Posted by Ilmari Jauhiainen

https://advgamer.blogspot.com/2025/09/police-quest-open-season-final-rating.html

 by Alex

Is this really “THE MOST INTENSE MULTIMEDIA CD EVER!”? Remember when “multimedia” was an adjective that seemingly everything had slapped onto it? My friend Merriam-Webster.com (NO AI FOR ME!) defines “multimedia” as “using, involving, or encompassing several media” in its adjectival form. As a noun, M-W states that “multimedia” is “a technique (such as the combining of sound, video, and text) for expressing ideas (as in communication, entertainment, or art) in which several media are employed,” and also “something (such as software) using or facilitating such a technique.”

So, by this definition, isn’t a movie multimedia? Isn’t a Broadway musical? Weren’t radio plays? Weren’t plays by Euripides and Aristophanes? You’re telling me Oedipus Rex wasn’t a more INTENSE MULTIMEDIA experience than Police Quest: Open Season?

Ah, but by the box’s own definition, I am comparing apples to oranges, or what Aristotle might call in Posterior Analytics (which is NOT the analysis of the human butt; get your minds out of the gutter) a false syllogism. If all A is C, and there is no B in A, and we suppose that A is “a Greek tragedy” and C is “an intense multimedia experience” while B is “a compact disc,” we can see that calling, I don’t know, Lysistrata or The Frogs a more intense multimedia experience than Police Quest: Open Season is logically unsound. But the real Greek tragedy is me, a Greek, bastardizing the great Philosopher’s Posterior Analytics to make a butt joke about a thirty-year-old adventure game.

«Ντρέπομαι που είμαι πρόγονός σου, βρε μαλάκα.»

I mean, there are better ways to make butt jokes about or in adventure games:

So if the horse fart is A, the horse’s ass is C, I guess the bag is B, so we can say “All A is C . . .” Talk about Posterior ANALytics . . .

The amount of mileage I’ve gotten out of that screenshot is truly stunning.

Allow me to re-introduce myself, since it’s been a while. Six months, to be exact, since my last post. My name is Alex. You might know me from such reviews as Conquests of the Longbow and Quest for Glory III, as well as about a gajillion Police Quest (actually, more like three, including this one) and Leisure Suit Larry (actually, also just three) games. There was also L.A. Law: The Computer Game, but the less said about that, the better.

“You never signed an NDA, so technically nothing is legally stopping you from talking about L.A. Law: The Computer Game.”

Anyway, life happens. Shortly after that last Police Quest: Open Season post, we went on a vacation, and when we came back, stuff happened at my wife’s business which necessitated me quitting my day job and working with my wife full-time, whereas I had previously worked on the margins, helping out with paperwork, etc. Now, I’m enjoying the fun of being a full-fledged small-business-owner. 

So given that it’s been a minute since I actually finished Police Quest: Open Season and this final rating post, I’ve had a lot of time to think about this game and how I want to structure this post. And given the, shall we say, strong personalities that have been involved in creating the Police Quest series, it’s impossible for me to look at this, the official fourth Police Quest game, without juxtaposing it against the un-official Police Quest game that I blogged about earlier . . . Jim Walls’s Blue Force!

IT'S A COMPETITION, BABY!

That’s right! Daryl F. Gates vs. Jim Middle Initial Unknown Walls in a tete-a-tete battle for police-related adventure game supremacy!

In this corner . . . former L.A.P.D. chief Daryl F. Gates!

And in this corner . . . former California highway patrol officer Jim Walls!

Oh man, we’ve got ourselves a doozy, a real barnburner set to rival the Thriller in Manilla, the Fight of the Century, and Jake Paul versus an old Mike Tyson. This is even bigger than Coke vs. Pepsi and Nintendo vs. Sega which, if you remember, were actual wars!

But who started the fire? Daryl F. Gates or Jim Walls? Or was it always burning since the world was turning? The great Philosopher Billy M. Joel didn’t provide a satisfactory answer because, in true Baby Boomer fashion, his reference points begin right around the time that he was born, which is when history obviously began, and he had nothing truly substantive to say after “JFK! BLOWN AWAY!” even though the song kept on going. What a hack. What a fraud. He doesn’t even have anything to do with Police Quest: Open Season! Screw you, Billy Joel!

Though I give him credit for being one-half of a weird prog-rock/proto-metal duo before his career as a sensitive singer-songwriter took off.

Man, now I’m pissed! PISSED! Let’s subject Police Quest: Open Season to the mathematical scrutiny of The Adventurers’ Guild founder Trickster’s PISSED rating scale, and seeing how it stacks up against Blue Force! Right off the bat, we’ve got some blood drawn: Jim Walls has never been a police chief, let alone in one of America’s biggest and most-important cities, so a point goes to Gates . . . but nobody has ever accused Jim Walls of being a racist which, in America, even the mere accusation of being one is the equivalent of being anathematized and excommunicated by a church or having a fatwah put upon your head by some angry mullah or whatever, so a point goes to Walls. We’re starting things out with a score of 1-1, but I’m sure things will get more intense as this battle goes on!

