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
Designer \ Writer
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Cinematographer
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Team Quality Control
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Configuration Lead
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System Programmer
[ 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)

Ahead of Its Time

The Good
Daryl F. Gates' Police Quest: Open Season (herein after referred to as, “Police Quest 4") is a point n' click graphic adventure game very much ahead of its time. It attempts to provide an interactive and realistic experience as to what a police detective actually does during a murder investigation. This is years before, "Grand Theft Auto" would attempt a similar interactive and realistic experience, albeit from the point of view of a criminal. For its day, the storyline is pretty daring and features impressive voice acting, sound effects, music, graphics.

The Bad
Police Quest 4 abandons the central character and the fictional city from the previous games. Many of the game's puzzles can be incredible frustrating, albeit for different reasons. Some puzzles are entirely logical, but do require a basic understanding of professional police procedures. These "procedure" based puzzles add to the realism of the game, but may disappoint gamers expecting Hollywoodized law enforcement. Other puzzles are so illogical and bizarre, that you can only solve them by trial and error repetition or cheating. Finally, something must be said about the game's storyline, as it may turn some gamers off. Police Quest 4 offers a pretty realistic depiction of the diverse people, ideas, behaviors, conflicts and places of the area, during the early 1990's. This includes a window into race, ethnicity and class conflict. It includes profanity and a gritty crime drama, where even children are not safe. It includes the murder of your partner, the wife and child he leaves behind, and his ties to the transgender community. It includes such characters as a successful rap artist, a violent Neo Nazis and a friendly, but probably stoned, hippie. While the realistic, colorful and otherwise gritty content does not go beyond what one might see or hear on a television episode of, "Law and Order", “Criminal Minds” or “CSI”, it may make some people uncomfortable. Personally, I liked the game's risqué realism but it tends to fade away too soon. For example, the playable character has almost no personal life that we know of and the game never offers the range of freedom that became famous (or infamous) with the "Grand Theft Auto Games".

The Bottom Line
Police Quest 4 does offer a high degree of interactive, gritty and thought provoking realism within the limits of an early 1990s, CD-ROM, point n' click, graphic adventure game. Puzzles are heavy on the police procedures or heavy on being painfully absurd. It breaks away from the characters and locations of the previous Police Quest titles and really tries to reflect the range of different people, places, conflicts, idea, identities, life-styles and behaviors that exist. In many ways it is a forerunner to later games such as "Grand Theft Auto" and, with some revisions, a new version of the game could become very successful.

DOS · by ETJB (428) · 2010

PQ4's realism doesn't go far enough

The Good
The Police Quest series was always about realism ever since In Pursuit of the Death Angel was created. There were three games, which were designed by Jim Walls. It was up to the player to deal with situations based on actual events that plagued Walls' career as a California highway patrol officer. With three games under his belt, Walls resigned from Sierra, even before The Kindred was completed, leading many people to believe that was the end of the series as they knew it.

But no, there was actually a fourth game, but it went through drastic changes. Replacing Walls was former “America's Most Wanted” producer Tammy Dargan. Dargan was previously a producer for the remake of PQ1, but now she has a much bigger role in Open Season, serving as producer, director, designer, and writer. In addition, the main character is now a homicide detective called John Carey, not Sonny Bonds the policeman; Los Angeles replaces the fictional Lytton; and no longer will you be handing out traffic fines or driving from one location to the next. The only thing that Open Season has in common with the last three games is that you still have to do everything “by the book”.

Open Season comes on a whopping twelve floppy disks or one CD-ROM. The latter version contain full speech throughout the entire game. Not only that, but you also get a “making of” video, with a woman explaining what I have just covered. You also get a demo of King's Quest VII. The disk version is restricted with the option of 320x200 or 640x480 resolution. But no matter which version you get, you get the usual game manual, warranty card, and something called the “abridged manual”, in which you refer to to get the job done.

The game opens with a crime scene where Carey's friend and partner, Bob Hickman, is found tortured and mutilated in an alley of South Central LA. What he was doing there at the time and who would do this is unclear. Several of your colleagues are on the scene already, and it is up to you to investigate the crime scene thoroughly. The game doesn't proceed further until you have done everything a real homicide detective would do.

