The shortest running of the common Sierra Adventures. Does that say anything about its quality? Come on, we're talking about Sierra! As if these sillyheads had ever cared about consumer wishes or producing quality products!

Police Quest is aimed at a different target audience than the childish King's Quest for example. The designer was a retired policeman and the game claims to be 'authentic'. Whatever that means. After playing, you'll know.

Or after reading this review of course. Simulating the 'real life' of a police officer (in the USA of course), i.e. no constant shoot-outs, cases aren't too spectacular and so on. Actually quite a unique and promising approach.

So gameplay can be described as 'daily routine': get to the police station, get your stuff out of your locker, attend the briefing, patrol the city. Still sounds good. I'm getting bored though, so let's get to the bashing.

It's the details which make this game fit well in Sierra's collection of crap! What's the point of being forced to search your own locker out of many different ones, after that searching your seat in the conference room and then searching your 'pigeonhole' (used for memos)? It doesn't matter if you're standing exactly in front of the right pixel! In real life, you'd know all this anyway, so it's not even realistic, but only stupid.
Next example: to go on patrol with your car, you first have to do a 'routine inspection'. And don't forget to fasten your seatbelt, otherwise you'll be sacked immediately! I'm aware that real police officers also have to stick to the traffic rules and are only allowed to use their siren in special cases, but is all this nitpicking really necessary? It's a game, it should be fun primarily!

Typical for Sierra, the game of course doesn't forgive you anything, i.e. every tiny mistake will immediately lead to death / suspension / whatever other reason to lose the game. Stupid. Just stupid.

So much about the nearly unplayable game. Last but not least, there is the horrible presentation. Graphics have been adopted 1:1 from the PC and even for PC-standards, they're bad! Imagine what that means for the superior Amiga (at least the colours aren't as ugly as in King's Quest)! Music is almost as bad as coming out of the notorious 'PC-speaker'. That's what you get from aiming a game solely at the US market!

The good idea makes Police Quest superior to most of Sierra's stuff. Execution is lousy though, so stay away from it!


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