Puzzles and Solvability: 2

Look at this screenshot. Look at it. Lest we forget how we got here, I’ll run down what led to Detective John Carey being pulled by a serial killer’s dog to the serial killer’s house:

• Carey discovers that one of the suspected murder victim’s clients was last seen at the victim’s office the day she disappeared.
• Carey discovers this individual is named Mitchell Thurman. How does Carey discover this? He finds Thruman’s case file on the missing victim’s desk. Boy, this Thurman guy sounds like someone that Carey, a police detective investigating a murder should talk to!
• The game does not let Carey read the case file to find out where Thurman lives.
• The game seems to stall out until the player pixel-hunts in a location that hasn’t been relevant since the beginning of the game and finds a rope that had never been there before.

• Carey then has to go back to where this suspected victim’s body was found, once again encounter a dog that had been there before, tie the rope into a lasso, and throw it around the dog’s neck, which causes the dog to run home.
• Once at the house, Carey can’t leave.

This is so wickedly stupid it beggars belief. I mean, up until this point the game’s puzzles had been relatively decent, but it falls apart so spectacularly in the endgame with puzzles that aren’t only improbably but just plain dumb and unfair that I cannot in good conscience give it any higher than a 2. Otherwise, I’d say it would have deserved perhaps a 4.

What do I mean? At the beginning of the game, things make sense. You are thrust in the thick of things, investigating the murder of your colleague and best friend, as well as the tragic murder of a young boy. Are the two related? You have to speak with witnesses, gather clues, follow leads, and deal with crazy neo-Nazis and their dog-faced girlfriends.

“Arf arf, bitch.”

The neo-Nazi stuff requires some quick reflexes, but you know, it still feels like part-and-parcel of what an actual cop in a crime-infested major American city (but I repeat myself) might have to deal with. 

You get evidence tested, go to the coroner, examine impounded vehicles, deal with journalist scum . . .

. . . and in general do cop things. Until the end. Where you gather evidence and cannot do a single damn thing with it. And then do unbelievably stupid things, like drink tea prepared by the guy you are sure is the killer and then watch a movie he puts on for you instead of, you know, questioning him further or calling for backup or anything. And then after somehow escaping the theater alive, you are expected to do that stupid dog puzzle instead of looking into Thurman and maybe getting a warrant, finding his address in the file, and so on. What began as a competent police procedural a la the first two Police Quest games devolves into a stupid-fest a la the second half or so of the third Police Quest game (we’ll get into the overall tone in the “Environment and Atmosphere” section and the plot holes and red herrings in the “Story and Setting” section). So it seems like the dumbness isn’t all the result of Jim Walls’s involvement.

Or is it actually Jim Walls’s legacy?

What I said about Blue Force:

“Puzzles and Solvability: 2

This rating may seem unfairly, punishingly low, but one thing I noticed while playing Blue Force is that there were precious few puzzles that required much intuition. Most of the time, it was a click-fest to find the thing you know you need . . . The puzzles, such as they existed, when they weren’t just ‘Go here and click this thing on that guy’  . . . Overall, the puzzles weren’t much fun, nor did they provide a sense of accomplishment . . . I’m going to be comparing this game a lot to the last Jim Walls-designed game I’ve played, Police Quest III. I gave that game a 3 for this category, lamenting that I couldn’t give it a 3.5. In Police Quest III, the puzzle quality tapered off near the end, but at first there was actually some amount of both logical and lateral thinking required, and the paperwork puzzles and other administrivia Sonny had to deal with made you feel like a cop. Blue Force is even more poorly designed than that: you get things you need for later puzzles well before they’re actually needed, which sort of throws the gameplay loop off. I mean, there is a certain intuition needed to notice the rare coins in Mr. Carter’s shop, and then going through your inventory to realize you have this rare nickel you picked up seemingly for no reason at all in the study at Jake’s grandma’s house . . . I cannot in good conscience rate Blue Force’s puzzles equal to even Police Quest III’s. Blue Force’s were either too easy or too annoying. Understanding developer intent and what they were going for is one thing, but it doesn’t make the puzzles any better.”

My gripe in my Blue Force rating about getting things way earlier than you will ever use them isn’t a thing in Police Quest: Open Season, but it does lead to some obnoxious goofiness like having to trudge all the way back to South Central L.A. to get the rope which wasn’t there before (and is hardly visible, to boot). So neither game did a particularly good job in this respect. 

Result: Tie. 

We’re at 2-2 now. Let’s see how Interface and Inventory shakes out.

