Police Quest 4: Open Season

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Name: Police Quest 4: Open Season Year: 1993 Publisher: Sierra Developer: Sierra Platform: PC Genre: Adventure Total rating: 68.8% - rated 28 times rate now: please log in to rate Submitter: Res Added: Oct 16 2004 Warez status: Warez

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Author: Orillion Date: Sep 16 2005 - 11:54 Score: 55 points

Open Season is the fourth game in the acclaimed and yet controversial Police Quest series, yet this one is different than the previous installations in many ways. First, in Open Season we do not enter the shoes of policeman Sonny Bonds once again, but instead play as detective Carey of the LA police, investigating a creepy murder mystery. While this is a nice change, I found that playing as Carey overall was less satisfying then playing as Sonny, because as Sonny the player gained a certain level of personal satisfaction as he progressed in police ranks throughout the series, and here we are playing as someone who is already a well-established detective. Also, while Sonny never had a great an interesting personality, Carey is - believe it or not - even more boring. I mean, at least Sonny married a prostitute (the STUD).

The story in this one is fairly standard:
A friend of Carey, an undercover police officer, is murdered in a dirty LA alley. Soon enough, similiar murders begin to happen all over town, and it becomes apparant that a serial killer is on the loose, with many a clue pointing at gang involvement. The story is, unfortunately, far from great. Even as I progressed far into the game, I found that I was doing it in the hope that the story will eventually become interesting with the inclusion of some mind-boggling twist, but was rather dissapointed. The characters themselves, including Carey, are all rather bland and boring. Hickman, Carey's dead friend, is probably the most interesting character in the story, but is unfortunately dead, so that doesn't help much.

Graphic-wise, the game is just ok. There was an attempt to make this one look more realistic and mature, which was actually pretty succesful, but unfortunately that comes with the price of rather boring surroundings and average-looking graphics. The animations are pretty fantastic though, and were probably motion-captured. The characters move, for the most part, as you'd expect them to. Same goes for the sound, which is just average. The music tunes rarely got on my nerves, but they were definitely not memorable in any way.

What really prevents me from recommending this to any adventure game lover is the difficulty level. Open Season demands that you follow every single police procedure and doesn't let you progress otherwise, which can be rather frustrating, especially if you're not all that familiar with them. Also, the vagueness of the story and the clues often leave you at a loss as to what you're supposed to be doing next, which leads to aimless wandering.

Overall, Open Season is an average quest with some nagging problems, which I would only recommend for fans of the series and those who really like police/detective games.

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By Brokendownflier - Jul 07 2006 - 20:51 This series is ESA protected and will not be found on CGN. Do not post links of places where it can be downloaded nor ask for it to be emailed to you as those comments will be deleted.

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