Police Quest: Open Season - Won!

By Alex

This is it, my friends, the last Police Quest: Open Season gameplay post. I am going to write a separate Final Rating because this one is long.

We left off the last post with Carey learning about a body found in Griffith Park, giving a bone he found at the crime scene to the coroner Sam Nobles after scaring off a dog using the mirror that a male prostitute broke off of Carey’s car . . .

. . . yes, all of this happened, and by the way, did you realize that the male prostitute was voiced by none other than Charles Martinet?

“Who?” you may be asking. I’ll tell you who:

That is right: none other than the voice of the world’s most famous plumber voiced the world’s most famous male prostitute in Police Quest: Open Season. Wild.

“Twenty-a dollars get’s a’you’a a real’a good’a time’a!”

Super Mario 64 is the game that made Mr. Martinet’s voice famous, and was released on June 23, 1996. The only information I can find out about the CD version of Police Quest: Open Season is that it was also released in 1996—however, even the mostly comprehensive Police Quest Omnipedia provides no further details. Without knowing the month, once must assume that Police Quest IV’s voicework could have been recorded in 1995, or even 1994, depending on when Sierra got started with the voice actors, or recorded sometime in 1996. Either way, I have a feeling Mr. Martinet was glad to say lines like “Let’s a-go!” instead of “Wooooo! Am I being arrested? Gonna throw me in a cell with a big ol’ burly guy?! Start the party!” and “Oh, honey, I gotta watch everything I put in my mouth... I just couldn't.”

Back to the story at hand. To recap:

• A Jane Doe was found murdered at Griffith Park.
• Carey gets a bone from the crime scene.
• Stupid Officer Ted at stupid property is not there, so Carey skips the paperwork and gives the bone directly to Nobles, urging him to run a DNA test, red tape be damned.
• Nobles fills Carey in on two more murder victims, a John Doe and another Jane Doe, found in a car parked at Hollywood & Vine.

This is where we pick up. But before I do, let’s talk about football.

FOOTBALL!

Yeah! The Super Bowl just happened, you know? The Eagles of Philadelphia thrashed the Chiefs of Kansas City, keeping the Chiefs from winning three Super Bowls in a row, something no NFL team has every done. The game was a laughter—Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts and the Eagles’ offensive line made the entire K.C. defense look silly, and Philly’s defense made Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes look like a no-talent scrub. There were no egregious calls made in Kansas City’s favor, because when you’re down by 30 there’s not much the refs can do to help. Mr. Taylor Swift himself, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, had a terrible game, and Ms. Swift was lustily booed. Now, I don’t care one much for Taylor Swift’s music, but that seemed harsh to me. Oh, and the commercials sucked too.

But in football there is the concept of the challenge flag.

Thanks to legendary former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick for demonstrating its use.

For my readers who are either not from the United States or don’t otherwise follow American football, a challenge flag lets the coach of one team challenge a call made by a referee. From Section 1, Article 1, paragraph (a) of Rule 15 straight out of the Official NFL Rulebook:

Each team is permitted a minimum of two challenges that will initiate Instant Replay reviews:

(a) The Head Coach can initiate a challenge by throwing a red flag onto the field of play before the next legal snap or kick.

I plan on throwing a lot of challenge flags through the course of this post, and the best part is that I’m not limited to two because this isn’t football. This is adventure gaming, baby! So get used to bone-crushlingly dumb design choices, puzzles, and other bizarre and inept rulings on the field. Ready? Here goes. But I’m going to spoil things first: I actually enjoyed Police Quest: Open Season, and probably think this is the third, maybe second-best Police Quest game out of the original four.

With a set up like that, let’s play ball!

(Oops, wrong sport).

We begin at the end of last session, which was game day 3, a Wednesday. I had two leads:

• Speak to the owner of Ragin’ Records on Hollywood & Vine, as he was the one who discovered Jane Doe 1202-L and John Doe 7216-M naked in a car parked outside of his store.
• Go to the impound lot, where the car in question was taken.