Interface and Inventory: 5

I had no issues with Police Quest: Open Season’s interface or inventory. By this point in time, Sierra had honed its point-and-click interface to perfection. I didn’t have difficulty moving Carey, looking at things, or picking them up (being able to see them is a different matter—the rope, the pretzels at the Short Stop bar, and so on). The interface didn’t work quite so well during the game’s one shootout, but the whole point of that sequence is to survive long enough for backup to arrive, so it doesn’t require the manual dexterity to hit a bunch of moving targets or whatnot—even Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist had tougher shooting mini-games.

Come to think of it, Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist was kind of a police simulator, in a way, as well, wasn’t it?

The inventory also provides a lot of information when you click on an item to examine or interact with it. Even if the item is useless, like the vending machine candy bar, the game at least acknowledges its existence. There are also some humorous messages when you try to click various objects on the various characters you encounter in the game, the record store owner and the male prostitute being a few of the funnier examples (we’ll get to the actual writing in the “Dialogue and Acting” section). So a five seems like a perfectly reasonable score for an interface and inventory that are so good, you don’t even notice them . . . and I mean that as a compliment. 

And Police Quest: Open Season has no driving mini-game. There’s a map and you just click on where you want to go. You just click on it.

What I said about Blue Force:

“Interface and Inventory: 4

I’m giving this a 4 solely for the command wheel that pops up when you right-click the mouse button. It freezes the game and gives you an opportunity to make your selection . . . Otherwise, the interface is pretty standard fare, with some things I noticed which prevent me from giving a higher rating . . . First, there aren’t many things to click on and get descriptions of in each room. I contrast this with Sierra games, where a part of the fun was clicking every icon on everything and everyone in a given screen just to see what funny responses you can come up with. Second, while I like that the inventory is constantly displayed on the bottom of the screen, it does eat up a lot of real estate, and the descriptions are only bare-bones . . . Lastly, Blue Force doesn’t have a speed slider! Given how slowly Jake walks, this is particularly egregious. It made me not want to keep playing in the parts where I was stumped and needed to do the classic adventure gamer thing of revisiting every place to see if I missed anything . . . Hey, at least there’s no driving minigame!”

Result: A point for Police Quest: Open Season! 

Sierra’s title is up 3-2 at this point, winning by being basic but sleekly functional instead of being innovative on the one hand (the icon-wheel) and deficient in all the rest of the areas that matter. But this match isn’t over yet. On to the next round!

Story and Setting: 4

You know something? For most of Police Quest: Open Season, I was all-in. The game thrusts you into the action with some visceral murders—I still get uncomfortable looking at the screenshots of little Bobby Washington’s corpse—and doesn’t let up . . . until the eventual descent into Crazyville. But for a while, you’re really feeling the heat, tracking what appears to be a female serial killer as they successfully kill a whole bunch of people and get away with it. How did they do it? What’s the motive? What’s up with the weird dismemberments? Why was Carey’s friend and colleague Hickman targeted? Did Bobby Washington have anything to do with it? What the hell is going on here, L.A.? Randy Newman wrote a song about how much he loved you, and this is how you treat the man’s memory?

What’s that you say? Randy Newman is still alive? Oh whew. He’s one of the few piano-playing dorks I actually don’t mind. Sorry, Billy.

Actually, I'm not sorry.

Now, you might think the fact that a lot of these investigative leads go nowhere would bother me, but you’d be wrong! That’s what police work is like, right? You think you’ve got your guy—er, gal: Yo Money’s girlfriend/manager Nicolette Rogers? But no, it’s not her . . . And the whole thing with Ragtop Spiff at least closes the sad book on the Bobby Washington affair, but it had nothing to do with the serial killer. Okay, fine, that stuff works in a perfectly workmanlike manner. It beats having everything be predictably related like, as you’ll see below, Blue Force’s current killers being the same people, or at least one of the same people, who murdered that game’s protagonist’s parents and set him on a course to become a cop, etc. and so on. Real life isn’t like that, and police work is definitely not like that. To jump ahead, Police Quest: Open Season did not go for the actiony 80s cop show vibe, goofy and earnest, of its predecessors, but instead reflected the 90s shift to gritty realism, which was also a thing in the 70s, so yeah, what even was the 80s, other than a time of “ROCK AND ROLLER COLA WARS!” that our short, ivory-tinkling weenie just couldn’t take?

