Chase JK – Follow and Hurl is a Third Person Runner game that begins on a lovely, firework-filled night. We are not observing the light show, however. Our nameless character is instead prowling the streets in search of women to abuse perform surprise gynecology on. Unfortunately for all involved, he comes across a group of three girls and gives chase. It does not work out the way he intended. As it turns out, obesity saved the day since he can’t maintain his sprint for long. That’ll make for a dull end to things, though, and is where we come in. It is up to us to train this man to his limits, like in the Rocky movies. Legality, morals, and ethics are but mere words in the face of his determination.
That’s about the gist of the story. All text is entirely in Japanese, and there is not much narrative after the intro. There isn’t a way in hell that we stand a chance of catching anything other than a lawsuit. Our beginning focus should be on collecting the coins scattered about the level while doing our best to avoid crashing into obstacles. After gaining some currency, we have four items to spend them on, with their effects being permanent. The first is a Nutritional Drink that allows us to sprint for longer. As soon as you run out of energy, the level ends in failure, so it is a vital upgrade. Second on the list are Sandals. It sounds underwhelming, yet it is by far the most essential item since they increase your overall speed. Even if you run for an eternity, it is all for naught if you can’t catch up to your victim.
Before describing the other two, I’d like to mention how terrible it initially feels to play this game. Even the slightest curvature to the upcoming road will send our character drifting off to the side. Touching the edges of the street will count as a crash and set us back to walking speed. It becomes a test of patience to maintain control while trying to avoid pinballing around the place. This brings me back to our third available item to purchase. The shoes with spikes. It gives us far more traction and control to take turns. I don’t understand why it exists. The game should handle well or decently enough right out of the gate. All other items have a place, but this one feels contrived and an overall detriment. With that being said, I am being slightly petty here. You quickly gain currency, so it will cease to be an issue after about 15 minutes of playtime.
Last but not least, we have shoes with springs. I want to say it allows us to flutter jump, but it is more accurate to say it straight up lets us sprint on air. You gain a surprising amount of bang for your buck with these. Even buying a few will let you run in the air for what seems an eternity. Considering all of the obstacles are land-based, it can get overpowered fast. So we finally did it. We stacked enough items to finally have the speed and maneuverability to catch up to a girl. Now comes the arguably more difficult part. You have to bump into her six times before the level ends. After each collision, parts of her clothes will rip off. It is shown in her portrait to the right. Once she is in the nude, you’ll know we are in the final stretch. A single more bump into her, and our character pounces into a hentai scene.
The H events are brief but are voice-acted and feature sound effects. Each girl has a few different poses with Japanese text detailing the act all along the way. Like a bloodhound, our character sniffs out the location of the other two. This takes us to a new area containing different visuals. We will soon discover why we caught the woman that we did. She was by far the slowest one, and the hunt only gets more difficult from here on out. It was a pleasant surprise just how fast this title got. Believe it or not, this is the closest to an F-Zero hentai game that I know of. The warped sprites when taking a turn reminded me a ton of the Super Nintendo’s Mode 7 as well. Chase JK does what Nintendon’t, I suppose.
After enough time jumping, sprinting, and defying gravity, we will defeat the final girl. It was a long-fought battle, but our character now has Olympic-level athleticism. This isn’t the end, however. We will loop back to the first stage with two key differences. The first is that the environment has been extended, and we must run much further before reaching its end. Our second difference is the starter woman gaining a massive buff to her stats. It is where things start getting a little insane, and the character hitboxes become more of an issue. You need to bump into her directly from the back. If you try slamming in from an angle or stopping in front, that will have no effect. It’s impossible to collide with her mid-air as well. With how many obstacles there are and the sheer speed at which you are going, it becomes an ever-increasing pain.
Chase JK has an appealing art style. It is entirely based on 2D sprites, yet it does an incredible job of making some objects look 3D. I legitimately thought some assets were modeled with polygons until taking a look at the pictures I took. Unfortunately, here comes the negative. There is no fullscreen mode. You’ll need a program like Lossless Scaling to get more than a small window on your monitor. Now, here comes the flaw that is likely to be a deal breaker for some. This title doesn’t feature any way to save our progress. Once we exit the game, it is back to square one. Gone are the items you’ve grinded currency for, and once more, we return to the terrible controls. Given that fact, it made more sense why all H scenes were unlocked from the start. It will only take 1-2 hours to complete, so it isn’t too difficult to accomplish in one sitting. Replay value is the aspect that will suffer the most. While there is skill involved, the grind is what matters, and going through the motions again is a tough sale.
At the end of the day, we have no shortage of Runner games. Chase JK does not do enough to set itself apart and features enough flaws to drag it down significantly. It would be difficult to recommend based on three short H scenes alone. You can see all there is without even playing the game, and beating it twice doesn’t unlock anything new. The only obstacles are roadblocks if you don’t count touching the road’s edges as one. This isn’t highly-priced at 880 Yen, around six dollars as of this review, but it seems a bit much for what’s on offer. It relies too much on the character’s stats and does not innovate with its gameplay. Once you’ve seen the barriers and coins of the first stage, you’ve seen all it has up its sleeve.
What it comes down to is how much the idea of chasing down women and seeing their clothes gradually rip off until they’re in the nude appeals to the individual. Seeing a chunky man in sandals running at mach-10 speeds may just be worth the price of admission alone. That was a sight I won’t be forgetting anytime soon, and the wacky concept of Chase JK is what drew me to it in the first place. Playing the demo may be worthwhile if you’re on the fence about this title.
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