Mr. Not The Bass Player from the Red Hot Chili Peppers offers a few details about his grisly discovery:

• Abandoned Car: The vehicle was a Ford Tempo. The music owner, whose name we never learn in this game, but is absolutely not Flea, confirms that he did indeed call the police about the car.
• Specifics on Abandoned Car: The music store owner first noticed the car around 10:00 a.m. when he opened his store. He saw naked people in the back, thought they were just “having a party,” and began his day of work like, ho-hum, just two people smashing in a car parked on a busy street in broad daylight, just another day in L.A., you know? But about an hour later when he went to get coffee, they were still there, and Señor Pulga tells Carey that’s when he noticed something was “kind of funny.” You know, besides two people smashing in a car parked on a busy street in broad daylight.
• What Was Funny: Our celebrity lookalike record store owner tells Carey that the oddity about the couple copulating out on the street was that the car wasn’t moving. “No motion, no party,” he said. He’s a businessman, you see, and he can’t have naked people outside of his store, so he called the police. If it were my business, I would’ve called the police a wee bit sooner, but you know, to-may-to, to-mah-to, and so on.

I stop by the Bitty Kitty for, you know, naked ladies research, but Barbie Cann (yeah, it’s supposed to be “Cann,” not “Kahn.” I guess they were making a joke about her “Cann”s and not her “Kahn”s).

See, because of her cleavage, and . . . oh, forget it.

But she has nothing new to say.

Next up, I go to the impound lot, home of the “hilarious” duo of Billy Bob Sturm and Window Guy, and find out that . . .

. . . Charles Martinet also did the voice of Billy Bob!

And the janitor too. Remember him? No, you don’t. And that’s okay—he doesn’t matter. There’s only one Sierra janitor that matters: Mark, from Leisure Suit Larry 6, obviously.

I still stand by my assertion that Mark the janitor is one of the grossest-looking video game characters of all time.

Actually, what we find out is worse: the impound lot is closed.

Oh boy. I’m going to get a lot of mileage out of this image in this post.

Listen: the game gives (a) no indication that time is passing until it decides that it passes, based on certain triggers, (b) I’m with the police, dang it, and (c) we are trying to solve a murder. If Detective Carey wants to examine the car, he should be able to examine the car post haste.

So now I’m wandering around like a dork, unable to advance the game. I go back to the station and spend an interminable amount of time walking through drab, lifeless, and probably stinky halls, waiting for elevators to arrive.

Sigh.

Sigh.

Sigh.

Carey’s office: nothing. SID: nothing. Property: nothing. And so begins the time-honored adventure game tradition of revisiting every location in the hopes that something has changed.

The Third Eye Theater? Nothing. Griffith Park? Nothing. South Central L.A.? Nothing. Yo Money’s house? Nothing. I even go back to Dennis Walker’s place, and guess what? Nothing. So desperate was I, I visit Lt. Block and just get chased out by his generic dialogue.

Lt. is all, “Come in, Carey,” and then the second I go in he’s all, “Get out of here!”

The morgue, the police academy, Hickman’s house (nobody is home; they left to go out of state, remember?). I am seriously aimless. It is here I comment on the previous post, expressing my dismay at what appears to be a game-breaking bug. See, I had broken down and looked at a walkthrough, and what’s supposed to happen is that there’ll be a scene outside of the morgue. But nothing I do triggers it. About the only thing I accomplished was going to the Short Stop and picking up some complimentary pretzels from one of the tables (2 points, 355 total). Remember when bars had complimentary pretzels and peanuts and stuff like that? Me neither. That said, the last few times I’d been to Greece, drinking establishments will bring out stuff like that on the house while you enjoy your beverage, but it’s a custom that’s sadly gone the way of the dinosaur here in the U.S. of A.

Enough lamenting! What do we have to be sad about? After all, at this point Ilmari comes to the rescue, spitting straight facts here and here. I’d thought that missing the cigarette was doing me on, but that’s not the case. Per Ilmari:

For what it's worth, I've now checked the official hint book for the game (https://www.sierragamers.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Police_Quest_4_Hint_Book.pdf), which shows not just what actions give points, but also which of those are necessary. Taking the cigarette at Yo Money is not a must do.

The hint book also lists all the things you need to have done to move from one day to the next. For ending day 4 these are:

* Give arm bone to Dr. Nobles at morgue

* Show red shoe to Nicolette at Yo Money (if you haven't done this in previous days)

* Show red shoe to Electra at Bitty Kitty

* Meet Barbie at Bitty Kitty and show her the red shoe.

So, that's the official position.

I went back and re-did everything I’d done previously, having every conversation, and using every inventory item, including showing the shoe to Barbie Cann, which I’d already done, per my last post:

I show her the shoe, and Barbie doesn’t think it belongs to one of her girls. She says it’s too big and that it would probably fit Carey better than her. All right, we have enough evidence that it belongs to either a really big and tall woman or to a man. It’s glaringly obvious at this point.