Well, I’ll tell you because I was there, man! First of all, the 1980s has nothing to do with this post, save for the fact that Sierra really got its start in the 1980s, and the first two Police Quest games were released during the ten years between 1981 and 1990 which comprised the decade. Second, the 1980s are when Rush released what is arguably their greatest run of albums, Moving Pictures in 1981, followed by Signals in 1982, Grace Under Pressure in 1984, and Power Windows in 1985. You’d think I’d include 1980’s Permanent Waves in there, but 1980 was technically the last decade of the 1970s, and further, the entire world didn’t look like a Nagel painting back then, so no, I won’t count it. However, I personally argue that 1987’s Hold Your Fire really capped Rush’s remarkable string of fantastic albums, with 1989’s Presto being good, but weak compared to that prior five-album murderer’s row of absolute bangers. Also, the band had some seriously dorky haircuts during the 80s, especially Geddy Lee’s “coonskin cap” coiffure, which just . . . I mean look at it:

But it didn’t affect his bass playing. 

The 1980s gets castigated by some, glorified by others, and for different reasons. It was alternately the good-old days and the beginning of the end; a time of Cold War hysteria and American triumphalism; an era of widening economic inequality and a rising tide that lifted all boats; a period of extreme poverty and extreme wealth, a time where the stagflation and negative nihilism of the 1970s gave way to a new sunny optimism where everything felt like it was coming from California—even the President, a man who was either the antichrist/Dr. Evil or the savior of the Republic, depending on what letter you put next to your name. Action heroes were big and loud, music was big and loud, fashion was big and loud, everything was big and loud! And heart-on-sleeve too, though there was still plenty of cynicism and satire for those who knew where to look. 

This the vibe Jim Walls brought to Police Quest. 

By the 1990s, even though communism was defeated (if only . . .) and the Soviet Union fell and America won the world (if only . . . ) and everyone was rolling in the dough and Bill Clinton was feeling our pain and forever wars in the Middle East were just some neocon’s fever-dream and we had the Internet the future was looking good and blah blah blah, media tended to get kind of darker. It’s like the sunny, cheery, Morning in America was replaced by “Welcome to the Jungle,” which made sense as the decade wore on, but anyway, 80s cheesiness and goofy earnestness was deemed passe so we got cop shows like Law & Order and NYPD Blue and dark movies like Seven and The Matrix which, instead of Star Wars-style pulpy sci-fi gave us a grim, violent, and darkly philosophical where the line between good and evil was blurred, and Rush put their synthesizers away and released a string of successively heavier albums, from the relatively poppy Roll the Bones in 1991 to the darker Counterparts in 1993 and the downright grungy Test for Echo in 1996. Alex Lifeson even sported a soul patch for a while. A freaking soul patch.

The 90s were wild, man. This is the era Daryl F. Gates/writer Tammy Dargan brought to Police Quest: Open Season. 

Less forgivable than Alex Lifeson’s soul patch are the plot threads that promise some sort of payoff but go nowhere, like the romance subplot between Carey and Detective Chester or Carey and Electra the stripper, or my digression about Rush, or, you know, the killer’s motive. So the story begins with a bang and then craps out, just like Police Quest III: The Kindred, going to show that this phenomenon isn’t just a Jim Walls thing. 

Now the setting . . . yeesh. Man, 1990s L.A. as depicted in this game is gross. I would not want to live here, or even visit.

Okay, maybe I’d visit here.

Seedy, dirty, dingy, dungy (dungy?), Police Quest: Open Season definitely conveys a sense of place, a lived-in gritty realism which is what they were going for, and I realize I’m also discussing the environment and atmosphere here, but my point is that the game’s setting is effective but not particularly pleasant. The game sets out to make the player feel like they’re really getting into the underbelly of American life, and it definitely delivers. However, Police Quest: Open Season’s setting is not enough to offset its sadly stupid story.

What I said about Blue Force:

“Story and Setting: 3

This is a tough one, quite honestly, because the story of a rookie cop who joined the force to be like his deceased father is a good enough backstory for me. However, the tie-in to (SPOILER ALERT) Jake’s parents murder was very hackneyed. Further, the game’s, quite frankly, quaint and cozy feel didn’t lend itself well to the heavy plot involving murder and arms smuggling. The main villain came from out of nowhere. The best part of the story was Jake teaming up with his father’s former partner whom he, I guess, started a private detective agency with, Lyle Jamison. Otherwise, romance subplots go nowhere, the characters aren’t particularly memorable, and even recurring antagonist Bradley Green is just a generic, hyperaggressive biker dude . . . As far as the setting goes, Jackson Beach, CA is basically the Police Quest series’ Lytton, CA. It’s a generic small American city with an overall small feel. In fact, the stakes of Blue Force felt small. There wasn’t much urgency, and the whole thing came off as a bit second-rate.”

Result: Another point for Police Quest: Open Season!

PO:OS is up 4-2 now, giving the underdog a real tough climb. Let’s see how Blue Force does in the “Sound and Graphics” department.

BUT WAIT!

Blue Force has male bonding, and Police Quest: Open Season does not!

How can I not give Blue Force a point for this? Male bonding is too great to not earn its place on the scoreboard. Police Quest: Open Season does not have male bonding. And even though it has an arcade cabinet at a bar, it does nothing with it. 

