Case 1: In Search of the Skunk Ape – Deluxe Edition
A few months after Case 5, on August 8th 2006, the next Ben Jordan game was released, but, surprise, surprise, it wasn’t the eagerly awaited 6th part of the series but a remake of the first case. As the series had steadily become better and more popular after its humble beginnings, it became clear to Grundislav that the original “Search for the Skunk-Ape” wasn’t as good as it had the potential to be. And so the idea for this deluxe version was born. Although essentially retelling of the first game’s story, the remake adds some interesting details to the story as well as some other features that were also utilized in later games of the series, thus making this game an essential addition to the series.
Story/Characters
Not much to say about story and characters as these are mostly the same as in the 2004 version of the game original, with some minor adaptions like the receptionist getting a sex change. Of note are an extended intro that gives more details about Ben’s past, in particular the role that Ben’s grandfather had on his career choice, and an optional end sequence that you get to see after collecting all points. This ending introduces some mysterious new players that will obviously become relevant in a future case, namely Case 7.
Gameplay/Puzzles
While the story stays largely unchanged it flows a bit more relaxed now, what with additional locations and puzzles that were interspersed throughout the game. Not only has the quantity of the puzzles been increased, but they are more difficult too, so it’s more likely to get stuck in the deluxe edition than in the original Case 1. However it’s still not a terribly difficult game. Interestingly enough, BJ1 Deluxe has basically the same situations as the original, but the puzzle solutions tended to be very different. This keeps you on your toes even if or especially if you played the original BJ1, because you might approach problems from the entirely wrong perspective. In any case it’s not redundant to play both versions of the game. Similar to BJ5, Case 1 Deluxe also uses a map to travel from one location to the next. The map system is one of my biggest gripes with this game however. It’s very rare that a Ben Jordan game uses unituitive controls, but in this case – contrary to almost any other game in the genre – it’s not possible to leave a location and automatically trigger the map. Nope, you have to explicitely use the map in your inventory every single time you want to switch locations, which gets really old really fast. Other than that, BJ1 Deluxe uses basically the same controls and interface as BJ5, which still work like a charm.
Graphics/Music
Ben Jordan 1 Deluxe sports some very nice background graphics, possibly the best in the series yet. Character sprites are on the high level of BJ5 and the character portraits have obviously been completely reworked compared to the original and are much nicer now. One of the most notable new features in this game are the new cutscenes, which are very similar in style to the Gabriel Knight 1 ones: we basically start with an empty black screen on which then various comic-like panels appear step by step. This works very well in the intro, but I think I would have preferred to see some of the action in the latter half of the game drawn with ingame graphics. Still, all in all the new cutscenes are a success and they are also used in the later games of the series. As for music and sound, this game doesn’t bring many new music tracks into the mix, but what is there works well. The biggest innovation is that the game has voice overs for the first time in the series. Ben’s voice might not be what expected after only reading it for five games, but it fits actually very well and it grew on me very fast. The other speakers (including Grundislav himself) do a good enough job, but there’s not a whole lot for them to sink their theets into, as neither of the few characters in the game is very deep. From a technical point of view, there are some minor problems with the recording quality of some of the voices, but nothing too bad. Unfortunately though, there are two bad design decisions regarding the voice work that mar the whole experience a little. Firstly, by default voices are activated and texts are deactivated and it isn’t possible to change these settings in the game menu. It is possible however, to press Ctrl+T to activate both voices and texts, which is the favored way to play, at least for me. Being able to read along helps understanding all the dialogs, especially in view of the aforementioned lapses in recording quality. My second issue in regards to the voice work is that not only the dialogs but also all of the game’s narration is fully voiced (by none other than Grundislav himself by the way). While this sounds like a nice feature, I found the constant narration a bit grating and I would have much preferred to only have the dialogs spoken. Luckily, both of these issues were resolved in future voiced Ben Jordan titles.
Final Verdict
I reckon the question now is whether Case 1 Deluxe makes the original Case 1 obsolete. For me personally the answer is a definite “No”, but from a more unbiased perspective I’d say “It depends”. Is Case 1 Deluxe a better game than the original BJ1? It clearly is. It’s prettier, longer, harder and from a story-point-of-view it’s tighter connected to the later cases, so on that account it’s easy to see why people might prefer to start with this one rather than with the original. On the downside, this game is plagued by a few unfortunate gameplay and design decisions, but that’s not really the reason that makes me hesitate to recommend new players to start the BJ series with this entry. The real reason is that beginning with Case 1 Deluxe means that the beautiful natural progression from Case 1 to the later games is lost. In the original order of release, the Ben Jordan games start out very small, with comparably crude art, simple stories and easy puzzles, though the love and care that was put in these games shines through from the start. With each new entry, the series grows more ambitious and professional and plain impressive, as can be easily seen by my reviews of the first five cases. Directly starting with Case 1 Deluxe breaks that progression somewhat. This game has voice overs, better graphics and a number of gameplay conveniences that the other early games simply don’t have, so going to the next non-Deluxe game in the series might feel like a regression of sorts. On the other hand, seeing the series slowly grow and develop over time was a big joy for me and is fascinating to this day, whenever I replay the series. Honestly, I don’t know whether I’d have enjoyed the series as much if it wasn’t for this sense of progression, both story-wise and from a game developer’s point of view. Lastly, I feel the additional story in the intro and in the end sequence that hints on some future plots might work better after BJ5 than at the very start of the series. For all these reasons, my favourite order of playing the Ben Jordan games will always be the chronological release order (and yes, this includes playing both the original and the deluxe version of this case). After careful evaluation, my rating for Case 1 Deluxe is 3/5: objectively a big improvement over the original, but with more gameplay and control issues than your average BJ game, plus the story is still rather on the weak side compared with the other instalments.
