Police Quest III - Final Rating

Written by Alex

If you’ve been reading my posts about Police Quest III, you’ll know that I tried really hard to like this game, but certain things kept me from achieving as much enjoyment as Jim Walls and company would have liked me to.

“REAL paperwork!”

These things aren’t, I believe, complaints from a modern gamer engaging in chronological snobbery against a game over two decades old. No, my complaints have to do with basic elements of adventure game design like writing, story, and puzzle construction. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. On with PISSED! It’s far better than being PISSED on!



Puzzles and Solvability: 3
I wish I could give this game a 3.5 rating, but no half-measures for PISSED, pal! It’s all of the way or none of the way! Like Jim Walls says, I do things by THE BOOK! The book of Trickster, in this case. I finally settled on a 3. At the outset, Police Quest III’s puzzles are logical and kind of interesting. I might be the only one who found the paperwork-based puzzles novel; they helped create the overall vibe that Police Quest III was actively trying to put you in the role of a police sergeant. I think puzzles like the disciplinary action against Morales for conduct unbecoming of an officer, or Sonny’s supervisory role when Morales pulled over the pregnant woman and verbally abused her, are make sense within the context of the game. And they set up the “Morales hates Sonny” subplot which, unfortunately, fizzles out like a lot of the other subplots in this game (we’ll get to that later).

I don’t think we’ll see puzzles like this again, until OFFICE QUEST finally hit store shelves.

Many of the puzzles early in the game were logical, and I have to admit that, much like with the previous games in this series, it was kind of fun checking the manual to see what the right procedure is and watching it play out on the screen. Whether it was making sure to put the right time and violation code into your tickets, gathering and booking evidence, or investigating crime scenes, things made sense. Searching through old case files was fun, and made you feel like an actual cop. Using the facial composite tool while interrogating Carla Reed was also unique, as were the various traffic stops. And the crime scene investigations were always fun, seeing what clues Sonny could dig up and try to put together. And although some puzzles are dumb, like having to click the “8” on a television remote to open a secret fireplace passage down to a hidden drug lab (what?), all was good.

Until later in the game, particularly the last two days, when the “fun” aspect gets bogged down in a steaming quagmire of interface issues, the boring driving mechanic, and outright tedium. Driving from the fortified crack house to the court house to get a search warrant once is fine. Having to do the exact same thing right after to get a judicial order in order to use the ram unit really tried my patience. Oh, and before getting the judicial order, don’t book all of the evidence you found in the burned-out wreckage of Steve Rocklin’s house; even though proper police procedure has guided you throughout the entire game to book your evidence ASAP, don’t do so this one time that the game gives you no advance warning about or else you won’t be able to get the warrant!

The driving mechanic itself could be considered a puzzle, and it’s a bad one at that. Given that Lytton is huge, Sonny’s car is slow (even at 100 m.p.h.), and that you have to slow down to take turns and stop at T intersections, the bulk of the driving just felt like padding. This is especially egregious, seeing as how there are only a half-dozen or so unique locations to visit.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……..

Another valid gripe are the potential dead-ends. This is like the anti-Leisure Suit Larry 5. From what I’ve read from commenters here and on-line elsewhere, seemingly insignificant actions can create unwinnable situations way later in the game, and with no warning. This is just unfair. And I don’t mean Space Quest I you-should-have-gotten-the-glass-from-your-escape-pod unfair, because in that game, you could at least walk back from the laser beams and to your escape pod (don’t get me wrong; it’s still a b.s. puzzle). Here, if you screw up something in a given day, you’d have to somehow find the Lytton Police Department’s time machine and go back to correct your past mistake, which would make for an awesome game, but I digress. Now, some of the things are sorted out automatically, and can be viewed as alternate solutions, which is something I like, for example, the fireman giving you the photograph of Jessie and Michael Baines if you miss it during your sweep of Rocklin’s house. But other times you may find yourself floating down Excrement Creek without a means of conveyance.

