Policenauts

Developer: Konami
Year of release: 1996 (1994 on NEC PC98)
Platform: Playstation
Official website: to old to have one, translation site: http://policenauts.net/english/
Date finished: 6 October 2009
Playtime: +-15 hours

Policenauts is one of those games that I wanted to play since I read Hideo Kojima's background a few years ago. Having played his Metal Gear Solid and Zone of the Enders series, I just had to try some older games from him. I would have played this game earlier if it wasn't only released in Japan and never translated!

The last few years I had forgotten about this game until I read the kotaku post "Policenauts English Localization Completed". Finally I could play the game in English! Thanks to the people who did the translation project!

The game is a cinematic adventure game with a mature science fiction story line. The first thing that I noticed was the visual style of the game. The game looks like a Japanese animation, anime, from the early '90s, which in my opinion is one of the best looking anime style. The anime style that you see today, with all the big eyes and boobs and cute faces, just isn't my thing. I used to be a big fan of anime, but the visual style of today's anime just isn't as good as before.
Since the game is done in this beautiful '90s anime style it can still match up with today's anime graphical standards in games. It looks much better than the anime cut scenes in SF4, which were horrible. Of course the animation in policenauts isn't as smooth in frame rate as today's anime games.

The gameplay consist of 90% point and click exploring the environment and having conversations with other characters. The other 10% of gameplay consists of rail shooting and reload, like the old lethal enforcers or house of the dead style, and mini games; comparing pictures and quick and steady movements and timing to disable a time bomb, handling security cameras. You can say that the game is 90% story and 10% play. The story plays a big part in this game.

The story is played in the future where mankind has created a colony in space, called 'Beyond' and where earth is called 'Home'. You play as Jonathan Ingram who was one of the first policenauts short for police astronauts. Due to an accident, you have been floating in space for 25 year in a life vessel in a hibernation state. In the life vessel you haven't aged, but everyone around you has. The story starts three years after you have been rescued. You are now a lonely detective on Home. Just this start of the story already got me hooked, it's really a cool sci-fi start.
Your ex-wife who has been living on 'Beyond' comes to your office with a request to look for her husband. After this conversation, she gets killed by a car bomb right in front of your office. To find more clues about her assissination and her husband you travel to Beyond. On Beyond you meet your old policenauts partner and other former policenauts. One of the former policenauts is now the leader of the biggest company on Beyond, the Tokugawa group, which controls almost everything on Beyond. The story evolves to a conspiracy in the Tokugawa group and serious crimes as producing narcotics and trade in human organs. You even visit the moon and fight of armored suits in the story.

The story is told from Jonathan's perspective; you often look through his eyes and occasionally you will know how he thinks of situations that the story gets him into. In most cases you will see an anime drawn image of an environment with some looping animation in there and often a character to interact with. You have to explore the environment by clicking on objects, Jonathan or if there is someone around will tell you very detailed what the object is and does. The cool part is that the game is developed for a mature audience; for some objects they give so much detailed information that I really learned some new interesting things. Since it is a science fiction game there are also objects in the game that are pure fiction, even those have incredible detailed information as if they exist for real. Definitly plus points in my opinion, it really shows that the developers did some deep research on every object that they put in the game.
To progress you need to click on the right objects to get new information. When talking to a person you choose which questions you want to ask which often lead to new questions. The goal is to ask the right questions to get the information that you need to continue the story. Since I always want to do as much as possible in a game, I asked every question that I could choose multiple times, which gave me a lot of background information about the person and the world they are living in. It's not necessary to know al that, but it is interesting and it really shows that the developers wanted to create this massive colony filled with lively people that all have there own personal experience.
Before you talk to someone you can also chose to look at the person first. All the female persons that are in the game are of course beautiful looking and Jonathan can flirt with them. In some cases if you are really persistent you can be a little pervert and touch their boobs.

Next to the great visual style and story, the game also has a nice sound track and great Japanese voice acting. The necessary information that you need to ask for are often supported by nice voice acting and there is lip sync in the animations! Information that isn't necessary is often only shown on screen in text form without any voice support.

Since the game is directed by Hideo Kojima, you also see some homage to movies and other games. Jonathan and his partner really look like the main characters in the Lethal Weapon movies and Myrl from the Metal Gear Solid series plays a role in the game.


The good

• Visual style, the early 90's anime visual style looks good even for today's standard. That visual style has always been a more realistic looking style, than today's anime visual style. I'm more in favor of the detailed realistic style, which makes it timeless.
• Story and setting, I'm a great fan of good sci-fi stories especially when they are ment for a more mature audience. The world where the story is told in has lots of detail and you can get plenty of background information about characters, by having a nice conversation with them, and the sci-fi world. The information is so detailed as if the sci-fi world really exists.
  
• Mini games, the rail shooting, comparing pictures, disabling a time bomb etc are nicely done. I never would have thought that 'comparing pictures' could be done so well in a game that is focused on a more mature audience.
  

The bad and improvements

• Gameplay pacing, the rail shooting gameplay could have been spread more even through the story. At the start and near the end of the game you get quite some rail shooting gameplay scenes, but in between you get it sporadically; after some hours of story you get one rail shooting scene. It would have been better if there was a rail shooting scene between every hour of story gameplay.
• Player feedback, I noticed that in one rail shooting scene; on the speed way shooting on a motorcycle, the player feedback was lacking. In most rail shooting scenes you would get some feedback when you hit the target, visually or a sound, with the motorcycle there wasn't any clear feedback, so I really had no clue if I was hitting the target or not. Also the hints that where given for the motorcycle scene weren't really helpful. I died quite often before I understood what I had to do, which was quite frustrating and could have been prevented with a little more feedback to the player or a slightly better hint.
  
  

It was a long time ago since I played a point and click adventure game. The last game I can remember is the Curse of Monkey Island; that was more than a decade ago. At the start of Policenauts I wasn't really sure if I would like the slow or less active gameplay compared to today's games. But after seeing the visual style and the massive detailed information that is put in the game world, I really did not mind at all. I took my time to explore every object and had long conversations with every character in the game. It felt relaxing and it kept me in the interesting story from start to finish. In overall it was a nice experience and I'll probably play some more of these old point and click games between all the action and fast paced games of today.

8.5/10