Remember that scene in Bloodsport (speaking of the the 80s!) where Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Karate Champ with Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds (have I mentioned before how much Revenge of the Nerds does NOT hold up?) and they basically become best friends?

Yeah, well, Detective Carey plays ‘Stroids by himself like a dork because he has no one to male bond with.

“But Alex, but Alex, at least Police Quest: Open Season has an arcade game-within-a-game and Blue Force doesn’t!” 

Sure, but ‘Stroids sucks.

Result: Male bonding . . . it’s great!

Blue Force is catching up, and now we’ve got a score of 3-2! We’re halfway through our bout; let’s see how the contenders are faring. Chief Gates, what’s your strategy going forward?

“Chief. You called me chief, right? That’s my strategy. I’m the CHIEF, baby! I was YOUR BOSS while you were a CHiP, Walls, your BOSS! And you weren’t even on CHiPs, so nyah-nyah-na-nahhh-nahhh.”

Oh man, them’s fighting words, especially coming from the guy who was technically your boss. How do you respond to that, Jim?

“Hey Chief, guess how many minorities got beaten up by cops under my watch? Starts with ‘Zee,’ rhymes with ‘eero.’”

GOOD LORD, Walls is SAVAGE. Ouch, I think I should give him another point for that comeback, but no, the PISSED must go on (off?).

Sound and Graphics: 4

I struggled here because a four feels a bit low, and Police Quest: Open Season does feature voice acting (well, “acting”) which ranges from good to not-so-good (Charles Martinet as a male prostitute though . . .). The music is also okay, but was of generally bad quality, not compositionally but in how it sounded in the version I played, so not to hurt Neal Grandstaff’s feelings and all, but it just came across as amateurish, or maybe I should say behind the times compared to the rest of the game’s presentation. Otherwise, the sound effects were perfectly fine and effective. 

The game world though, yikes. As discussed above, it’s grainy and pixelated and all-around ugly to look at. Well, maybe not ugly but un-aesthetic. Unappealing. Kind of washed-out and poopy. Even Yo Money’s mansion looks only slightly more glamorous than South Central.

So okay, fine. Police Quest: Open Season is an ugly game to look at.

The kind of game world you play real life to escape from.

And the music is kind of ugly too. And the voice acting is pretty cringe at times, but generally better than, say, King’s Quest V’s. But it’s not as good as Quest for Glory IV’s. So while the overall presentation, as I said earlier, portrays the environment the game’s designers wanted to portray, it’s just not a particularly nice environment.

What I said about Blue Force:

“Sound and Graphics: 5

Blue Force’s graphics are generally on par with what else was out there in 1993. They aren’t eye-catchingly good; they don’t make you sit up and take notice the way, say Quest for Glory III’s lush junglescapes and city streets did. But they portray a mid-sized American city the way it would have looked in 1993, and the beach environments are nice. One thing I ask myself when I rate graphics is whether the game makes me want to actually visit its environments in real life. This is unfair to reality based games like Blue Force because I already live in such an environment. However, there is still room within such mundane environments to get creative through the use of perspective, player viewpoint, and things like that. Unfortunately, Blue Force plays everything relatively straight. It’s serviceable, it works, but it’s not worthy of anything higher than a 5 . . . Ditto the sound. Ken Allen’s score and sound effects are fine, but there’s nothing memorable, though I do love that fuzzy Soundblaster sound. It tickles the ol’ nostalgia sensors of my brain. Otherwise, though, it’s not enough to bring this score any higher.”

Result: Blue Force takes this one!

Oh my, we’re tied at 4-4. Is Blue Force the Comeback Kid? Does Walls have it in him to take the last two categories? Whose cuisine—I mean police-themed adventure game—will reign supreme?

Environment and Atmosphere: 6

We’ve already established some of this—Police Quest: Open Season effectively portrays the darker side of Los Angeles circa 1994 or so, and does it well through the use of photograph-based environments, digitized actors, and a presentation that offers up the unvarnished truth of life on the L.A. streets. The dark soundtrack and grim subject matter heighten the sense that you are there with Carey poking around into places best left undisturbed, full of dangerous, or at least sketchy characters, a kind of place where you can’t be some sort of Dirty Harry . . .

No Dirty Harry’s . . .

What movie wasn’t showing up at the Third Eye Theater when Carey showed up . . .

“Some stuttering kid is working at the theater and the music gets creepy. Carey notes that the guy looks like ‘one big kid.’ Carey shows his badge (2 points, 382 total), and says he’d like to ask some questions, such as ‘What movie are you showing?’ You know, important police stuff. ‘Last Year at Marienbad,’ the guy stutters. ‘No Dirty Harry?’ Carey asks, somewhat disappointed.”