Story/Characters
Not much to say about story and characters as these are mostly the same as in the 2004 version of the game original, with some minor adaptions like the receptionist getting a sex change. Of note are an extended intro that gives more details about Ben’s past, in particular the role that Ben’s grandfather had on his career choice, and an optional end sequence that you get to see after collecting all points. This ending introduces some mysterious new players that will obviously become relevant in a future case, namely Case 7.
Gameplay/Puzzles
While the story stays largely unchanged it flows a bit more relaxed now, what with additional locations and puzzles that were interspersed throughout the game. Not only has the quantity of the puzzles been increased, but they are more difficult too, so it’s more likely to get stuck in the deluxe edition than in the original Case 1. However it’s still not a terribly difficult game. Interestingly enough, BJ1 Deluxe has basically the same situations as the original, but the puzzle solutions tended to be very different. This keeps you on your toes even if or especially if you played the original BJ1, because you might approach problems from the entirely wrong perspective. In any case it’s not redundant to play both versions of the game. Similar to BJ5, Case 1 Deluxe also uses a map to travel from one location to the next. The map system is one of my biggest gripes with this game however. It’s very rare that a Ben Jordan game uses unituitive controls, but in this case – contrary to almost any other game in the genre – it’s not possible to leave a location and automatically trigger the map. Nope, you have to explicitely use the map in your inventory every single time you want to switch locations, which gets really old really fast. Other than that, BJ1 Deluxe uses basically the same controls and interface as BJ5, which still work like a charm.
Graphics/Music
Ben Jordan 1 Deluxe sports some very nice background graphics, possibly the best in the series yet. Character sprites are on the high level of BJ5 and the character portraits have obviously been completely reworked compared to the original and are much nicer now. One of the most notable new features in this game are the new cutscenes, which are very similar in style to the Gabriel Knight 1 ones: we basically start with an empty black screen on which then various comic-like panels appear step by step. This works very well in the intro, but I think I would have preferred to see some of the action in the latter half of the game drawn with ingame graphics. Still, all in all the new cutscenes are a success and they are also used in the later games of the series. As for music and sound, this game doesn’t bring many new music tracks into the mix, but what is there works well. The biggest innovation is that the game has voice overs for the first time in the series. Ben’s voice might not be what expected after only reading it for five games, but it fits actually very well and it grew on me very fast. The other speakers (including Grundislav himself) do a good enough job, but there’s not a whole lot for them to sink their theets into, as neither of the few characters in the game is very deep. From a technical point of view, there are some minor problems with the recording quality of some of the voices, but nothing too bad. Unfortunately though, there are two bad design decisions regarding the voice work that mar the whole experience a little. Firstly, by default voices are activated and texts are deactivated and it isn’t possible to change these settings in the game menu. It is possible however, to press Ctrl+T to activate both voices and texts, which is the favored way to play, at least for me. Being able to read along helps understanding all the dialogs, especially in view of the aforementioned lapses in recording quality. My second issue in regards to the voice work is that not only the dialogs but also all of the game’s narration is fully voiced (by none other than Grundislav himself by the way). While this sounds like a nice feature, I found the constant narration a bit grating and I would have much preferred to only have the dialogs spoken. Luckily, both of these issues were resolved in future voiced Ben Jordan titles.
Final Verdict
I reckon the question now is whether Case 1 Deluxe makes the original Case 1 obsolete. For me personally the answer is a definite “No”, but from a more unbiased perspective I’d say “It depends”. Is Case 1 Deluxe a better game than the original BJ1? It clearly is. It’s prettier, longer, harder and from a story-point-of-view it’s tighter connected to the later cases, so on that account it’s easy to see why people might prefer to start with this one rather than with the original. On the downside, this game is plagued by a few unfortunate gameplay and design decisions, but that’s not really the reason that makes me hesitate to recommend new players to start the BJ series with this entry. The real reason is that beginning with Case 1 Deluxe means that the beautiful natural progression from Case 1 to the later games is lost. In the original order of release, the Ben Jordan games start out very small, with comparably crude art, simple stories and easy puzzles, though the love and care that was put in these games shines through from the start. With each new entry, the series grows more ambitious and professional and plain impressive, as can be easily seen by my reviews of the first five cases. Directly starting with Case 1 Deluxe breaks that progression somewhat. This game has voice overs, better graphics and a number of gameplay conveniences that the other early games simply don’t have, so going to the next non-Deluxe game in the series might feel like a regression of sorts. On the other hand, seeing the series slowly grow and develop over time was a big joy for me and is fascinating to this day, whenever I replay the series. Honestly, I don’t know whether I’d have enjoyed the series as much if it wasn’t for this sense of progression, both story-wise and from a game developer’s point of view. Lastly, I feel the additional story in the intro and in the end sequence that hints on some future plots might work better after BJ5 than at the very start of the series. For all these reasons, my favourite order of playing the Ben Jordan games will always be the chronological release order (and yes, this includes playing both the original and the deluxe version of this case). After careful evaluation, my rating for Case 1 Deluxe is 3/5: objectively a big improvement over the original, but with more gameplay and control issues than your average BJ game, plus the story is still rather on the weak side compared with the other instalments.