Notice that I didn’t record any points at that time, as has been my custom this series, because I didn’t get any. However, this time I show Barbie the shoe and even though the exact same sequence plays out, I get 2 points for 357 total now.

I’m calling B.S. on this one, game.

BUT! This time, I go to the morgue, and there’s Kristy Bilden, harassing poor Sherry Moore, fresh from being felt up by Nobles to get railroaded by a sneaky, sleazy, underhanded, and unscrupulous journalist, but I repeat myself.

Sherry is obviously not the brightest bulb, as the game goes to great lengths to underscore with its typical subtlety. Sherry insists she has nothing important to say, but Bilden is undeterred, asking about the torture of the killer’s male victims, how they’d been found naked, how the most recent male victim had panties around his neck. Carey intervenes but it’s too late: Bilden has tricked Sherry into confirming these details. Carey is heated, dragging Sherry away like she’s his child.

Yeah, Carey’s pissed. He tells Bilden he’ll have her job if she intervenes, but do you think she cares? No way. She’s got a story!

Everyone’s afraid in L.A.! Panic in the streets!

Gun sales are up!

No one feels safe as L.A.’s first female serial killer holds the city in her thrall! And can the police even protect us? Find out in our next report: Journalists: No Matter How Much You Think You Hate Them, It’s Not Enough!

We finally, finally, advance to game day 4, Thursday. At the morgue, Carey blames Sherry for causing the panic—what a jerk!—while Nobles sticks up for her. Of course he sticks up for her—he likes her. Carey could learn a thing or two about wooing a coworker from Nobles. See, Sam gets it.

“I was just, uh, taking a fluid sample . . .”

Sherry, for her part, is very apologetic and just feels horrible about the whole situation. “John,” Nobles asks after Sherry leaves the room, “how can you be mad at a girl like that?” It’s really simple: because Carey isn’t trying to run a DNA test on her.

I’m throwing the challenge flag at myself for these jokes.

At least Nobles has some new information for us:

• Skeletal Findings: The DNA on the arm bone hasn’t come back yet, but based on Nobles’s experience, it’s definitely a human bone and likely matches Jane Doe 1201-K.
• John Doe 7216-M Autopsy Status: This autopsy was done first, and is complete. The GI tract has been ruptured, he was not asphyxiated to death, and fluids have been taken and sent out.
• John Doe 7216-M Identification: Nothing yet, but his fingerprints have been sent out for a national search.
• John Doe 7216-M Body Fluids: Nothing back yet, as they just went out this morning, but Nobles is not hopeful for a match. He goes on to explain that there are so many poisonous substances here on God’s great Earth, and nowhere near all of them have been studied and categorized by the scientific community. To which I say, science, get off your lazy butt and do something about it!
• Jane Doe 1202-L Autopsy Status: The body is being prepped as we speak.
• Jane Doe 1202-L Identity: No ID, but these fingerprints have also been sent out for a national search.

On the way out, Sherry apologizes again. Carey admonishes her not to talk to “those people” again because “they’ll twist your words around, make your life miserable.” So true!

Sigh.

Back to SID I go. Mind you, every single time I go to the Parker Center, I have to walk inside, then click Carey’s ID badge on Carey to walk by this dork:

Then I have to go to the lobby, push the elevator button, wait . . . it’s such a chore.

Back at SID, Chester has something new to say. As an aside, after beating the game, I learned there’s a death where you keep clicking the “Hand” icon on her breasts, and she eventually sues you for sexual harassment and you lose. This turned into a Larry game at some point.

• Glue Sample: This is an industrial-strength glue which shares properties with the glue in Hickman’s eyes. The issue is, this brand is sold everywhere, and is even the same brand used at the Parker Center.
• Found Bone: There are no DNA results yet, and Chester does chastise Carey, telling him he should’ve turned int into property. Carey agrees, then says “but I also need to find myself a killer.”
• John Doe 7216-M: There have been no toxicology results since Carey last asked.
• Jane Doe 1202-L: The same as with John Doe 7216-M: No toxicology results, and they haven’t heard anything back from Quantico, where the samples were apparently sent. Chester admits “[w]e’re at a dead end.” Not what you want to hear during a police investigation!
• Abandoned Vehicle: There were body fluids, hair, fingerprints, and red fibers in the car. Samples were taken, etc. and so on. Otherwise, the car was, in Chester’s estimation, “Too clean”—there was nothing in the glove box, the trunk, under the seats, and so on.
• Jane Doe 1202-K Update: Prints were taken, but so far don’t match anything or anyone.

