Beat Cop’s setting steals the show. A pixel neighborhood block bustling with cars, cats, and people becomes your new home away from home as you fill the shoes of a detective recently dropped to the lower ranks of being a street cop after a sordid scandal. Storefronts with neon lights enthrall you. The city is alive. Criminals are everywhere. Tickets must be written.
But there’s nothing behind the buildings, it’s all just solid art direction and no follow-through. It reminds me of when you go to Universal Studios and you see all the backlots. You think they’re so pretty, but in reality, there’s nothing there. It’s an illusion of a bustling 1980’s neighborhood with none of the substance. Dialogue repeats itself constantly. Bland denizens walk down the street in a repetitive fashion, often the same exact model. Occasionally a cat patrols through the alley.
All of this can be excused, however, by budgetary constraints. After all, it’s an indie game. But the problems with Beat Cop run deeper and by far the biggest one is that it doesn’t have good writing; worse, in games with repetitive controls and mechanics, writing is the vehicle that must propel the game forward. It falls on its face when it tries. Jokes are usually nothing more than tropes from 80’s action films, ranging from racism to incompetence–often riffing off another joke that wasn’t funny prior.
The thing is, when it comes down to it, the game is still charming. The setting feels so alive and the game is caught in the epoch. The mechanics, while rote, are enjoyable to hammer off in succession. It almost pulls it off. Perhaps that’s why it’s even harder to take when the writing flounders and gets caught in its bland, stale stereotypes and cliched plotlines. It could be the perfect parody, a humorous retrospective on a decade where urban life was louder and less sophisticated.
But as it stands, it’s just an illusion. And even the prettiest illusion will eventually remind you that it has no depth as you write out your tenth ticket of the day in a snapshot of old America, watching two identical NPCs say the same line within frames from each other.
A copy of the game was provided for review.