And another thing . . . interface issues! Of course, I’m referring to The Puzzle from Hell. How in the world did this make it past the play-testers? Why would they give you oddly specific street numbers, and then expect you to just plunk each star right in the middle of the given city block? Absurd. With regards to the shooting mechanic, having to click the gun on Sonny instead of on your adversary is also unfair, both at the Old Nugget and the crack house before ordering the ram unit to do its duty. I hate it when interface issues keep a player from solving puzzles. This is the point-and-click version of awful parsers.

Seriously, &$*#! this puzzle.

In Office Quest II: In Pursuit of a Raise, can I give Mr. Fleming a poor performance review?

And lastly, much like in Larry 5, many of Sonny’s actions seem completely inconsequential. Based on the past murder cases Sonny investigated, the DNA evidence he gathered seemed to point at positively ID’ing the suspect. But absolutely nothing comes of this evidence except for points. Putting out an APB on Rocklin’s car seems to have no effect. And there is no explanation whatsoever about the cult, which is weird since (a) cult activity and ritual seems to be a huge part of the bad guys’ modus operandi, and (b) Sonny finds a CULT BOOK. Couldn’t this, I don’t know, offer some insight into the motivation of the game’s primary antagonists? Or did the writers run out of time and patience, much like I did while playing this? Only one man knows, and he’s not telling.

“’Sup?”

Interface and Inventory: 4

Let’s start with the good: I have no real complaints about the inventory. It’s nothing—and I mean nothing—special. There is no real way to interact with any of the objects beyond putting batteries in Sonny’s flashlight and opening the evidence envelope Leon the stereotypical coroner leaves for Sonny at his office. But in the inventory screen, Sonny can’t do anything with his items. He can’t even read the CULT BOOK which could, perhaps, maybe shed some light on the people Sonny is trying to track down and bring to justice. There are no informative inventory messages, no funny inventory messages, not even any flavor text. This isn’t bad per se, just kind of lazy.

The interface doesn’t fare quite as well. Broadly, it functions just fine. I don’t like this early Sierra point-and-click habit of having non-clickable objects create a red X on the screen—give me some generic or humorous message, like in the Space Quest, Quest for Glory, or Leisure Suit Larry series. But the icons typically do what they should, and do what you’d expect them to do.

Except when you want to shoot at a suspect, you don’t click your gun ON them. You click it on Sonny, which most normal players would think is somewhat suicidal behavior for a cop to engage in, but for the hundredth time: WHAT DO WE KNOW? WE’RE NOT THE EXPERTS!

So yeah, you click the gun on Sonny to draw the weapon and shoot suspects. Except in the very last part of the game, when clicking on the gun in the inventory screen automatically makes the crosshairs appear. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Story and Setting: 4
Starts out strong and peters out at the end. I could make a dick joke here, but I have class, people! The long and short of it—oops, let’s try that again. The thing that makes Police Quest III’s story is that there’s a lot of set-up—effective set-up—with very little payoff.

This manifests itself in a few different ways. For example, the pacing of the game works very well: It starts out slow, taking Sonny through an average day as a police sergeant. He gives the briefing, attends to administrative matters, and then goes patrolling the highway. When Marie gets stabbed at the end of day one, the story picks up intensity: The stakes are higher and the murders continue as Sonny desperately searches for clues. I rag on the pentagram map puzzle, but it’s cool to find out the next place that Rocklin will strike (even the entire premise of patterned murders falls apart with just a slight application of logic).

Unfortunately, the cult aspect, and the way Morales ties into it, is rushed with very little explanation. Why did Morales join the cult, and how come she didn’t do more to undermine Sonny’s investigation of it? How come none of the evidence Sonny gathers seems to matter in the long run? And what’s the deal with Michael Baines, anyway?

Yes, we’re made to believe by Dr. Aimes that Michael Baines is, and I quote, “[n]ot your average scumbag. He’s closer to the slit-his-own-mother’s-throat variety. I’d know more if I’d examined him, but based on this, I’d say he’s a schizophrenic psychopath. This guy’s criminally insane, Bonds. I’d be careful how I approached him.”