Geez, it’s like these people didn’t exist.

Since I’m at the Parker Center, I go to all the usual spots. Teddy has nothing valuable to offer. Carey asks him if he misses being on the streets, but Teddy says no: after getting shot, and now that he has a son, he’s very happy behind a desk, thank you very much.

Do you know who else is happy behind a desk?

This guy! Hal has been taking calls all day. When Carey asks what the news is, Hal replies “You are the news.” He even thinks Bilden has the hots for Carey and that Carey needs to watch out or they’ll end up married. If only! Now that would’ve made for a great plot twist if this game didn’t just drop every single plot thread during its last sequence. But we’ll get there.

Hal has nothing useful to offer—every time you come to the office at this time, he’ll say something like “Half the people want to kill you, and half of them love you”—I’m paraphrasing here—or that people are calling in with insane tips and stuff like that. And then the phone rings and Hal takes it, rendering him unavailable for conversation until you leave the screen and come back. Otherwise, there are no memos on Carey’s desk. It turns out I won’t get any more during the remainder of Police Quest: Open Season. I also cannot fill out any more reports to give to Hal, so Paperwork Quest is, alas, truly and definitively at its end.

Which is bonkers, because there is absolutely a LOT of stuff that will happen that Carey really needs to write up and file. Anyway, it’s time to check out this Ford Tempo.

Now, the impound lot is open, so Carey heads to Impound Town. He shows the clown in the booth his badge (2 points, 359 total), prompting the guy to say, “Tell him McGarrett said, ‘Book him, Dano!’” He’ll know what it means!” He then devolves into a paroxysm of inappropriate laughter. This guy laughs at everything, and it all just sounds stilted and lame. Just like Billy Bob’s dialogue!

“What in tarnation ya Sam Hill whippersnapper greenhorn!”

Carey delivers the stupid message (2 points, 361 total), which causes Billy Bob to let Carey take a look at the car. Before doing so, I decide to ask Billy Bob some questions:

• SID: Billy “Mario” Bob confirms that SID was there for hours and didn’t find any prints, which directly contradicts what Chester told Carey. Maybe Chester lied, or maybe Billy Bob is just stupid. I decide to go with the latter theory.
• Owner of Vehicle: No clue! There was no ID or registration. Surely the police department has other ways of determining a vehicle’s ownership. I mean, you could check with the DMV, but nah.
• Glovebox & Trunk: Nothing in either of them.

Enough jibber-jabber: time to examine the car.

There is nothing in the front, and nothing in the back, but unlike the first car that was here, the fact that you can look in the front or back, depending on where you click the eye, gets me thinking.

Ah-ha! You can look at the license plate (4 points, 365 total). 2BSY669! Now we can plug this into the computer at Carey’s office and run a search, doing everybody else’s work for them way after the fact. When seconds count, the police are apparently days behind.

So I make the trek back through the Parker Center’s front desk and lobby, back up the elevator, back through the halls, and to the computer terminal. I type in Carey’s user ID and password, get to the DMV section, and type in this license plate number . . .

. . . and discover . . .

. . . absolutely nothing!

Nope, 2BSY669 doesn’t work. I’m about to throw the challenge flag, but when double-checking my screenshot to ensure I didn’t write the number down incorrectly, I take note of the diamond-enclosed letter E on the license plate. I look this up on my computer in real life and learn that, in California, this means a vehicle is exempt from taxes, as in, it’s a state, municipal, or county vehicle . . . and the E is the first figure the license plate number. So I retype it as E2BSY669 (2 points, 367 total), and learn that the vehicle is registered to the Central District Health Center, and that there’s an address!

So away we go!

Whee!

I debate throwing a challenge flag on this puzzle, but decide against it. It’s actually a decent puzzle, if a little obnoxious, as if the game is saying “Look at me, I am so smart,” but ultimately since I felt a smug sense of self-satisfaction at figuring it out all by myself, I let the ruing on the field stand.

Following our lead to the Health Center, I expected a gym or something, which makes no sense, and instead find what is basically social services.

Here’s where Carey finally gets some real, solid investigative leads, but also apparently forgets how to read. You’ll understand in a few minutes.

