Here we go with your impressions for Jerry McPartlin - Rebel with a Cause:
The story: You play Jerry McPartlin, an aspiring rock star in 1950s America who has been touring dive bars across the country and has returned to his Louisiana hometown at the urging of a Hopi shaman, only to find a series of murders has been occurring. Almost everyone is afraid to leave their rooms (and you know, this helps save money on character models.) You have to figure out who's behind the murders, and learn a little something about the disappearance of your parents at the same time.
Even if you overlook the fact that Hopis aren't even native to Louisiana, the premise of the story is...well I won't say it's bad because it's actually on par with point-and-click adventures. It just felt underdone. A lot of plot points were not properly explained, and I sure hope it wasn't because they were planning a sequel. (According to the developer's website, this game hasn't even been released yet! ...At least they still show up in the Steam forums from time to time.)
The gameplay: Click to walk the easiest path to a destination, double click to run in a beeline towards it, then double back around obstacles. In some areas this is especially jarring, such as the school: your character weaves drunkenly between desks or down a tight hallway. As for items, right click to look and left click to interact. This becomes irritating when you realize some items require you to look at them as opposed to interact with them. Interacting with a picture tells you that you can't do anything with it...but looking gets you what you need. They couldn't have made both functions identical here? Speaking of items, a lot of the areas in the game are huge spaces with virtually no interactables. You can go to the town square, see lots of buildings, and Jerry has nothing to say about any of them. If you really couldn't be bothered for those extra descriptions, couldn't you have put the two buildings you need side by side and save all that wasted space?
Also, there are so many literally useless items. One item - the bowling ball - has no functional use in the game except for trying to use it on everything to get two achievements. (The achievement for finding all the interactions is the only one I couldn't get, and it doesn't even look like there's a list online anywhere.)
Finally, be ready for loading. Lots and lots of loading. Several quests entail speaking to one person for one bit of info, then leaving to talk to someone else for one more snippet of info, going to a third place to pick up the item, etc. In those parts it actually seems like you spend more time loading than you do playing.
The graphics: Apart from the wasted space, not too bad. The few characters they had look good, even though they once again saved on character modelling by having a set of identical triplets.
The audio: There were a few nice tracks attempting to emulate 50s rock and roll. There is a running gag in the game where Jerry has a rivalry with Jimmy Lash, and Jimmy's song keeps playing on the jukebox. Eventually there's a chance to change it..but the next song sounds like it's the same style (Yeah, I know, indie game, can only afford to pay one musical group...but make the effort to sound a little different if you're gonna do that!) None of the characters attempt a Louisiana accent. A few characters attempt "vaguely Southern," including the Native American woman, for whom that makes like the least sense. The dialogue is a little janky, but not much. It's...alright.
The length: Took me 3.3 hours to complete the game. I wonder how much of that was spent on a loading screen.
The verdict: It's weird. This game had a decent premise and loads of potential. It feels too short story-wise and too long gameplay-wise. I would have liked to see more streamlined quests, better optimization for quicker loading, and a little more fleshing out of the characters and plot. I didn't hate it, but it's below average. I wouldn't jump to recommend it, but if you already had it in a bundle and you've got nothing better to do, you might want to give it a shot.
