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Metascore
53

Mixed or average reviews - based on 4 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: Jessika committed suicide, and it’s up to you to find out why she did what she did by prying into her digital past. What at first seems to be a job like any other quickly develops into a dark drama with twists and turns.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 4
  2. Negative: 1 out of 4
  1. Sep 24, 2020
    60
    Jessika cannot be recommended lightly, as although the premise for the plot is promising, the factors of suicide and problematic elements of Jessika's characters could have been handled and portrayed better. In the end, the plot seems to rely on the shock factor of the subject matter and does not put enough focus on its delivery, leaving those in control with a sense of wanting more from a title that demanded so much of them.
  2. Sep 1, 2020
    60
    Overall the strong early positives for Jessika, particularly its first tonal bait-and-switch, are undone by its structural weakness towards the end. Coupled with minor issues like the odd translation issue in text, it's an interesting if sometimes inconsistent game. However, it's not afraid to go after difficult subject matter like far right extremism, and that's definitely to be commended.
  3. Sep 8, 2020
    50
    The FMV mystery Jessika supplies a thought-provoking if uncomfortable story, though a number of flaws in the interface and to a lesser extent the English translation take focus away from the tale it’s trying to tell.
  4. Aug 25, 2020
    40
    It’s a tough game to sit through – and not just in a “it deals with challenging subject matter” sort of way. It’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re having someone’s gross beliefs about their twisted ideology shoved down your throat. Its initial premise had me hooked at first, but the bait-and-switch of subject matter does not make for a pleasant experience.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. Mar 4, 2022
    8
    I kept thinking I had a handle on where Jessika was going with it’s story but it kept surprising me. I won’t spoil it’s twists or highlightsI kept thinking I had a handle on where Jessika was going with it’s story but it kept surprising me. I won’t spoil it’s twists or highlights except to say I was very happy with it from a plot standpoint. The acting was top notch from the actress who played Jessika. She had to do it all: happy; sad; angry; hurt; etc. There were some plot points that I felt were unresolved. Maybe I was just reading too much into something the developers never meant to be deep but I think there was more that could have been explored for certain subplots such as who you are and Jessika’s time spent with her track coach. I have played FMV games like this before, if you’re familiar with games like “Her Story” then you’ll feel at home. You watch videos and try to figure out keywords to search for to unlock more videos. It’s certainly a game I enjoyed having a pen and paper around for. Where this diverges from what I was used to was that during all of this you receive emails and have chat conversations with the client and your coworkers. These conversations are required but provide more clues. The conversations also added some much need comic relief at times but there were other times where I didn’t like any of my dialogue responses because it didn’t match what I wanted to say. More responses from the standpoint of someone who is less of a people person would have been nice. I found that the keyword system worked fairly well and I was able to guess all but a couple without much difficulty. The game allows you to favourite videos and I suggest using that to favourite locked videos so you can find them easier. There are times where the game will have distractions while watching a video and while they added atmosphere to the game sometimes it was annoying as things would pop up blocking what I was typing and I would have to bring the Terminal again to continue. The game also had a gap of about 1-2 seconds after searching for a keyword where it won’t accept any key presses. This was a little annoying because I had a huge list I had compiled and didn’t want to wait. Some of the videos had a lot lower of a voice than others but it wasn’t a huge deal.

    I played Jessika on Linux. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any bugs or glitches. You can save the game at any time but there is only one save slot. There are no graphics options but considering that the game is an FMV this is to be expected. You can adjust subtitles; language; ambience; keyboard noises and audio volume. The game ran fantastic and the interface was well done in terms of resembling an actual operating system. Alt-tab didn’t work.

    Game Engine: Unity
    Graphics API: OpenGL
    Disk Space Used: 880 MB

    GPU Usage: 0-67 %
    VRAM Usage: 952-1043 MB
    CPU Usage: 12-28 %
    RAM Usage: 3.1-3.4 GB
    Frame Rate: 138-144 FPS

    Overall this was a very solid game. Despite some little quirks the game play was fun; the story was engaging and the production values were great. I finished the initial game in about 3 hours but you can keep playing to find more video files and that took me to 4 hours and 10 minutes in total to do. I paid $16.37 CAD for Jessika and it was more than worth that.

    My score: 8.5/10

    My System:

    AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 21.2.6 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Linux Mint 20.3 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 5.4.0-100-generic | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz
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