Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel

"For all of you who liked the '80:s police shows!"

I remember playing this game when I was very young. In fact, too young to understand a word of what was said in the game. My mother tongue is not English, you see. And being a seven year old without English as first language while playing this game is not recommended. Still, the game taught me a lot of English (I was much better than the other children in my class), and also taught me some eternal moral codes I always had with me (whether it really was because of the game or my mother's constant nagging will not be discussed here). Anyway, I actually managed to get very far in the game (don't ask me how!). Then, as I grew older, I forgot the game, just to pick it up again many years later in my late teens. I now had the tools to play the game correctly (improved skills in English and a more logical way of thinking), and I played it every now and then, until finally finishing the game some years later.

Police Quest puts us in the shoes of Sonny Bonds. A veteran police officer who works the best he can at the Lytton Police Department in the city (and I tell you, he does it GOOD!). What starts out being an ordinary day at work with standard police tasks (writing speeding tickets, drinking coffee with the pals etc.) soon develops into a much deeper and darker fight against the evil forces. As the game proceeds, you learn more and more about the vicious Death Angel (real identity unknown), who seems to be the new drug lord in the city. As the crime rate and the deaths of school teenagers using drugs raise, it's up to you to infiltrate the operation area of the Death Angel, and put him behind bars forever.

This game is one of the Sierra classic adventure games, meaning its interface and gameplay is just like the Larry games and King's Quest games. For those of you who have no knowledge of these games (under what rock did you live the last twenty years?), you control your character using the arrow keys, and write text commands at the same time, such as "open door", "take gun" and such. In other words, you must position your character at the correct place, and type the correct command in order to advance (double frustration!). There are plenty of different scenes to visit, and you use your car to drive to the locations. The game basically mixes puzzle with adventure. There is an evolving plot during the game, and many situations to clear up.

The most important aspect of Police Quest (and also all the older Sierra games), is the easiness of failing and dying through the game. The game is based on doing a real police officer's work, and that means doing EVERY single task the correct way. If you break one little rule, you get a game over. Thus, you will find yourself saving and restoring often. In fact, more times than is healthy for you and your harddrive. All Sierra games are like this, but Police Quest manages to take it even one step further! Simple things as missing a briefing, failing to do a safety check of your car before hitting the streets or running a red light lead directly to a game over. The good news is that you can save the game anytime you want to, so as long as you save often, you shouldn't have to backtrack too much.

It is true the Sierra games are very old, but we'll put aside the date and focus on their design, no matter how blocky the pixels are. Some of the games, like King's Quest and the first Larry game actually had quite nice designs. Police Quest however, tries too much to be the "average city designed" game. Most of the scenes in Police Quest are quite uninspiring. It's nothing that makes your eyes bleed, but some more creativity could have been put here. Same goes for the sound, which is only PC speaker. Larry 1 also used PC speaker only, but it managed to have some damn good tunes you kept whistling days after. The Police Quest songs are not memorable at all.

Those are the worse aspects of the game. Now for the fun ones. While a little stiff and outdated, Police Quest is actually very fun to play. You feel great cruising the streets, nailing the slugs that breaks the law. Many "sideshow jokes" are thrown in now and then, which enhances the enjoyment. While the many ways of dying and the somewhat awkward dictionary of the game put you to halt sometimes, it is not too difficult to pass the obstacles. You often have some kind of idea how to fix up the situation. Take the challenge of writing a ticket for the girl who drove a red light, for example. Somehow you know what to do in that situation. You know you are supposed to write a ticket and give it to her, and for that, you have a faint idea that you need her driver's license data. With this knowledge, you can experiment until you find the correct way of doing it. This is a breeze of fresh air, unlike most other Sierra games, where you need to put in totally illogical commands like "jump on mushroom" just to be teleported to another world and so on. Police Quest never loses its logical puzzles, giving you a much more fair challenge.

This doesn't mean the trip will be easy. The quests and challenges are many, and there are also 246 points that you can collect if you really want to win everything at the game's end. This gives you a good motive for playing the game some more times. You might also find yourself playing it again just for fun, or just to find all the different ways you can fail on (some of them are very silly).

Police Quest is a little difficult to conclude in a review. While the many death traps and the game's tendency to misunderstand your commands might scare away people, it is still a very nice game which can be played again many times. It is fun and challenging, and gives the player a nice feeling while playing. However, compared to the other adventure games, Police Quest loses points for its "ordinary-ness". While Larry was a game rebelling against society, filled with dirty jokes and forbidden themes, and King's Quest was a creative fantasy tale mixing the best bits from the folklore of the world's four corners, Police Quest really is nothing more than a policeman's simulator. No twists, no craziness, no surprises. Still a very good game though. If you like adventure puzzle games and police action, have a lot of patience and high skills in English, then this one is a must for you.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/31/06