIN JACK Drink a lot, a lot from the fountain of MEDIEVIL, that classic Playstation 1 that received an updated version very recently. And that inspiration goes beyond a simple tribute, it is practically a copy of the Sony game, to the point that there are even sections where Jack removes his head and must advance or solve puzzles only with it, just as it happened with games. by Sir Daniel Fortesque. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? And… it depends. If you liked the skeleton swordsman games and you were wanting more, this game is the best option you will find, because it is practically more of the same. If you did not like them or you are looking for something new, you will not find it here.
GAMEPLAY KNOWN AND SOLID, EVEN THOUGH IT DOES NOT INVENT ANYTHING
The idea is to go through each level, out of a total of 6, fighting enemies, platform a lot, overcome different minigames, solve puzzles and get to the end of it, where a confrontation with an always difficult Boss awaits us, and where the intelligence in combat than strength. To carry out his mission, Jack is not alone, but is accompanied by a crow and an owl. The raven acts as a long-distance attack, diving at enemies to damage them and also interacting with doors, levers or bridges that are far from our reach. The owl is our guide, always giving us information about what is happening and the objective of the next mission.
To defeat the enemies that cross before us we have different types of weapons, which are only achieved by defeating a boss at the end of the level, so we will only get one for each of them. But once obtained they remain in our inventory, so if for example we defeat the boss of the third level and we want to return to the first one because we missed collecting an item or collectible, we can use all the weapons that we have obtained up to that moment.
Collectibles are divided into 2 types: raven skulls and gramophones. The former serve as the currency of the game and can be used to buy new bodies, although the difference is only aesthetic because it does not change the gameplay at all, no matter what body we are using. The seconds serve us for absolutely nothing that is to find all the secrets of each level.
Several times during each round the action will be interrupted by a mandatory playable change, all in the form of minigames. Some can be of the speed / survival type, where we have to control for example a mine cart, a ghostly horse or a gargoyle and reach the end of the section without dying; while others are puzzle solving using literally the head. Playing a melody in the correct sequence, the classic memory game of pairs in the cards (although here they are graves) or carrying a bomb to the end of a catwalk using quickly and strategically levers and blows are some of them. There are several per level and they are all entertaining and not very difficult to beat.
Finally, once all the obstacles have been cleared, a boss awaits us at the end of each level who will make us have a bit of a bad time at least a couple of times. All the final battles are difficult until we turn them around, because it is not enough to simply try to hit the boss and, in fact, it never just works like that. The idea is to dodge everything that he throws at us until we have the opportunity to make a movement that makes him lower his guard for a few seconds, and there we can attack. This process is repeated several times, with new attacks from the boss or even scenarios that change and become less friendly every time we manage to do damage, so, in principle, we are going to die a lot against bosses.
In sum, the gameplay ends up being quite entertaining and with practice everything in the game is surmountable, since the scale of difficulty is quite balanced.
TECHNICALLY CORRECT AND WITH A RETRO SPIRIT
The original version of PUMPKIN JACK it was a technically correct game and not much else, but it didn’t pretend to be either. Beautiful graphics both in characters and settings, dark background music and the absence of voices except that of a narrator at the beginning of each level, it is clear and it is clear that the intention of the developers was always to give the game a retro spirit, that gives us a feeling of reliving those ninety days where we were little children playing the aforementioned MediEvil, Spyro The Dragon or Crash Bandicoot on our old Playstation 1. And taking that into account, the goal was reached. And how does the New-Gen upgrade that we are analyzing now work? Things don’t change much and the settings are mostly cosmetic. The PS5 and Xbox Series version of PUMPKIN JACK It now offers 4K resolution at 60 FPS, which of course makes everything look more beautiful and fluid, but it does not touch anything at the playable level. If anything, I felt that the controls were a little less sensitive compared to the previous version, which is a totally positive thing and will cause us to die a lot less times due to falls or inaccuracies when moving on thin catwalks or we are doing series of jumps. Otherwise, the game is exactly the same so it is still a good title, especially for those who want to receive a nostalgia slap.
AN ARMY OF ONE MAN
The game was developed entirely by a single person, Nicolas Meyssonnier, and considering that data the result cannot be less than surprising. On the official page of PUMPKIN JACK The boy does not hide his obvious influences on the Sony classics, which in addition to those already mentioned include other games such as the saga of Jak & Daxter. The objective was, in his own words, to transport us 20 years ago, to the time when we played the PS2, and provide us with a game without so many pretensions or complexities that are so abundant in today’s gaming. Just jump and hit, and repeat a thousand times, like in the “old school.” So much so, that the game even has a death counter, which not only increases with each one of them, but it even launches mocking phrases at us every time we fail. In addition, humor is present in all the dialogues of the story, and the game never even takes itself seriously, so jokes, occurrences and loads of current pop culture are the order of the day.
The levels are not too long, so going through them thoroughly to find everything they hide will take us just over an hour each, so that in about 8/9 hours we will be able to have seen all the content that the game has to offer. It’s not much, but the road is always fun.