Cop Out

In these halcyon days of the sprawling open-world crime game, when we’re encouraged to beat, steal, and slaughter our way to gaming advancement, it’s easy to forget about the other side of the coin. See, in games like Grand Theft Auto, we spend all our time creating mayhem when, not so long ago, the emphasis was much different. There was a time before GTA when, imagine the horror, we were encouraged to be good. There was a time when, instead of knocking the shit out of passers by, our job was to uphold the law. We were the cops. We were the filth. We were the pigs. And I liked it.

My earliest memory of police games is Atari’s 80s arcade title, APB, and its star, Officer Bob. His job was to patrol the mean streets in his motor, arresting people for anything from littering to murder while saving some time to go looking for donuts. Bob, it has to be said, however, was not the model policeman. Not only would he earn demerits for reckless driving, Bob was also a bit of a nightmare in the interview room, beating the hell out of suspects before the captain showed up. Officer Bob was basically the proto-Jack Bauer.

Things got a lot more serious with Sierra’s Police Quest series, which began in the same year as APB hit arcades. Developed in collaboration with real-life ex cop Jim Wall (and subsequently Daryl F. Gates) the Police Quest games took a vastly different approach to Atari by making adventure games steeped in real-world police methodology. In Police Quest games you needed to do things by the book – you’d need to fill out reports, examine crime scenes and perform routine arrests while at the same time keeping an eye on your dodgy colleague and being drawn into a dark and mysterious story arc. While the gameplay was often basic and sub-par, the ideas at work in the Police Quest games were not. I loved the idea of tracking down bad guys and although the minutae of police work could be enormously tedious (doing a safety check on your car, for instance) there was something compelling about the realism. Sadly, this is something that seems to have taken a back seat in police games in recent times.

Sierra must have felt it was turning gamers off with too much routine as Police Quest itself soon moved away from investigative adventure, eventually becoming the SWAT series. Before we knew it, the police game had suddenly become all about the action. Gaming cops became the clichéd Hollywood loose cannons and their games became less about the police work and more about the driving/shooting. Unfortunately, the police game has never really recovered from this and it’s rare that we get to play as a cop and actually solve crimes. And then came GTA and suddenly we became obsessed with avoiding the police, killing the police, committing the crimes.

That’s not to say the spirit of Police Quest has died completely – you can still find investigative adventure gameplay in titles like the glossy but dull Crime Scene Investigation games, but it rarely makes it into mainstream gaming. These days, most gamers will throw a spaz if there’s no tutorial or objective marker on the screen, so perhaps it’s a bit much to ask the modern gamer to embrace the idea of thinking, rather than shooting, their way out of a situation. But maybe it’s time for a change.

We have the technology – and developers have the ability – to create sprawling open worlds which would be the perfect setting for a new breed of cop game. One which combines action, shooting, driving, police procedures and storyline to create something which feels both authentic and compelling. Activision arguably tried to do something in this field with True Crime but, not only did it feature the one of the most irritating protagonists ever to feature in a game, it was action-oriented and tongue-in-cheek.

Online gaming has changed things a little, offering players the chance to take on the role of the cop in some titles and Realtime Worlds’ upcoming APB sounds particularly interesting, offering a mix of action and RPG elements. But, there is still a gap for a real police game. A game that doesn’t reward you for headshots or drifting around a corner. A game which draws you into a storyline and makes you care about the job. Most importantly, a game about using your brain and your skills to catch criminals. Come on devs, let’s forget about beating up grannies for a while and do some police work.