[h1]Only for early 90s adventure connoisseurs.[/h1]
After trying to satisfy my recent urge for retro-games with the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, which failed miserably because I obviously suck at arcade fighting games, I went for a much more laid back and chill experience with the classic Police Quest Collection and much to my surprise those games did not age as poorly as other classic adventures I've played from the early 90s.
The Collection contains the original versions of the first four Police Quest games plus the VGA remake of the first game. Gameplaywise they are pretty much everything that comes to mind when you think of "classic late 80s / early 90s point-and-click adventure". What sets them apart from their mostly wacky and more comiclike contemporaries (like Maniac Mansion, Leisure Suit Larry, Monkey Island or Sam & Max to name a few) is their much more realistic premise with an extremely over-particular focus on correct policework procedures. And just to mention it right at the start: All games run perfectly fine on modern systems without any patching or fixing required at all.
I didn't play the original first Police Quest and instead went straight to the VGA remake with it's charming colorful pixel grafics. The story and writing is exactly as you would expect it to be: It strongly resembles the kind of banter that you'd see in early 90s trash TV and cheap C-movies, but at least it's kind of entertaining and might make you chuckle now and then.
To solve the game you actually need information printed in the manual, which is only partially included as PDF, so it's absolutely obligatory to use a walkthrough. But apart from that, it aged a lot better, than the first Police Quest SWAT game for example. It's a quite short game, too, so if you have an afternoon to spare, there are much worse games to waste it on.
Police Quest 2 on the other hand didn't get the fancy VGA treatment, which makes it a borderline unplayable game in every aspect, wether it'd be in terms of grafics, sound, controls or the gameplay itself. It's the very definition of late 80s snail-paced, super-cryptic, hyper-contrived adventure gameplay: Again, you basically need a walkthrough from second one, otherwise good luck in figuring out what the game wants you to do and then typing in the proper commands for that (yes, you actually have to type in all the stuff you want to do and hope that the game understands it because there are no mouse controls). I'm unable to understand how all those adventures became so successful in the late 80s and early 90s with gameplay like that. Due to the cryptic gameplay plus the antedeluvian presentation and controls this was the Police Quest game I enjoyed the least, but you have to give it that, the 8-bit chiptune music is just banger after banger.
Police Quest 3 was the first game in the series with VGA grafics, mouse controls and a new user interface, so it pretty much plays exactly like the VGA remake of the first game, but once again, maybe even more so than in PQ 1 and 2, you absolutely need a walkthrough for all the cryptic and contrived BS.
The last game in the Collection, which is called Police Quest Open Season, is no continuation of the Police Quest 1-3 story, but more of a spin-off or reboot. It starts a lot f*ckin darker and grittier than the previous PQ games with the discovery of the bullethole-riddled body of a 6-years-old boy in a dumpster in the ghettos of L.A., but it quickly falls back into the almost soap-opera-like cheesy writing of its predecessors, even accompanied by bad voice-acting this time. They went for slighty more realistic visuals, too, but they aged considerably worse than the charming VGA grafics of PQ3 and the PQ1 remake and in combination with the poor sound (the music is actually more annoying than oldschool-amazing here), the presentation of Open Season is the second-worst of the whole collection after PQ2, despite it being the latest game of them all. On the other hand it has some much needed quality-of-life improvements, for example it got rid of the absolutely dreadful, frustrating driving sections of PQ1 and PQ3, which gives the game a much better flow. Nevertheless, PQ OS requires a walkthrough, too, unless you have A LOT of spare time and simply NOTHING better to do with it. In the end, of all the Police Quest games (SWAT 1 included) only the very first game seems somewhat solveable without a guide to me.
Finally be aware that the Police Quest games portray a rather conservative and dated view on american policework, gender roles, ethnic groups and society as a whole. In other words: Many aspects of those games are pretty much politically incorrect in 2024 and if you are sensitive or easily triggered regarding the topics mentioned above, you might get offended here.
Since the Police Quest games are only about a handful of hours long on average, I have to admit that I did somewhat enjoy breezing through them with a walkthrough, more so than I did most other early 90s adventures I played so far. But then again, I grew up loving videogames ever since I saw the Super Mario Bros. demo running on the NES display at our local toy stores back in 1991 when I was 5 years old. I'm perfectly aware that my (limited) enjoyment of Police Quest stems from pure nostalgia simply evoked by the (mostly) charming VGA grafics and (mostly) awesome chiptune music (basically any game from the late 80s and early 90s makes me smile because of those), and not because the Police Quest games would be timeless adventure masterpieces that were ahead of their time and aged like fine wine. Quite the opposite. Police Quest can be fun for people grown up in the 80s and 90s who just want to get a break from all of today's foto-realistic grafics and take a bath in glorious nostalgia, but it would basically be a crime to recommend this Collection to anybody younger than 35. If you are a hardcore fan of mega-cryptic classic adventures and/or just trying to flee from the daily responsibilities of a family father approaching his forties by desperately clinging to the careless memories of your own unworried childhood (just like me XD), it might be okay to invest 5 bucks for Police Quest Collection on the next sale. But then again, maybe just save those 5 bucks instead and buy your kids some ice cream on the next family trip, eh?
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POLICE QUEST COLLECTION
Genre: Adventure
Release: Q4 1987 - Q4 1993
( ) 0/8 Simply one of the worst games ever made. Don't waste any money on this.
( ) 1/8 Bad. Seriously flawed with barely any redeeming qualities. Worth a couple of Cents at best, if at all.
(X) 2/8 Sub-par. Only for hardcore-fans of respective genre / series. Don't pay more than 5 bucks.
( ) 3/8 Meh-diocre. It‘s okay. Don't pay more than 10 bucks.
( ) 4/8 Decent, but not for everybody. Don't pay more than 15 bucks.
( ) 5/8 Good game, Must-play for genre- / series-fans. Worth 20 to 25 bucks max, if you are not a fan.
( ) 6/8 Great game, universal recommendation. 30 bucks would be a steal for this.
( ) 7/8 Outstanding game, a milestone of it‘s respective genre. Definitely worth its full prize.
( ) 8/8 Simply one of the best games ever made. Get this, the prize doesn't matter.