And yet this is what happens when Sonny encounters him:

Michael Baines is . . . French? (*ducks thrown tomatoes and baguettes*)

In other words, he’s not the most effective villain. What could have been a cool revenge plot tying Police Quest III back to the other two games of the series becomes kind of flames out, with a tacked-on villain who really doesn’t do much of anything. Did Michael burn down Rocklin’s house commit any other crimes? Who knows? Rocklin seems like the real villain, if anything. You’d think if Michael was this insane person with a grudge and bad-ass military training, he’d be more of a threat to Sonny. Weak all around.

As far as the setting goes, it’s fine. It’s Lytton, the same town as the first two Police Quest games. Most of the stuff is still there, although as discussed previously, Cotton Cove is now Aspen Falls and has expanded considerably. That’s not really a complaint, though, more of an observation.

Sound and Graphics: 7
I have absolutely no complaints here. For the time, the graphics were great, and they still look good. There weren’t really any funky animations or graphical glitches, backgrounds are well-detailed and look like what they’re supposed to be, and the digitized close-ups hold up really well! The environments are lush and vibrant or dark and gritty as the story demands.

Still, this is a 1991 game. Isn’t 7 kind of high? Aren’t we dangerously close to 10 with a lot of years go to? Yes and yes, but you know what gives Police Quest III the extra boost? Jan Hammer, baby! The music in this game, while not all-pervasive, is excellent. I particularly like the main driving theme, though the hot pursuit theme is good (would be better without that super-annoying siren sound-effect), as is the little ditty that plays when you pull into Lytton PD. The moody themes played at the crash site and the crack house are also top-notch. I would contemplate giving this rating an 8, but some of the sound effects are bloody awful. It makes no sense why some, like doors opening and closing, gunshots, and digitized screams, sound great, while others, like a thug blowing out cigarette smoke, sound like computer farts. Jan Hammer, I salute you. Computer fart guy, I computer fart in your general direction.

That’s right, people: Dick jokes are off-limits, but fart jokes are fair game. You have been warned.

My hat is off to these guys.

Environment and Atmosphere: 6
Honestly, Police Quest III does great in creating an atmosphere of dread and urgency, the ridiculous sequence of events on the final day notwithstanding. Sonny’s adventure begins like a typical day on the job, patrolling the highway, pulling over fools (and the occasional undercover cop) for driving too fast, too slow, too horny, and too drunk. Then things take a turn for the dark with the attack on Marie and the murder of Dent, and Sonny spends the next few days desperately searching for the evil cultists who have hurt his wife and are turning Lytton into their own personal art project where the medium happens to be dead bodies [NOTE: The Adventure Gamer administrators take no responsibility for that horrible metaphor]. Morales’s strange behavior only adds to the tension: a serial-killing cult is at large, and Sonny also has an unreliable and authority-hating partner to deal with.

The whole thing gets silly starting, I’d say, when Sonny let’s Morales take the cocaine (I STILL CANNOT GET OVER THIS), but until that point when it turns into a cross between a police spoof (“Hey! We know the address of our most likely suspect! But first, let’s go to the mall and make a phone call!”) and a bad Shakespeare play (piles of dead bodies on the floor), Police Quest III delivers atmosphere in spades.

The environments are fine, too: Police stations, hospitals, alleys, dive bars and the like all look and feel like they’re supposed to. Though now that I think of it, the alley where Andrew Dent is found is pretty big for an alley!

An ALLEY, ladies and gentlemen!

I mean, this is an alley:

Not so much space to work in. I think you could fit maybe one car in there. Not two cars with room for seventeen more.

