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you thought life in the good old US of A was all donuts
and MacDonald's -- even for cops? Yeah, well, you shouldn't
believe all those cute things they tell you in Sesame
Street (Who ever heard of a talking bird, anyway?) On
the other hand, no one in their right mind would believe
all that screeching tyre and designer jumper Miami Vice
stuff either.
So
what's it really like for your average, ordinary cop
wearing out shoe leather on the streets? No lizard's
toenail, bumper Christmas party, I can tell you. There's
loads of driving around and performing petty traffic
duty for a start. And when you do finally get called
to the scene of a crime, you've got to be pretty sure
you follow the correct procedures for arresting, searching,
calling for backup. Oh yeah -- and you hardly ever end
up shooting . . . Bah! Spoilsports!
Well,
now you can have a go at being one of these well hard
routine sort of street cops yourself -- in a combination
of glorious Sierra interactive 3D and typed in verbal
commands.
It
all starts out at police headquarters in Lytton. This
is your comfy as a troll's hole base: come back at the
end of the day for a shower (bleuch!), change back into
civilian clothes, use the computer to follow up leads
(you can actually type in data), get your daily briefing
from the captain -- the usual routine.
Your
patrol car's just outside and most of the action involves
manoeuvring it about an aerial view map of Lytton's
streets. The idea is that once you're out of the station,
you're free to investigate some of the city's locations,
pull people up for driving offences and respond to radio
alerts. Once you get good enough at that, you might
even be promoted to going undercover and helping to
rid the city of the notorious drug-dealer, Death Angel,
for the good of the force!
That's
the idea anyway. In practise, the actual driving around
is so awkward that if you survive long enough to get
to the scene of more than one incident, you're so brilliant
you should be given a life-long supply of lizard legs
and promoted to Chief of Police immediately. It takes
just one tiny mistake with the mouse on the map for
your car to career into the sidewalk and that's the
end of the game. Oh yeah -- and if you mess up one bit
of police procedure (like not walking round your car
first before you leave the car park), that's the end
of your police career -- dead realistic that. I know
there's a save game option but it still seems like a
pretty big cop out (geddit) to expect you to keep on
saving every five seconds just in case you get thrown
out of the game -- again.
Survive
long enough to actually get to any action and you're
in for a big disappointment. The parser doesn't always
understand the most obvious investigative questions
(say about a number plate) and all you end up doing
is performing a few routine actions. Maybe it gets more
involved later on but I doubt you'll want to stay around
that long.
Maybe
if you like Sierra games and can ignore all the sudden
death situations they bung in as a matter of course
and don't mind some pretty basic graphics, you might
get a fair bit of fun out of this. As for me, I can
do without loads of really annoying death scenes, uninteresting
gameplay and not-very-exciting interactive graphics
-- especially for 25 quid. Think I'll buy myself a policeman's
hat and start looking important down Ludlow Bridge instead
-- it's cheaper and there's a lot more scope for violence.
Huaaargh!
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