Now, if you happen to live in the City of Angels, you'll know that the alley isn't a hand-painted background, but the real thing (as it looked like in 1993). The PQ4 team digitally photographed each scene in the game, and then scanned them into the computer. I really enjoyed looking at the chopper shots of the city at the beginning and ending of the game. I like how each location you visit opens with a nice exterior shot. The characters themselves are no longer 2D works of art, but portrayed by real actors.

What you have to do in the game is similar to both the first and second games. During the game, you have to make arrests and collect evidence in plastic bags. You also interview people, but this is often done through a Quest for Glory-style tree, where selecting one conversation topic can cause a whole bunch of new topics to appear. I really enjoyed interrogating Nobles at the coroner's office. There is some interesting information he gives out about how victims die. It is right up there with novels by James Patterson.

The gray and black appearance of the interface looks excellent. Highlighted items are in red. The icons in the icon bar are laid out nicely, and a few things are added to it, including a button that lets you access a map and two smaller buttons allow you to turn on or off this icon bar. Default is off meaning that you still have to put up with the stylized “Police Quest” logo throughout the game, but I don't have a problem with this since it doesn't take up too much space. Speaking of the icons, a black-and-white squad car replaces the normal Sierra “wait” icon. I like the grid that serves as the background in the inventory window.

I enjoyed watching the little bits of animation here and there, and a good example of it can be found in the opening shot. What seems to be a chopper appears from the right with a light beaming down on the streets, but it turns out to be a Carey's badge. I found this to be pretty cool. Also cool is the way the map of Los Angeles disappears when you select your destination.

I believe that Open Season is the first game to use Sierra's SCI2 engine, and one of the main features of the engine is the ability to support a resolution of 640x480, selectable through the installation program. In the game, everything interface-related including the text and icons appear smaller.

The soundtrack blends well with what you are doing, and it really sounds good when you selected General Midi as your sound card. The music sounds quite creepy as you make your way through the killer's house. There are realistic sound effects whatever you do.

The narrator is quite humorous when it comes to clicking the hand cursor on objects or characters, or trying to use certain inventory items on things. My personal favorite is clicking the hand on Dennis Walker's belongings.

The Bad
Daryl Gates, the person who oversaw the project, said in an interview with Peter Scisco for his “Police Quest Casebook” that the battering ram we saw in the third game was done all wrong. It is ironic, then, that Open Season is unrealistic in some areas. In more than one instance, Carey is threatened with a person carrying a weapon, but whoever it is freezes just before the attack, allowing you to go into your inventory so that you can draw your gun at them. This doesn't work in real life, so why couldn't Sierra get it right and make the player make the gun active before the encounter? After all, you don't see that deranged man in the third game freeze just before he assaults Sonny. In another example, the game has Carey walk through the killer's house without calling for backup.

It is nice that Sierra used photo-realistic backgrounds, but this causes problems, the actors stand there like statues if there isn't a close-up view of them. And even then, it isn't long until you discover that the game suffers from poor lip-syncing. Also, at a long distance, even their faces are blocky.

In order to get through each day, you have to think like a detective and ask yourself what they would go through when they want to interview people or inspect crime scenes. This information is supplied in the abridged manual. Thinking like a detective might be fine, but it becomes boring once in a while and the player is likely to forget what they have learnt in, say, ten years time. I'm sure that the LAPD changed its policies, making the information redundant.

The Bottom Line
As the final adventure in the series before the Police Quest team decided to turn their backs on the genre and decide to focus on tactical simulations from now on, Open Season has its fair share of ups and downs. It was the first Sierra game to feature photo-realistic backgrounds, long before the likes of Phantasmagoria and its sequel. The interface looks good, and the soundtrack is great. Seeing as Open Season went through some drastic changes, it made sense not to label this as Police Quest IV.

DOS · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2015

Realistic mystery, sometimes gritty to a fault

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.

Windows 3.x · by jTrippy (58) · 2007

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Discussion

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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.