Dialogue and Acting: 4
As a police procedural/drama, clichéd characters abound here. Some, like Leon the coroner, bothered me more than Sonny’s cheesy “I’ll find the bastard and MAKE HIM PAY” dialogue, but I think that’s because the quirky, sandwich-eating coroner is really an overdone stereotype, and it’d be cool to see a different type of coroner (do coroners have their own anti-defamation league? They should). The best example I can think of off the top of my head is David MacCallum’s Ducky on the television show NCIS: He’s a dapper, Eton-educated, older Scottish gentleman and war veteran. Not that NCIS is the greates show ever created, but my point is that it doesn’t take that much thinking to craft an interesting character that plays against type. The only one in the game who really does is the seemingly sleazy reporter who tries to come across as tough but ends up regretting it and actually helps Sonny out.

Otherwise, we have: The crazy old bag lady (because homeless people are funny!); the dumb hick janitor (because janitors are stupid!); the man-hating cop (because women hate men!); the Latino guy in a flame-covered, hydraulics-equipped car (because what else would a Latino guy drive?!); one useless doctor and one arrogant doctor (because doctors are rude, useless jerks!); and the rude, squirrely IT guy (okay, this one is true). And then let’s talk about Marie.

Now, I’m not going to turn this into some screed about female portrayals in pop culture or anything, mainly because (1) it’s not the job of every female character to be an ambassador of the female gender, and (2) it’s a computer game, people! But here’s Marie’s character arc, game-by-game:

• Police Quest I: Hooker. 
• Police Quest II: Gets kidnapped by Jessie Baines 
• Police Quest III: Gets stabbed. Is comatose for the rest of the game, and, at least in the ending I got, never recovers. 

My point is: Couldn’t they have found something a little more interesting to do with the main character’s wife? She’s a former prostitute, for crying out loud! That’s pretty interesting, isn’t it?

Come on, Jane! You can do better than this! I know you can!

It’s math time, folks: 3 + 4 + 4 + 7 + 6 + 4 = 28 / .6 = 46.6 rounded up to a 47. Wow! The same rating that Larry 5 got. But it makes sense, in a way: Areas where Larry 5 excelled—inventory and interface, dialogue and acting—are areas where Police Quest III faltered, while Police Quest III had (slightly) better puzzles and music. PISSED don’t lie, and math wins again. 47 seems plenty fair, given the game’s shortcomings. Much like the Larry series, Police Quest felt some growing pains in the transition from parser to point-and-click. Alas, this is the last we’ll see of Sonny Bonds and Lytton. It’s a shame that Sonny didn’t get a better send-off. As a sad coda to this, Jim Walls, inspired by the success of several other classic-era adventure game revivals—some by his former Sierra co-workers—tried to raise funds via Kickstarter to make a new police game called Precinct. But Mr. Walls didn’t meet his goals, and the project was canceled in 2013.

But on to happier things! The correct guesser of this game’s score was The Anonymous Pineapple! Let’s give him or her a hand, folks! Anonymous Pineapple, your prize is this bitchin’ autographed picture of none other than former California Highway Patrol officer-cum-computer game designer and all around legend Jim Walls! Now your life is complete!

You can thank me later.

* * *

Police Quest III has a pretty bad reputation now, but contemporary reviews, like this one written by J.D. Lambright in Computer Gaming World, couldn’t get enough of it. He calls it “the best of the series to date.” Lambright praises the graphics, music, sound, and interface, but he also sings the praises of the puzzles. And I know that Lambright played through the whole game, because his review is a quasi-walkthrough. Interestingly, Lambright compares Police Quest III to Leisure Suit Larry 5, writing “unlike some of the other games with the parserless interface, like Leisure Suit Larry 5, Sonny Bonds can die.”

One of the claims in this review is rather dubious in my mind. The editor interjects that “the police procedural aspects of the series have been so well-received by actual law enforcement agencies and personnel that Jim Walls' development company, Jim Walls Games, is working on a professional computerized training program using Sierra's toolkit,” but I could find nothing corroborating this. Police Quest I, yes. Police Quest III, no.

