Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel

The Good
This game was the second Sierra adventure I played, and it still is one of the most memorable. The character development is awesome with a wide range of NPC's all with distinct personality's and stories to learn throughout the game. The humour in the game is great - from the locker room banter to the angry sergent to all the funny descriptions at each location you go to.

This game redefined what adventures were when it was released - up until then adventures were solely based in the fantasy realm whereas this was an engaging story based on real-life happenings and characters. The need to follow police procedures to advance the game and gain maximum points was a great way of giving the game more depth and also implementing the copy-protection - and it was a very convincing way of making you feel like you really were a cop.

The learning curve of the game is nicely set with a few easy patrols and crimes to solve early on. As you delve deeper into the plot, more characters are revealed and more of the overall story becomes apparent - and everything interconnects nicely, with things getting harder as you get deeper into the game. The finale is brilliant and a truly great ending to the game, after the perfectly paced build up.

This game has that magical 'charm' that most of the early Sierra adventures seemed to have, but which got lost pretty much after the first batch of point and click adventures. Definitely lovingly created. It is possible to finish this game and miss out on a lot of the extra points and a couple of interesting side stories to uncover too. A good incentive to replay the game to find out everything.

The graphics are the blocky AGI original style, but are never the less colourful, charming and convincing, drawing you magically into the world of Lytton. Great atmosphere, and a who lot more attractive than the rubbish VGA re-release.

The Bad
Not a lot wrong with this title - it probably wouldn't be that much fun to your fan-boy, top-20 commercial game players who saturate the market these days (anyone who bought the bland Matrix Reloaded game for instance), but anyone who has a love of great adventure games should check this out and play it through - without using any walkthrough's (it really makes it a lot more fun and satisfying). Also, play it using the Sarien AGI parser because you get the three-channel sound instead of PC speaker nonsense.

The Moby score of this game is a bit low in my opinion - perhaps conceived by someone who played it using a walkthrough or something and not enjoying it fully. Or maybe I'm biased because I loved these Sierra games dearly when growing up. I would've given it 4.5 out of 5. It doesn't deserve 5 out of 5 simply because there are other adventure games that are even better than this - Kings Quest 3 and Monkey Island 1 for example.

The Bottom Line
A classic adventure, that drags you into its world with lovable characters, a great plot, cool cartoon graphics, awesome set-pieces and is a perfectly paced game that escalates into a worthy conclusion. This and Police Quest 2 are by and far the best in the series, and are right up there with the best Sierra adventures (Kings Quest 3, Space Quest 1-4, Manhunter, Larry 1-3).