SO THAT’S WHAT IT MEANS! Sgt. Sutter was actually warning Blue Force players that there would be no showings of Dirty Harry, in other words, no Dirty Harry’s, at the Third Eye Theater in L.A. He was trying to save his men the trip into the big city. What a guy, that Sgt. Sutter. You know, I think we’ve discovered the world’s first example of synergistic story elements in video games. Amazing. Simply amazing. Are we sure that Gates and Walls are opponents and not allies? Have they been tricking us this whole time? Is this fight a set-up, designed to sucker people into ordering it on Pay-Per-View like it’s the 80s or something? 

Anyway, Police Quest: Open Season sets out to do something and does it, very effectively. While it ain’t pretty, it’s effective. So I guess we could say it’s pretty effective. Or effectively pretty.

What I said about Blue Force:

“Environment and Atmosphere: 5

Do you find bowling alleys exciting? How about municipal offices? Jails? Warehouses? Maybe even living rooms and kitchens? Then I’ve got the game for you: Blue Force, by California’s own Jim Walls! . . . The game’s environments and atmosphere actually do a perfectly good job of making you, they player, feel like you’re in a mid-sized American city. For that, it should be commended . . . Blue Force sets the scene, and the scene is . . . kind of boring. But I cannot fault a game for doing what it set out to do. It created the vibe it was going for. A rating of 5 is eminently fair. It’s perfectly average, not too high and not too low. It’s there. Just like Blue Force.”

Result: Police Quest: Open Season breaks the tie in its favor! 

PQ:OS is up 5-4. The best Blue Force can hope to do is a tie now, so with baited breath I eagerly await the final category, “Dialogue and Acting”!

BUT WAIT! A new challenger appears! And by “challenger” I mean “completely made-up and arbitrary category!” What’s that I hear? Whose music is that?

If these guys had a theme song, what would it be?

My goodness, that’s the ATF’s music! Yes, America’s venerable and most honorable, highly respected federal agency, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms! Those of you non-Americans might think the ATF sounds like a real good time, but their job, but it’s actually to enforce federal laws related to those three items, or maybe they just use alcohol and tobacco while discharging firearms. And shoot dogs. Just by way of reference, for whatever reason, when the ATF shows up at a perp’s place—whether an actual perp or as is often the case, the wrong place—the resident’s dog curiously seems to get shot. 

Yup, Uncle Sam’s premier corps of canine-killers factor into this increasingly bizarre discussion of two old computer games for no reason save for the memes. 

Oh, the memes!

Anyway, this category will be judged on both “Is the ATF in this game?” and “Should the ATF have been in this game?” It’ll make sense soon, I promise.

In Police Quest: Open Season, Thurman’s dog plays a prominent role. He’s there blocking pour Ms. Parker’s remains, he’s needed to find Thurman’s home, he’s there blocking the hallway in Thurman’s apartment, and he’s there growling at Carey, preventing him from moving after Carey comes to in Thurman’s place.

And how does Carey deal with this dog? In order:

• A mirror.
• A lasso.
• Some pills.
• A ball.

Granted, it’s hilarious to think of Carey shoving prescription painkillers down a vicious dog who is rumored to be a literal man-eater’s throat, and the image of Carey chucking the ball out of the window—a barred window which doesn’t have any glass—with the dog following gleefully thereafter will forever be burned into my adventure-gaming memory, but you know what would have been a cleaner, safer, more efficient way of dealing with said problem pooch that is not only easier but has the full backing of the United States Government?

That’s right.

Now, Blue Force, by contrast, has two dogs. Remember the romance subplot that goes nowhere? You don’t? I don’t blame you. Here’s a quick refresher: At the marina where 80 percent of Blue Force takes place, Jake saves a woman and her son from an abusive grenade-wielding biker dude on his boat, the Future Wave. Jake later, naturally, develops a thing for this woman, and even has her over for dinner. After the meal, Jake, the woman, and her son walk Jake’s dog on the beach. Yep, the main character in that game had a dog. 

The bad guys also have a mean, vicious dog guarding the warehouse on their island. Jake gets by said dog by throwing a fishing net on it. 

Here’s the kicker: Jake and his partner Lyle, when they’re not male bonding, are trying to get evidence for the ATF. So the ATF are actually in Blue Force, and they heroically show up at the end to perform mop-up duty . . . mop-up duty that somehow doesn’t involving shooting one of the two dogs in the game, including the dog that’s right there. These are like wonder-dogs. Move over, Krypto, there are new super-pets in town: For that alone, Blue Force gets a point. By contrast, Police Quest: Open Season is a game where you wish someone would come and shoot the reoccurring menace that is Thurman’s dog, but alas, Los Angeles circa 1994 was utterly bereft of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Think about that for a second.

Somehow, inexplicably, no dogs were harmed in the making of this game.