Other contemporary reviews were very kind to Police Quest III as well, and I can see where Lambright and others were coming from. Perhaps this 2015 rating of 47 is the equivalent of a 1991 85, but I don’t know quite how to adjust for video game score inflation so it shall remain baseless speculation, my favorite kind.

At the end of the day, Police Quest III is a good enough game. If you are a fan of the series, I do recommend playing it, if only to see how the saga of Sonny Bonds concludes. It does enough right that you can overlook the wrong, and I may even, dare I say it, call the game enjoyable. Days 1 through 5 are the most enjoyable, and it kind of spits the bit on Day 6, but on the whole I’d say give it a go.

Yes, the same guy who nitpicked puzzles, plot points, and characters to no end is advising that classic adventure game fans play Police Quest III, but those are fine distinguishers that separate a game of this era in the upper 60s/low 70s from one in the upper 40s/low 50s. Taking the big picture view, Police Quest III is not a bad game, just a disappointing one.

But Corey Cole’s in it! How bad can any game that Corey Cole is involved with be, anyway?

* * *

So coming up next for me is . . . oh brother . . . Conquests of the Longbow. Another Sierra game I never finished in my youth due to some stupid puzzle-related bug. And some commenters have suggested that maybe I should give Jim Walls’s next game, the non-Sierra police adventure Blue Force a go when the time comes. And there’s always Larry 6 and 7. Is that my lot in life, to play Larry games, Jim Walls creations, and puzzles that tormented me in my younger days? Again, I wonder sometimes what I’ve gotten myself into here.

* * *

CAP Distribution

100 CAPs to Alex

• Blogger Award - 100 CAPs - for playing the game for our (and Jim Walls') amusement

20 CAPs to Anonymous Pineapple

• Psychic Prediction award: 10 CAPs - for the score guessing contest
• I checked the plates award - 5 CAPs - for telling us how to deal with the undercover agent
• You mean I have to do this every single time? award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out why Police Quest screwed the minds of police officers

15 CAPs to Niklas

• The most boring game ever - 5 CAPs - for the idea of Office Quest (TM)
• His partner had three first names award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out Crockett's nickname
• They came from beyond the stars award - 5 CAPs - for the alien cult theory

10 CAPs to Andy Panthro

• True companion award - 10 CAPs - for playing along so Alex could share the pain with others

10 CAPs to TBD

• Hey, he looks just like that guy from the Daily Show award - 100 CAPs - for pointing out Orpheus Hanley's uncanny resemblance to Al Madrigal.
• Actually, I think I may have overreacted a tad award - -95 CAPs - there's no way this person's getting more points than the person who just spent weeks playing through the damn game!
• Too many Dents award - 5 CAPs - for the Dent/dent-joke

10 CAPs to Laukku

• True companion award - 10 CAPs - for playing along so Alex could share the pain with others

10 CAPs to Aperama

• Nice try, but it ain't working award - 5 CAPs - for trying to find positive things in the game
• They made me do it award - 5 CAPs - for convincing Alex to volunteer to play Blue Force when it comes around

10 CAPs to Anonymous

• The boss is gone - let's make crap up... award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out that Jim Walls left Sierra in the middle of developing the game
• They made me do it award - 5 CAPs - for convincing Alex to volunteer to play Blue Force when it comes around

10 CAPs to The Real Jim Walls

• Deadly stare award - 10 CAPs - The Real Jim Walls - for constantly mocking Alex's progress with his ex-cop glare

5 CAPs to Torch

• Deja Vu award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out the loop bug

5 CAPs to Kenny McCormick

• I forgot my pencil - have to drive back to the office award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out why Police Quest screwed the minds of police officers

5 CAPs to Ilmari Jauhiainen

• It's not a dead-end, it's a feature award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out that some feared dead-ends are solved by other characters if you miss them.

100 donuts to The Fake Jim Walls

• It was just a joke, I swear - 100 donuts - For attempting to play a joke on Alex until one of the admins took him seriously and deleted the post