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
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!).

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.

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.

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.

The Good
The first three PQs weren't brilliant games; however, they were very good adventures. Their general design was neat, and all of them had a good detective-cop story (well written and with an original realistic touch) together with a good implementation of Sierra's traditional adventures gameplay. They weren't perfect or stood out particularly on something, but resulted to be solid, enjoyable and interesting. With PQ4, many think it's completely dedicated to realism and simulation of homicide detective's activity, and they distinguish (whether for good or for ill) this characteristic as the big difference with the previous PQs. But, although it's evident the designers intended distance from light-realism of the three firsts and to get something more serious, finally I think didn't exist such a difference, and in general it keeps the typical deep of realism of the series, that is, accessible to any no-cop average human being. Nevertheless, unlike its predecessors, PQ4 ends committing several important errors, but one really unpardonable.

To beginning with, PQ4 leaves "the universe" created since PQ1, that is the story no longer develops in the fictional "Lytton" City, or features to Sonny Bonds. Now we work for LAPD (in Los Angeles City, obviously) as the detective of homicides John Carey, but this doesn't mean it is more "realistic": the "more" realism than PQ1-2-3 stops right here, in the city's name. Sadly, the new protagonist is no very good developed. Actually, he isn't developed at all. John Carey lacks personal life, emotions and personality, and barely the only thing we finish knowing is his name. Sonny Bonds wasn't a cold stone. One more thing that was lost in PQ4. The story focuses on the resolution of a series of murders by means of "more or less" real police procedures, and this includes (sometimes annoying) bureaucratic formalities. We go back and forth collecting evidence at crime scenes, picking up (crude) analysis at the morgue, and doing reports to our Chief, while wait phone calls with new data for the case. All very mechanical, lineal and monotonous. We can't (and it's not necessary) do any deductive analysis with the clues that we have, because we achieve nothing. We always have the impression whatever we do is not useful to advance in the case, but to advance through the game. And that is not the same. The plot keeps slightly interesting mainly because in all police story we always want to know who is the murderer. However, Sierra doesn't exert itself more than that. From the relationship with the rest of characters, to the exploration of the crime scene, all never is as attractive as it could have been. Only once (in a particular situation) I felt interest to investigate to a suspect, and I involve in a very tense and thrilling situation. But after that, boring formalities again. In general, conversations with witnesses, suspects and victims' relatives are convincing and enough. But the dialogue with our comrades is so scarce and useless that it seems we don't belong to LAPD. In fact, we haven't any partner at all in the case. We are alone. Something quite rare in almost every section of the real police. The Chief is the only one with who we have some work-related relationship, but we never can tell him anything, only he gives us some orders. Well, there're also a couple of bureaucrats at desks which don't even see us, and other cops (bureaucrats too) receiving evidences on the 4th floor of the station, whose interaction is "hello-take this evidence-see you".

We come to the gameplay. Here is where it commits a capital sin. But about that sin I'll talk in "the bad" section. The development is quite logical, although very rigid, following police procedures such as: go to a crime scene, collect evidences, talk to possible witnesses for gather (maybe) relevant data, come back to the station, submit evidence to analysis, go to the morgue for autopsy results, come back to the station, make the report to the Chief. All of this repeats some times during the game. Yes, from time to time we must go to ask at some suspect's house, or to visit other site, but in general almost nothing removes us from the monotonous routine. None of these activities requires imagination, investigation, or some mental challenge to us. In the middle there is a action sequence (tough and frustrating), and other ones at the police academy in order to practice aiming (easy and boring). I don't think someone enjoys this part of the game with so many good FPSs nowadays, although I doubt that someone had enjoyed it at that time (year '94). There are some tedious "realistic" features that were included, such as put our ID on every time we enter in the station, go up and down on the elevator in real time (!), and deliver the report to the Boss every day, which don't add nothing else but anger and boredom.

The graphic part is also a aspect that changed to the realism in PQ4. The word "realism" always seems to suggest that something is "better"; well, this graphics prove that is not correct. Both settings and characters are photo-realistic, that is photographs of real things. "Hey, that sounds very well…but then, which is the problem?" perhaps you wonder, and the answer is: PQ4's graphics are very pixelated; and super-pixelated real things look horrible. But the worst of this is some object that we "must" to examine are completely unrecognizable. Our desk is a random bunch of all-color square points, and there, in theory, we must find a sheet of paper for the Chief. Also, I challenge you to find our office's computer (which we must use) in the station… The audio in general is acceptable. The midi music remarks tragic, tense and relaxing moments with quite success. But definitely, the songs of Larry (Laffer!) games inside the lift win the main award. Going up and down 800 times an elevator might have been something enough to damn entire industry of videogames, but thanks to that genial idea, I only damn this game.

So far, despite all debilities I mentioned above, PQ4 keeps certain attractive like police story, and it might be considered as a tolerable adventure. But the review doesn't finish yet…

The Bad
Although we don't need much cleverness to advance in the game, in some occasions we encounter some "puzzles" which challenge not to mind, but to patience. These "bothers" (it's better name them like this) are absolutely impossible to guess (guaranteed it!), blocking us inexplicably and without a logic reason. For example, at one point, I couldn't do anything: I went to a walkthrough which said that I should meet with a dog (!) at a crime scene. The problem was that the dog didn't appear! I thought it was a game bug. I read in detail the solution and I realized I hadn't bought glue at a mini-mart which I had visited a few days before. What for? I wondered. Anyway, I drove my car to buy that glue, and surprise!, the dog appears at the proper site. Thus I could continue the adventure. There are a couple more of "bothers" during the game, as to buy a drumstick (yes, a drumstick), enough to make us doubt about whether we must play it with a "realistic" approach or with a "Sam & Max" one. Besides, this causes we'll never be able to completely involve in its serious and realistic atmosphere. If you think the previous glue has at least a coherent and logic use later in the game, you are wrong. The glue, combined with other crazy objects, constitutes a portion of a puzzle at the end of the game, which might have easily emerged from design sketches of "Day of the Tentacle". This puzzle is as unnecessary as ridiculous, and thanks to it, PQ4 wins finally the title "absolutely forgettable game".

The Bottom Line
Sierra crucifies the reputation of PQ saga with this installment. Due to try (without success) the ambitious idea of make it more realistic than its predecessors, it achieves a tasteless and without personality story, with an extremely weak gameplay which sometimes touches ridiculousness. If you are looking for graphic adventures with the words "realism", "homicide" and "detectives", my recommendation extends to PQ3, and if you are looking for some more rich and complex, play the excellent "Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo". And to think that two years before PQ4, Sierra produced one of the best adventure ever... what a crazy world!

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.