What immediately comes to your mind when you think of a 80’s cop show? Drugs? Prostitution? Ass kicking? Well Beat Cop has it all, this game was inspired by the very essence of the 80’s from both the music to the graphics, it truly is a blast of the past with its witty and dark humour.

We follow a former detective by the name of Jack Kelly who has not only been framed for murder but has a stereotypical money hungry wife and that is what the games humour focuses on, stereotypes but more on that later. The game focuses on the choices you make and how you approach each day, whether that is ticketing a car to chasing down a criminal to even taking out the big bosses from both the Mafia and ‘The Crew’. All you need to know about the story is find some diamonds and enjoy the game, that’s it really, although that’s no necessarily a bad thing you could pretty much go through this game without learning the story and just doing the tasks that have been set, but do you really want to pay £12/$15 for a point and click adventure game without a story to keep you interested? Well, we will find out.

Missing diamonds…Corruption…Yep. We’re certainly in an 80’s cop drama.

The game itself, bar the story, is impressive. The pixel artwork to the smooth soundtrack is this game’s best elements. It’s bold and identifiable and I will give credit where credit is due, it’s bloody amazing how they were able to create an environment that screams 80’s and mystery. The soundtrack is well orchestrated, and brings to live the scene in which you are exploring, bear in mind although you are an officer you only have a single street to roam and investigate, not very cop like is it? How the game presents itself to the player is very clean to even the UI is very well designed and easy to understand, in regards to actually playing the game it is very smooth and fluent and due to Beat Cop not being a heavily demanding game you can expect a consistent 50-60 FPS making the experience that much better.

The world itself is populated, bustling and busy.

Now moving onto the gameplay, Beat Cop is your standard point and click adventure and to be frank, to me there really isn’t anything that stands out but to play the devil’s advocate, point and click adventures usually use the same formula in how the game plays and interacts with the environment. The game is more based on how the player handles each day and what they do, for example you might want to solely help the mafia and drive away ‘The Crew’ or vice versa, or you might want to be the social justice warrior you are and drive away any criminals that stand in your way, the freedom off this game is what helps make this game unique and with its multiple endings it’s up to the player how they decide Jack Kelly’ fate. But… Now this is a really big but… this game is so stressful, I guess you could put it down to it being a polices officers job but each day you feel as if you accomplish nothing but doing your daily ticket quota, every task that is given to you by members of the public are completely optional but if you are someone like me who wants to be able to do everything this isn’t the game for you, unless you have amazing time management skills and are a fast thinker sorry pal this will make you feel overwhelmed and even confused as to how to cope each day.

Expect to be asked to collect tickets and rescue cats. A LOT.

Back to the humour of this game, as I have previously stated this game really isn’t for the easily offended and probably will offend someone, this is due to how it can cross the line between dark humour and out right insulting. Personally I love dark and crude humour but sometimes it really isn’t called for, for example when you begin the next day your fellow colleagues go on randomly about how they got ‘some snatch’ or how their dick is hard. Jokes like that need to have a purpose and not to be said just because haha he had sex so funny. Really I found most of the humour quite cringey as it felt as if it was written by a young child who just found out about swearing and wants to be funny. Granted I did laugh at some jokes but most of the humour is forced and unnecessary to even the racist remarks in this game was just spurted out for no good reason, it seems to lack the concept of how and when to make certain jokes and how the game perceives different groups of people.

The humour is extremely hit’n’miss. Sorta’ like Marmite…

I have also noticed that where this game stereotypes one group it chickens out on stereotyping the other and really if this game is meant to be so offensive and in your face why not just insult everyone and not chicken out? For example calling gay people ‘Faggy’ and Black people ‘Darkie’ but when it comes to Italian people they seem to back out and use pasta related insults or even ‘greaseball’; there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground or are they scared of insulting others? This game isn’t meant to be taken seriously of course but I can’t help but wonder why some stereotypes get lighter remarks than others, was it because it was the 80’s and people got away with it? I personally don’t know but this is what brings down this game as it lacks structure, meaning and even a place in a game about defending your name and proving your innocence.

Pros

+ Great soundtrack
+ Amazing pixel art
+ Clear UI
+ The freedom of a nonlinear story

Neutral

? Standard Point and Click adventure game

Cons

– Poorly written jokes
– Dialogue can be dull and uninteresting

All in all this game was fun to play and some of the jokes was funny but the lack of considentce and purpose is what ruined it for me so for that reason I will be scoring it a 6.5/10. I personally would wait for it to go on sale before purchasing this game.