Jake Escapes HD Review

Jake Escapes HD is a building scaling, action game where the player controls a mastermind thief, Jake, as he gets into all sorts of trouble. While the gameplay for Jake Escapes HD was quite enjoyable, it absolutely needs more levels to be worth the price.

Gameplay consists of controlling both Jake and his mad scientist partner complete quests and scale up buildings. Jake can move from window to window by swiping and the mad scientist fires lasers at obstacles simply by tapping on them. Each level has some sort of objective that normally has to do with collecting items throughout the map or held by the obstacles themselves. On top of the obstacles creating difficulty for Jake, Bob, a U.S. government employee thief-catcher guy, is climiing up the buildings after him. Bob creates a time limit for each level (if Bob catches up, the player loses).

There are three different locations to play in: Area 51, Paris, and Moscow. Each location has a different theme (though Area 51 only has the one original level). In Paris, the player dodges mimes, artists, and old men throwing mannequins out of windows. In Moscow, the player dodges toy bears with fez hats, military men with bottles of liquor, and someone throwing Tetris shapes out of a window (I don't quite understand that one).

The graphics are the best part of this game. The game looks great on the new iPad. The cartoony graphics are high quality and the game runs super smooth. The original soundtrack for the game is even entertaining.

Some of the levels can be easily completed if the player thinks about the task at hand. For example (slight spoiler!), one level asks the player to find a red glove. For that level, alls the player has to do is collect one of the mime's gloves and combine it with red paint from an artist (both obstacle people from previous levels).

One consistent problem that I had was that sometimes items simply wouldn't be picked up. I would move over an item trying to be collected for the level and it simply wouldn't pick it up. Since the game doesn't allow Jake to jump backwards (down the building), that item is simply wasted. Often, if there are limited numbers of items in a level, this problem will cause player to restart the level. On top of this, there is no restart button. So players must simply allow themselves to be caught by Bob or let an obstacle knock them down.

There are only 17 total "jobs" in the game for players to compete. This is simply too little. The levels don't take long to complete and, beside from boss battles, they aren't particularly challenging. For $1.99, the amount of playtime for this one is simply unacceptable.