Daryl F. Gates Police Quest: Open Season

The Good
To lend an air of authenticity to their already-established Police Quest series, Sierra brought infamous LAPD Chief Daryl Gates to oversee production of this gritty detective mystery. The result is a richly-detailed and fully interactive episode of In The Heat of the Night. You use your gut instincts combined with supposedly-real police tactics to find out who's behind a string of murders in South Central.

The photo-realistic environments and real actors, while somewhat dated looking, are so compelling that it really takes you back to urban life in the 1990s -- the good and the bad. Adventure, mystery, and police fiction fans will enjoy wrapping their head around this whodunnit.

The Bad
The game captures the stress and depression of being a police detective so well that you'll find at times it's actually a drag to play. Bodies of innocent children turn up, best friends die, widows grieve and your boss is breathing down you neck. All in all, there's not much actual fun to be had..

The voice-acting is, unfortunately, very cheesy. It ruins the movie-like quality of the game, to the point where you may find greater enjoyment in turning it off and just reading the dialog.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect is the resolution to the mystery -- after spending the greater part of the game meticulously interviewing, note-taking, evidence-collecting, and putting the pieces together, you accidentally stumble upon the killer's trail. This is a huge disappointment for potential armchair sleuths who looked forward to solving the whodunnit aspect themselves.

The Bottom Line
A gory, realistic depiction of Los Angeles police life, and worthwhile mystery that sometimes takes itself a little too seriously. Anyone who's a fan of modern crime fiction would have a field day... or an Open Season.

The Good
Firstly, I liked the way that the real people were filmed and made into sprites. It adds a whole new depth to the game. Secondly, It flowed on from the previous games in the series. The interface was pretty innovative too.

The Bad
I didn't like the way some of the sprites moved. They were a bit jerky. And the game had a few bugs. Like when you go to the shooting academy (target practice), the game would go really slow (on my Pentium 3 667 Mhz). That's about all I can think of.

The Bottom Line
If you liked the other games in the series or adventure games in general, get it. I know Sierra can do better than this though. Although the real people looked good, they were jerky at times and spoilt the whole game. It looks like Sierra "chucked" this together at the last minute.

The Good
Police Quest: Open Season (PQ4) features realistic looking graphics, detailed police procedures to follow and a frank, if a tad cynical, take on early 1990s, Los Angeles.

Homicide Detective John Carey (new to the Police Quest adventure game series) must track down a serial killer who, as the game begins, has claimed the life of Carey's partner and a young boy.

As a point and click, graphic adventure game, the player uses Sierra's familiar icon interface to travel, pick up items and interact with the diverse citizens.

Failure to follow actual police procedure will result in death. Failure to survive an arcade sequence shootout, will result in death. The sheer level of realism in this game is groundbreaking, if not a bit annoying at times.

The Bad
Being an urban, homicide detective is not all fun and games. Police procedure must be followed in the game or else. If you are hoping to cut corners or ignore department policies, take my advice; play a different game.

Sometimes the game's depiction of people of color, immigrants and the LGBTQ community is not terribly flattering. It would have been better had the game not relied so much on stereotypes and cliches.

Last, but not least, it is very difficult to get this game to run on a modern operating system. This is a problem that I have experienced far too often with adventure games and it is unfortunate, because PQ4 has plenty of gritty realism.

The Bottom Line
Police Quest: Open Season is big on real-life, police procedure and fans of Sierra adventure games should enjoy it. I really wish that the game did not rely quite so much on stereotype, but if you can get past that, then you are going to enjoy unfolding the mystery.