Police Quest
| Police Quest | |
|---|---|
| developer | Sierra On-Line |
| Publisher | Sierra On-Line |
| Designer | James Walls Daryl F. Gates |
| First title | Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel (1987) |
| Last title | Police Quest: SWAT 2 (1998) |
| Platform (s) | Apple II , Atari ST , Amiga , Macintosh ( Mac OS ), IBM-PC : DOS , Windows |
| Genre (s) | Adventure , tactical shooter |
Police Quest is an adventure series from the game company Sierra On-Line . The first game was designed by ex-police officer Jim Walls and came onto the market in 1987 for the IBM PC and compatible PC systems in simple EGA graphics and controlled by a text parser . From the third part of 1991 a point-and-click control was used instead. Since the fourth part, Police Quest: Open Season , published in 1993, Daryl F. Gates was the successor to Jim Walls in an advisory capacity. He was also responsible for other successors and the Police Quest: SWAT 1 and 2 branches .
The series was also launched for the Apple II , Apple IIgs , Apple Macintosh , Commodore Amiga and Atari ST platforms . A Police Quest Collection is now also available in the USA and Great Britain, which contains the English VGA versions of Police Quest 1, 2, 3 and 4 and is compatible with the Windows 98SE / Me / 2000 / XP operating systems ( also available in Europe via import). Police Quest 1–4 have been available from GOG.com since January 18, 2010 and have been edited in accordance with GOG's company policy to run on Windows Vista and newer. The series is also available on Steam . All four parts can be played on many other platforms and operating systems using ScummVM , including Linux , macOS and Windows 10 .
Gameplay
The player takes control of the police officer Sonny Bonds, who is controlled in the first two parts with the help of the cursor keys and a text-based input menu (parser, i.e. you have to enter the commands yourself in English). In addition to typical adventure puzzles, routine activities such as controlling traffic offenders must also be completed. The course of the game is therefore less action-heavy than the topic suggests, which, in addition to being used as a training tool for US police officers, also led to some press criticism of the dry course of the game. From Police Quest 3 (and in the VGA remake of the first part), the mouse control typical of Sierra Adventures is used via an icon bar. Sonny Bonds was replaced by another protagonist in part 4, who did not appear in any other part.
Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel
In 1987 the first part of the police adventure, In Pursuit of the Death Angel, was released . Sonny Bonds is a patrol officer in the small town of Lytton, California. The game was used in the 1980s by various US police schools for training purposes. The plot begins with a routine patrol until the protagonist is promoted to the narcotics department and is involved in the demolition of a dealer ring. The dramatic effect is reinforced by the fact that Cathy Cobb, the daughter of Sonny's colleague Jack, dies of an overdose during the game.
This was the only part of the series that was still implemented with the Adventure Game Interpreter game engine . In 1992 a remake with VGA graphics based on the Sierra Creative Interpreter was released .
Police Quest 2: The Vengeance
After Jessie Bains, the head of the drug ring that was blown up in the first part and called himself Death Angel , was arrested and sentenced to 97 years in prison, in the second part he breaks out of prison, takes Sonny's fiancée Marie Wilkans hostage and sits down with her her off to Steelton, Pennsylvania. Sonny and his colleague Keith Robinson follow in a plane that is hijacked by Arab terrorists. In this part of the game, the game is very time sensitive, as it is necessary to overpower the terrorists and defuse the ticking bomb. After landing, Marie, who is held captive in Steelton's sewer system , must be freed. Like the two terrorists before, Bains dies from a final rescue shot .
Police Quest 2 was one of the first Sierra Adventures to use the new Sierra Creative Interpreter. The control was still based on a text parser.
Police Quest 3: The Kindred
A number of violent crimes and murders take place in Lytton, with Marie, the wife of main character Sonny Bonds, also being attacked. Sonny, who is now on the homicide squad, has to find the killer while his wife is in the hospital in a comatose state. The mastermind still has a personal account with Sonny. It is Michael Bains, the opponent's brother in the first two parts.
In this part, for the first time in the series, point-and-click control was used instead of a text parser and VGA graphics in 256 colors. Immediately after completing this part, Jim Walls, the ex-cop and inventor of Police Quest, left Sierra On-Line. Daryl F. Gates, former Los Angeles police chief, then took charge of the series. After another adventure part - but without Sonny Bonds and Lytton - the SWAT parts were created, which differed greatly from the gameplay of the original series.
Sonny Bonds
Sonny Bonds is the protagonist of the first three parts of the computer game series Police Quest from Sierra On-Line. He's a police officer in the small town of Lytton, California .
In the first part he is a patrol officer, but in the course of the game he is transferred to the narcotics department and blows up a drug cartel, whose boss, Sonny is now with the homicide squad, breaks out of prison and takes Marie Wilkans, Sonny's fiancée, hostage and dies in the liberation with a final rescue shot . In the third part, Marie, meanwhile married to Sonny , becomes the victim of a ritual rampage . While the doctors in the hospital are fighting for their lives, Sonny begins to search for the perpetrators.
The fourth part of Police Quest is the last adventure part before a tactical shooter was out of line with the SWAT titles. This part no longer plays in Lytton and Sonny Bonds no longer appears. But through the first three parts, the series achieved a fame that the later episodes could no longer make up for.
In the SWAT titles of the series, he was again given short appearances. So is Sonny Bonds z. B. in SWAT 4 the officer who leads the player through the tutorial.