After showing the receptionist his badge (1 point, 368 total), she’s more than happy to speak with Carey. This is Nora Bitteridge, and the narrator calls her “Receptionist and part-time psychology student,” which is weird, because she never tells you the last part. Police Quest: Open Season is full of things like this, including a glaring example of it which we’ll get to in due time, I promise.

Carey asks to speak with the manager even though he lacks the proper coiffure, only to be told the manager is out for the week. However, Ms. Bitteridge offers to help, answering Carey’s question about the vehicle by letting him know it is assigned to a social worker named Louella Parker. The game, for some reason, doesn’t give a dialogue tree at this point, but repeated questioning reveals some useful information:

• Ms. Parker is not in and Ms. Bitteridge has not seen her since Monday.
• Ms. Bitteridge has tried calling Ms. Parker a few times but received no answer.
• Ms. Parker doesn’t have any family in California, being “alone out here from Chicago.”
• Ms. Parker is a black woman, 34 years old, about 5’ 5” and overweight, which Ms. Bitteridge puts at around 160 pounds. My, how times have changed. She also has black hair and brown eyes—I’ll bet you anything Ms. Parker is one of our Jane Doe victims. Horrible!

Ms. Bitteridge lets Carey poke around in Ms. Parker’s office, so I do what cops are supposed to do.

There is not much, just “more self-help books here than at a Walden Books!” and a bunch of locked file cabinets and other books Carey does not care about. The bulletin board is likewise covered in self-help seminar notices, a little bit of character building for the unfortunate Ms. Parker.

When Carey looks at the desk, some sinister music starts to play.

Here, Carey finds a few things he can take: two case files (2 points, 370 total) and a tape (2 points, 372 total). The tape is Yo Money’s latest, with a receipt from Ragin’ Records tucked inside. The files, when Carey looks at them (4 points, 376 total), are for Barbie Cann and someone named Mitchell Thurman.

Now, Barbie we know. But who is Mitchell Thurman? This doesn’t warrant a challenge to the ruling on the field just yet. Let’s read the files first . . .

Oh, you can’t.

All right. Deep breath. Calm down. Let’s think about this rationally, game, so I can explain it to you. We are playing a detective. Detectives follow up on leads. If a woman whom we have a strong suspicion was murdered left two case files on her desk prior to being killed, a detective would do detective work and read them, figuring out information about these individuals, and maybe things like an address or other way to contact them. Barbie Cann we know, so it’s obvious we need to speak with her, but how about Mitchell Thurman? This is the first time in the entire game we’ve heard about Mitchell Thurman. Wouldn’t it be nice to use the information that’s sitting in a big, fat file in our police detective protagonist’s hands to follow up on this lead? But no. We don’t. Because Police Quest IV is gonna Police Quest IV. Tale as old as time.

At least Ms. Bitteridge will talk to us about some new stuff right now:

• Luella’s Friends: Ms. Parker did not have a social life. Work is her life, and she’s devoted to her job and her clients.
• Luella’s Boyfriends: Ms. Bitteridge does not know because she has a rule against discussing other people’s personal lives. Admirable, but not helpful for a potential murder investigation.
• Luella’s Clients: Carey asks about the types of cases Ms. Parker handles. Ms. Bitteridge informs him that she’s a family counselor and typically deals with custody cases, issues with abused kids, juvenile crime, and so on. She’s assigned clients through the county.
• Luella’s Work Habits: Ms. Parker is out of the office and in the field a lot—many of her clients are either homebound or Ms. Parker needs to see their environment. Ms. Bitteridge estimates that Ms. Parker only spends about half of her time in the office.
• Luella’s Disappearance: Ms. Parker had no personal or professional problems Ms. Bitteridge is aware of. Ms. Parker is also very private. She is overworked and does work on her own time because the county doesn’t provide enough funds or staff.
• File Folders: These would be Ms. Parker’s current cases.
• Case Codes: There is a numbering system, and letters assigned by the county, where B means the case involves children, and O means it is a borderline case. I think B should mean borderline, but who am I, anyway? L.A. County?
• Child Custody: These involve cases of child neglect, child support, child abuse, or an unfit environment: “Detective,” Ms. Bitteridge says, “when it comes to children, the system tends to be very protective.”
• Borderline Definition: These are cases referred to the Health Office by another agency, where that agency needs help.
• Barbie Cann: Ms. Bitteridge knows no details about this case due to confidentiality rules and laws. However, last she got a call from Ms. Cann asking to speak with Ms. Parker and says it was hard to hear her because of “very loud music playing in the background.”
• Mitchell Thurman: Ms. Bitteridge is familiar with him, saying that he was an odd and very disturbed child. Thurman’s mom was murdered and his dad was abusive. So much for confidentiality, I guess! Ms. Bitteridge last saw Thurman last Monday—the day Ms. Parker disappeared!—saying he had to speak to Ms. Parker because he had the “Monday blues.”

