Daryl F. Gates Police Quest: Open Season

aka: PQ4, Police Investigation 4, Police Quest 4
Moby ID: 149
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Police Quest: Open Season is the fourth installment in the Police Quest series. It abandons the story arc of the previous three games, introducing a new setting and a new protagonist, homicide detective John Carey of the Los Angeles Police Department. Carey finds his best friend and ex-partner, Officer Bob Hickman, murdered in an alley in the Southern part of the city. An eight-year-old boy named Bobby Washington has been murdered as well. Carey begins an investigation that leads him deep into the criminal life of the city and a hunt for a maniacal murderer.

The game utilizes Sierra's traditional icon-based interface for interaction with the environment and generally follows an adventure format. However, it focuses on realistic police procedures even more than the previous games in the series. Much of the gameplay is dedicated to examining crime scenes, questioning suspects, and conducting a by-the-book investigation. There is a considerable degree of freedom in the interaction, allowing the player to perform actions not connected to the main story, some of which will, however, lead to the protagonist's death. The game utilizes digitized photorealistic images for its visuals.

Spellings

  • חקירה משטרתית 4 - Hebrew spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

112 People (90 developers, 22 thanks) · View all

Producer \ Director
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 20 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 62 ratings with 8 reviews)

A pretty realistic game. Two thumbs up!!!

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.

Windows 3.x · by James1 (240) · 2001

Realism can be a boring thing

The Good
The idea of bringing real police work to life in a game is certainly an appealing one. Who wouldn't like to see how police officers are solving murder cases? It is no wonder that Police Quest 4 needed good counselors to develop such a game. Daryl F. Gates, retired Chief of LAPD, wrote and co-created Open Season. And he did a nice job with the story line.

The Bad
I expected sort of a high-speed-get-the-serial-killer-game, when I bought Police Quest 4. I was bitterly disappointed. Most of the time you're walking around crime scenes, jotting down notes, comparing photographs, collecting evidences, write your report. And then you do it all over again. This may very well be realistic, but it is also boring as hell.

Since the game has a rich story to tell, it is inevitable that you're writing down the clues. After all your character in the game does this all the time. Now it was impossible, for no apparent reason, to review that information within the game. I would have loved a recorder to replay suspect's interviews for example.

The Bottom Line
The title is worth a look for everyone interested in real detective work. It is much more of a police simulation, than it is a police game.

DOS · by Isdaron (715) · 2001

Fun, but challenging

The Good
The Police Quest Collection was a standard of my childhood! This title, PQ4, was a completely different twist for the series, moving to more realistic mid-90s pixelated "real" images. At the time, this was a very cool thing... the game felt very modern and current. Playing it today (as with most old games), the poor points stand out more than they did back in the day...

Like "Grand Theft Auto", perhaps the best aspect of Police Quest IV is that the player experiences a degree of freedom within the confines of the storyline. Once a location has been discovered, the player can return there via the Map function later if they want to pursue a hunch further. If the location has been fully searched and the purpose achieved, the player is deterred from entering via some kind of message (i.e. "You knock and receive no answer", or, "It appears no one is home, detective", etc) - much appreciated when you have tons of locations and are not sure where to go. This freedom is especially hilarious with Teddy the evidence guy - you can hand him anything in your inventory, including your character's personal affects, and he'll take them and respond in the way a regular evidence guy would react if you handed him your car keys, etc! Amazing that they bothered to record that much audio for every possibility...

The writers toss you enough red herrings early in your investigation so that you're not sure who the killer is until later in the game, so that's kinda cool.

The Bad
The graphics are the first sore spot for me. Though an advancement in their time, now the pixelation factor of the imagery is nearly intolerable to suffer through.

Though it's cool they recorded so much audio for just about any situation you might put yourself into (mainly involving showing your inventory to other in-game characters), the voice acting is by-and-large terrible. Your character, John Carey, is voiced by a guy clearly just reading his lines from a sheet of paper under the direction of "sound as dry and cop-like as you can". The ethnic characters (South Central L.A.) are stereotyped so far as to be borderline racist, basically what white people in the early 90s would think inner-city black guys sounded and acted like. As well, the dialogue can be monotonous, as you are required to listen to speech after speech from the coroner just to advance in the game.

The realism factor is great, but they really went to tedious extremes - making you file paperwork/reports each day, requiring that you reach into your inventory and flash your ID or badge at everyone EVERY TIME you meet them or enter a location, and requiring you to walk through mazes of corridors and take an elevator (which works in real time) just to reach your desk (and the other relevant departments of the Police Department). The game also makes you listen to pointless and annoying repeat phrases like "You push the button to call the elevator" over and over... no crap I pushed the button!

There are certain "stuck" points you get in a game that gives you freedom like this, where you've done everything obvious and even tried to play a few hunches, yet there is still something keeping you from advancing. This can be incredibly frustrating, and to some degree, you need to be willing to access help/walkthroughs at some point or be stuck forever because you didn't do some minute thing like think to get the license plate number off the impounded car, or to combine items in your inventory to make something new and useful.

The story was interesting, but like most games, kind of ridiculous that they wrote so many events happening within the such a short span of days. There's a serial killer on the loose in L.A. and you're the only one workin' the case!! Yeah right... One limiting factor of the game is that it's possible to figure out who the killer is earlier than the game wants you to, and yet you can't do anything but go through the prescribed steps to solve the case a day (and one more murder) later...

