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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[ 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

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

Subject By Date
Is dude's name really part of the game's title? Pseudo_Intellectual (66248) 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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  • PQ4 Hints
    These hints, written by Diana Griffiths, will help you with the puzzles in the game.

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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.