In any event, scrappy underdog Blue Force gains the discretionary bonus point here, and the whole thing is tied up at 5-5. The last category, then, doesn’t just have the potential to knot things up, it is the tiebreaker. This is game 7 material here, folks. Gates and Walls just pounding each other, both men refusing to budge an inch, trying desperately to cram as much proper police procedure and absolute ridiculousness into their respective games. I can’t take it anymore!

Er, sorry for lapsing into Billy Joel territory. It won’t happen again, I promise. 

Dialogue and Acting: 5

This is a tough one, because for as stupid as the plot is, as cardboard-thin as most of the characters, Police Quest: Open Season actually is pretty well-written. Some of the characters have honest-to-goodness personalities. Not Carey; no, he’s a cipher, a faceless, gormless everyman whom, I guess, is supposed to be a grade-grind kind of brown-noser with a penchant for acting like a cowboy and slacking off to watch movies and have a spot of tea at a serial-killer’s murder den, but who are we to judge? The Police? 

Do I look like Stewart Copeland to you? Or Andy Summers? Or that other guy?

Yes, many characters are cliches: the angry chief, the gruff and disgruntled older detective, the stripper with a heart of gold, the bitchy manager. But there’s also the hilariously over-the-top male prostitute, the totally fried record store owner (why does so much of this freaking game involve that dork?), the obnoxious, scum-sucking, fear-mongering journalist (but I repeat myself), and the monotone-but-secretly-boning-the-hot-secretary coroner.

And there’s also this guy:

Would that he dressed in puppy play regalia so the ATF would shoot him.

Yeah, Marx. 

They game also features voice-acting, which is a mixed bag. I rather enjoy the narrator’s snark, though it’s so mid-90s-it-hurts TUDE!-era cranked to the max. The reason I like it is because the narrator is one of the game’s better voice actors, and his comments reflect how I felt while playing Police Quest: Open Season. Every snide remark had me nodding sagely in agreement. That said, there is a relatively complex narrative that only falls apart at the end, and this narrative, false leads and all, is pretty easy to follow and does make sense until the designers said “Nah, screw this” and took a hard left into Kookyville. 

The aforementioned Charles Martinet is good in his roles, even though the impound lot guy is obnoxious. Barbie Kann has a fun eastern European accent, the discount-bin Flea is appropriately fried, Hal is world-weary and cynical, Chester is endearingly sassy, Nobles is intellectual and intense, Kristy Bilden is pure scum, and so on, so there’s not too much to complain about as far as the voice acting goes. It’s more than competent; some may say it’s perfectly cromulent, but it’s definitely a cut above many games of the era with voice acting that I’ve played, though not as good as Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, as far as Sierra games go. Does it add to the experience? Sure. You certainly feel you’re in L.A. in the mid-90s, and what a lovely, well, “lovely,” place it be.

A note about the ethnic accents: Okay, the Asian convenience store owner, whose name is, I kid you not, Kim Chi, is a bit much, but the brouhaha about the black characters and their heavy use of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is unwarranted. That’s how people in South Central L.A. at that time talked. It’s like getting mad at Irish characters in Southie in Boston having thick Boston Irish accents. My God, what are the gangbangers supposed to speak like? Oxford University professors? It’s not like they’re sitting their doing Stepin Fetchit routines or talking like the Kingfish from Amos N’ Andy or anything. People need to get a grip.

So yes: though the plot to Police Quest IV is no great shakes (that’s me trying to say “It’s stupid” in a nice way), the writing is actually pretty good, and shows how the still-young genre steadily improved in several key aspects into the 1990s. 

What I said about Blue Force:

“Dialogue and Acting: 3

The writing in Blue Force didn’t have much personality to speak of . . . The writing is cliché, the plot predictable, and the acting, as it is, unconvincing. It’s very hard to get worked up about Blue Force one way or the other because it’s almost aggressive in its mediocrity, which is kind of weird, because aggressiveness would imply some sort of personality, which contradicts the idea that the game is mediocre, and all of this just goes to show that I’m really running out of things to say about Blue Force . . .”

Result: Police Quest: Open Season breaks the tie in its favor for a tight 6-5 victory!

Truly a thrilling fight for the ages. What do our contestants have to say about this knock-down, drag-out battle? First, the runner up:

“We tried, you know? Darn it, we tried. Blue Force might not have been a masterpiece, but it had heart. All of my games did. I never wanted to wallow in the vulgarity of the depraved; I wanted to show that good could, does, and will, triumph over evil. The nice guy does finish first, and get the girl. Small-town values are worth fighting for, and family is all that matters. Black and white could get along, solve America’s problems together—problems which affect all races—and even indulge in a little male bonding. Most of all, my games were fun. In a cynical, jaded world, that stands for something.”