The Bottom Line
The game is still really enjoyable, though once you've played through it, you can never go back and have the same completely fresh and naive approach that you did before. In that respect, the re-playability is limited. Still, the game is fun and challenging for a first-time player with the resolve to not cheat (or cheat sparingly!).

DOS · by Condemned (71) · 2009

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Is dude's name really part of the game's title? Pseudo_Intellectual (66255) Jan 28, 2013

Trivia

CD version

Daryl F. Gates Police Quest: Open Season was re-released in a CD version with new music, full speech (done by different actors than those who played the characters), numerous removed bugs, and many changes to the graphics. The cursors were re-designed and their size decreased, all objects in the inventory were re-drawn or re-photographed in a higher resolution, and many backgrounds and objects in background were re-shot in higher resolution (and thus higher quality) again. A short promo film on the game's making is included on the CD. There also two arcade games which can be accessed at 'The Short Stop' bar by clicking on the arcade games (an Asteroids clone and dune buggy game are available).

Though the CD version of the game is vastly expanded, it's also censored in one place - in the floppy version, Dennis Walker - the Nazi ruffian - is listening to music with Hitler's speech clearly audible in the background. This sample is present in the game's resource file RESOURCE.SFX. In the CD version, only the music is audible, and the file RESOURCE.SFX contains no trace of Hitler's speech anymore.

Locations

All the locations in the game are real, though some names are fictitious. Chief Gates wanted to keep the game as realistic as possible and insisted on using actual LA locations. Some of those were only available to the police and it was only thanks to Chief Gates' connections that the designers were able to photograph them. The Short Stop bar, featured in the game, is not only real, but infamous for a number of public disturbances involving police officers that occurred there. As the LAPD Chief, Daryl Gates disliked the bar for this reason so strongly that when he appeared there with the Sierra crew to take photos, the bar's owner thought they came to shut the place down.

Matchbox

It seems that the matchbox - not easy to find and not having any practical use in the game - may have been a trigger for some Easter Eggs, judging by certain messages that the game stores in the memory. For instance, there is a clear suggestion present in the memory to try and use the matchbox to light Mitchell Thurman's cellar *after* it's already lit. Doing so in the game displays an obscene message.

Points

Both versions of the game have bugs which allow the player to gain more points than he's supposed to. In the floppy version, Carey can call Varaz multiple times and score points. In the CD version, this bug is removed, but another one is present - in some situations, the "flamethrower" can be constructed an infinite number of times, and every time the player scores points.

References

  • The game has two cameos by Chief Daryl Gates - he's on one of the top floors of Parker Center, and at the very ending of the game, as he speaks and gives the Medal of Valor to Detective John Carey.
  • All the texts in the game are encrypted and can only be read by dumping memory contents while playing the game, at its various stages. This also reveals some interesting notes left by the programmers - such as a funny habit of referring to John Carey's character as to "ego" (Editor's Note: This is because all of the "actors" in Sierra graphic adventures were called "ego"s in the game interpreter.). Some seemingly critical comments regarding the LA Mayor from the game can also be seen - and Chief Gates, the game's designer, left his post mostly because of heavy clashes with the LA mayor at the time.
  • The names of the characters' sprites, visible in memory dumps, seem to indicate that Mitchell Thurman's final victim - the unconscious woman, unbilled in the credits - was played by the game's producer, Tammy Dargan.
  • In addition, there seems to be yet another developer cameo in the game. Dumping the contents of memory while playing the last hours of the game reveals that the unfortunate "Mr Head", who can be found in Mitchell Thurman's refrigerator (and whose - headless - corpse is probably stacked in Mitchell's bathroom), is apparently played by someone called Dave. Since "Mr Head" is unbilled, this is most likely a macabre cameo by the game's programmer Dave Artis.
  • The "Red Dogs" entry in the gang database is apparently a reference to Sierra developers ("hanging out behind fast food restaurants, hiding somewhere in the Sierra Nevada mountains...") or perhaps their friends (the "gang leader" is named "Billy D." - and Billy D. is credited as playing the character of Dennis Walker in the game)
  • Try looking up the registration plate "1ADAM12" in the DMV database on the Homicide Squad server - this is probably a reference to the old TV series. (The server itself is named "Sonny" - probably a reference to Sonny Bonds)

Sex

Both versions had depictions or references that were on the more "mature" side of the gaming industry. If you try and touch a female police officer too many times, your character will be fired from engaging in sexual harassment. If you touch the Neo Nazi thug, he will call you a "mother-loving faggot." The West Hollywood record store owner sounds like a stereotypical stoner and some of the records in the store, next to a transgender nightclub, are often associated with gay men. The issue of gender identity is raised in the game, both through cross-dressing of the serial killer and through the implication that your best-friend/former police partner was transgender.

Information also contributed by Edward Brown and Rambutaan

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Andy Roark.

Macintosh added by Tomas Pettersson.

Additional contributors: PCGamer77, Jaromir Krol, William Shawn McDonie, Jeanne, Alaka, Crawly, Patrick Bregger.

Game added May 29, 1999. Last modified January 29, 2024.