The first four Police Quest games make their way to current PC operating systems in this budget priced collection.
Police Quest Collection features 4 games, Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel(updated VGA version), Police Quest II: The Vengence, Police Quest III: The Kindred, and Police Quest: Open Season. All the games were developed with the help of former police officers and are simulations of real police work. You are given points on completing actives and how well you follow the standard operating procedures of the department. You will truly need to think as a police officer to succeed in these games. In the Police Quest games you play as a traffic cop patroling streets and a homicide detective tracking down drug lords, serial killers, bad people, ect.
In Police Quest 1-3 you play as Sonny Bonds of the Lytton Police Department. Police Quest 2 and 3 are true sequals in that the storyline contuines through all three games. Police Quest 4 is a all new story and has nothing to do with the past three games. In Police Quest 4 you play as John Carry of the Los Angles Police Department. Police Quest 1,3, and 4 are point and click adventures and all feature the same basic interface and graphic art style. You move a hand icon over objects to interact with them, a eye icon to look at stuff, ect. Police Quest 2 is different then 1,3, and 4, it has a different graphic art style and you have to type what you want to do, it's a little weird and I never really got used to it.
The Police Quest games boil down to you investagating a crime, collecting evidence, and following the clues to find your suspect. The main problem with all the Police Quest games is that if you miss a event or a item you will get hung up and have no way to complete the game. Something you missed in day 2 of the game will mess you up on day 4 and you will be stuck. The only Police Quest game I was able to complete without using help was the first one, the others are more complex, especially the forth game Open Season, that game is tough. These games are trial and error gameplay and it can get pretty old playing the same things over and over again. There are also some driving sequences in Police Quest 1 and 3 that change things up. A map of the city will be displayed on the screen along with the dashboard of the car and a overhead view of your car on the street. The driving in the third game can be frustrating at times because the car comes up on intersections so fast that it's easy to miss a turn, so it's not really that much fun. In Police Quest 2 and 4 you type or click on a map to where you need to go and you are taken there.
The graphics in Police Quest 1-3 are kind of a mixed bag. The backgrounds look pretty good, the on screen characters look ok, the problem is some of the items you have to interact with on screen look terrible. A phone on your desk will look like a pixlated box that looks nothing like a phone. So you need to use your eye icon and click on everything just to make sure what it is. Open Season has the best graphics by far, most if not all of the backgrounds are pictures taken from real locations, the on screen items look alot better, the on screen characters look better except for just a few of them in which their faces look like a pixlated mess.
The sound in the Police Quest games is ok. It's nothing but beeps and such in the first three games for background music, the sound effects all sound ok. It gets better with each newer title in the series with Open Season being the best and featuring full voice work for all the characters in the game. The first game has the worst sound, sometimes the background music is just down right horrible.
If you enjoyed the Police Quest games in your younger days when these games were new and want to relive those times again you will probably enjoy these games. There isn't really any replay value to them though, you will probably only feel the need to play through them once. It's hard for me to recommend these games to anyone who didn't play these games when they were new. They play and look pretty dated by today's standards and I'm not really sure if today's younger gamers would really enjoy them.