Jack Holmes: Master of Puppets Review

Player(s): 1
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Jack Holmes: Master of Puppets is a first-person survival horror developed and published by @TonyDevGame. I got to say, it’s amazing with how good indie developers are getting with making really nice games and especially good games in the survival horror genre. Jack Holmes is one of those games that stands out from other horror games. Not only does this game have a great atmosphere, but it actually can get creepy and has an uncommon subject matter (living puppets). If you’ve played Resident Evil 7, this game plays similar. I didn’t expect much going into this game, but I must admit, it did surprise me with how good it got.

We join Jack Holmes as he is about to embark on his first case. On this case, he must fight off living puppets, animatronics and other creepy creatures. The game starts out simply enough and gets underway pretty quickly. You start out at Jack’s house and have to gather your things and then off you go. Jack arrives at a house and has to sneak inside. After just a little bit of searching, you’ll find tons of frightful scenes and then eventually have to fight some living puppet enemies.

This game has a really creepy atmosphere, especially at the beginning. It loves to put you in the dark at times (Jack’s flashlight is very important) and it has a bunch of scenes of gore, such as bloody skeletons and mushy human remains. Just like I said at the beginning, it plays a lot like Resident Evil 7 and it has that same type of horror atmosphere as well. RE7 got right down dirty with its atmosphere and so does this game! The puppet enemies in the game are quite unique. You can shoot off their head but sometimes, their body will still keep attacking. There are other enemies similar to this later on.

The ammo is few and far between, but the game usually makes sure that you have enough to fight enemies. Starting out most of the enemies are puppets, but you’ll eventually be fighting spiders and other types of enemies. If you have a phobia of spiders, DO NOT play this game. The spiders do not look super realistic, but man, do they EVER have creepy movement. The environments start out not so interesting, but the game gets way better as you keep moving along. Starting out, you’re in a creepy house and eventually reach a cave area. Both areas can get quite creepy, but the game gets so much better once you finally make it to the amusement park. It’s fun to watch how a cute amusement park suddenly gets unsettling and disturbing. The game has an overall good variety of areas to explore and the gameplay variety ramps up more once you reach the amusement park.

Besides shooting, the game has a few puzzles here and there. Just like all survival horrors, you’ll have to find keys to open doors. There are also a few minigames. The overall graphics are quite good, especially for the environments. Like I keep saying, the game feels so very much like RE7 in so many ways and the graphics engine is one of them. The gameplay controls are nice and tight. It’s literally modeled after RE7 when it comes to gameplay. Some of the button choices are a bit strange – Triangle to interact, R1 to switch weapons?

The main problem that I have with this game is that every enemy is a bullet sponge. The most basic puppet, can take a full clip of the handgun to finish off. You can go for a headshot, that will sometimes kill it in a few shots, but it’s not guaranteed. I feel the game limits you to the handgun for way too long. Early on, it will have multiple dashing enemies attack you and each one takes nearly a full clip to kill. It’s so hard to avoid damage at times. Once I got the shotgun, puppets could take two shotgun blasts to kill and then other enemies would take around four. I know this bullet sponge enemy gimmick is a way to ramp up the difficulty and make you use up more of your precious ammo, but it sure does get annoying. It’s honestly hard to horde items in this game because the game throws a lot of tough enemies your way and it has other ways where you will suddenly lose your inventory all at once.

I had problems with the aiming also – mainly with the handgun. When aiming without holding L1, the bullets were not accurate with the target cursor very often. When aiming with L1, the aiming seemed more accurate, but it was still off at times. The aiming problems were most noticeable when trying to shoot distant targets. I also had a few problems with the game freezing and soft locking. I got stuck in the environment once and had to restart. None of the freezing and soft locking was a major problem though.

Jack Holmes: Master of Puppets is an overall decent survival horror. The enemies in the game do get annoying, but you eventually get used to it. The game can actually be quite tough at times. There were points where I got a bit concerned about ammo, which is quite rare with survival horrors nowadays. If you enjoy RE7 and its overall horror atmosphere, be sure to give this game a try. I feel you’ll enjoy the game the most. The game is also comparable to Fobia: St Dinfna Hotel, which also played like RE7 overall, so if you like either of these games, Jack Holmes is worth a shot.

The Good:
+ Good atmosphere and environmental gore
+ Nice variety of areas to explore

The Bad:
- Basically, all enemies are bullets sponges
- Aiming precision is off with handgun
- The game has somewhat bad pacing. The beginning areas aren’t as good as the later areas (amusement park area).