I . . . I’m not crying, for real. It’s . . . dusty in here. Yeah, dusty.

Chief, any stirring words on your game’s victory?

“Police Quest: Open Season had a speed slider so it didn’t take seven minutes to traverse a screen.”

By golly, he’s right! And with a final score of (2 + 5 + 4 + 4 + 6 + 5)/.6 = 43 to Blue Force’s 37, Police Quest: Open Season proves it belongs in the ranks of the FEW . . . the PROUD . . . the MERELY OKAY!

Yeah, Police Quest: Open Season isn’t a particularly great game or anything, but it is more playable than Blue Force in the sense that there are far fewer petty interface-related annoyances. There are also more things to do and more of the finer details you’d expect in a point-and-click adventure game, especially if you’re playing Blue Force after being weaned on Sierra and LucasArts games.

But this post isn’t about Blue Force, it’s about Police Quest: Open Season, and while a 43 feels too high, it’s what the PISSED system gave us. The game does okay on most categories and poorly on one, so viewed from this angle, 43 out of 100 is pretty much spot-on. A 43 puts Police Quest: Open Season in the same league as The Black Cauldron, Neuromancer, Earthrise, Future Wars: Adventures in Time, uh . . . Les Manley: Search for the King, the King’s Quest I remake, Countdown, James Bond: The Stealth Affair, Maupiti Island, Legend of Djel, um . . . Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2: Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X!, Fascination, Zork III: The Dungeon Master, Spellbreaker, Sorcerer, Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon, Knight Orc, and Black Sect, which is certainly a . . . list of many different adventure games. Note, though, that Police Quest: Open Season scored lower than the first Police Quest (52), Police Quest II: The Vengeance, Police Quest III: The Kindred (47), and the Police Quest VGA remake (57). So Jim Walls is vindicated after all. How about that?

“I knew I liked you, kid.”

I always liked you too, big guy. Sorry for all the jokes over the years. 

What did reviewers at the time think about Police Quest: Open Season? My survey shows they were decidedly mixed to negative. Dennis Owens began his review in Computer Gaming World by saying “Police Quest 4: Open Season is not a pleasant game,” which got me all like

but he meant it more as in the game’s subject matter forces the player to confront ugly truths about crime, justice, urbanization, race, inequality, and violence in America. Man, sounds rough. If only Mr. Owens knew how much better everything is three decades later!

Owens does, however, quite fairly I must add, highlight how the game does little to overcome the genre’s limitations:

“It is in this pointing and clicking, however, that the game reveals its one weakness: the limits of its genre. That a player unsure of what to do next must move the mouse all over the screen and repeatedly, desperately, click and point is a noticeable flaw in a game designed to be so seamlessly authentic. Often, how much an astute detective/player notices may depend on the resolution of his monitor or the accuracy of his mouse. Especially in a game as linear as Open Season, the incredible power of the game is replaced by the frustrating reminder that graphic adventures, at times, are little more than glamorized text games. It wouldn't have been unreasonable, it would seem, in a game that comes on 12 high-density disks, to include a feature that would highlight the names of important items when the pointer passed over them.”

Even by 1994, people were starting to notice. 

According to MobyGames, ratings range from 100% all the way down to 20%, which really tells us nothing, but the bulk range from 80% to 48%. One of you math nerds: go do your thing with averages or whatever and make it make sense. For now, let my review of Police Quest: Open Season stand as the definitive review henceforth and forevermore (sorry, George Starotsin, whose blog is actually really, really good). I’ve heard that some guy called the Space Quest Historian recently did a video review. I haven’t watched it yet, but here's the link. 

And so, friends, this series of posts comes to an end. I was thinking of getting Eddie Gorodetsky, the greatest punch-up guy in the business, to really polish these jokes, but I mean, look at the guy:

I wouldn’t leave him alone with my kids, let alone my jokes, so we’ll just let them stand on their own merits. Thank you everyone for your patience as I went through a few major life changes. I’ve enjoyed reading this blog for years, and writing for it, and I greatly appreciate your indulgence. However, as you can tell, I do not comment on every single post on the site anymore, and I don’t even comment on my own posts, and while I endeavor to read every post, I am many months behind. Yes, I don’t think I’ll be reviewing any more games for the TAG for the foreseeable future, but it’s been real, and I mean “real” sincerely and not in the faux street way: the real love and earnest passion this whole community has for retro PC games is a beautiful thing. You’re all my people, you know? Reading and writing for this site has helped me through many of life’s ups and downs, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my rambling posts over the past decade (holy cow the first game I did for this blog was in May of 2015). I hope they made you smile and made you reminisce about these old games, and maybe made you want to play them again, or pick them up for the first time (except for L.A. Law; screw that game). The privilege isn’t that you got to read my writing; it’s that I got to write for you.

Thank you and God bless. 

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