This sounds like a clue! All we have to do is get Thurman’s address from the file and—

—oh, right. You can’t read the dumb thing. So we just check with—

—save your breath. You can’t do any of these things. But at least we have Barbie and this Yo Money album as leads!

Carey shows the tape to Ms. Bitteridge, which surprises her, as she had Ms. Parker pegged as a classical type of person. Carey also shows the shoe, but Ms. Bitteridge doubts it was hers because Ms. Parker is a conservative person, “some might say ‘retentive,’” and her “personality” would never let her choose a shoe like that.

Le sigh. Back to Hollywood & Vine.

I am warning you: this is right around the time Police Quest IV really starts to get cuckoo-bananas, as my daughter says. How so? Just wait.

I talk to this moron again:

• Yo Money: Carey asks if the Flea-like proprietor is familiar with Yo Money. He says he knows who Yo Money is, but doesn’t know him. He also says that rap generally, and Yo Money in particular, don’t sell well at the store, as he sells mostly R&B, grunge, heavy metal, and mostly everything but rap. I find that a music store in L.A. that doesn’t have a demand for rap, even in the mid-90s, to be one of the most wildly implausible things in this whole game, and that’s saying something, but I digress. Anyway, our second-tier Chili Pepper here doesn’t remember selling this particular Yo Money tape: “Dude, nothing sticks in my mind. I’m a product of the 70s.”
• Louella Parker: Carey asks if this name sounds familiar. Our low-budget low-ender tells us it does not, because lots of people come in and out of the store, and he has stuff coming and going all day long.

Fine, whatever. I give him the tape (2 points, 378 total) and the proprietor of Ragin’ Records offers to . . . let Carey exchange it for something in the case? “8 track tapes . . . drumsticks . . .” he says. Drumsticks?

DRUMSTICKS?

Carey is going to take a tape he swiped from another person’s desk, a person we’re not sure is still alive, who paid for it with real hard-earned American dollars back when they were worth something, and Carey, a police detective, is going to exchange it for A DRUMSTICK?

I don’t need to elaborate further.

There’s a CD by the Fresno band the Miss Alans, who are a real band, and four drumsticks. They are:

• “A John Bonham from Led Zeppelin’s famous tour, Houses of the Holy.” Houses of the Holy was an album that they toured behind, but Led Zeppelin’s most famous tour was probably the 1977 tour, for reasons the band would probably like to forget, but anyway.
• “A Keith Moon, from The Who.”
• “A Danny Bonaduce of the Partridge Family fame.”
• “A Peter Criss from Kiss.”

It’s a toss-up between the Bonham and the Moon, but I take Bonzo’s stick (2 points, 380 total), which Carey is assured is totally authentic. In the inventory, I see that the stick “has a crusty coating of dried glue,” which is probably a clue, but this is exceedingly stupid. What you eventually do with the drumstick is, too.

Now I go back to the Kitty to have another chat with Ms. Cans—I mean Cann. Cann, I said. She asks Carey about the investigation, and asks if he needs someone to listen to him: “Tell Barbie where it hurts.”

Well, Barbie, playing this game has started to hurt my sense of self-worth . . .

Carey asks Barbie if she knew Ms. Parker. Barbie readily admits that she does, and that it’s a personal matter. “Why?” she asks. “Is Ms. Parker in trouble?” Carey tells Barbie that Ms. Parker is dead, which technically we don’t know yet, but Carey is making a decent inference here. For some reason, Carey tells Barbie that Ms. Parker’s murder is consistent with the two murdered cops, before asking Barbie when she saw Ms. Parker last. Barbie says Ms. Parker was supposed to stop in on Tuesday to deliver some papers, and doesn’t recall Ms. Parker acting or saying anything peculiar. Barbie sure is, though—for some weird reason, she repeats most of her dialogue here. She ends by telling Carey “You know, darling, she was a shy girl.”

Carey asks Barbie what Ms. Parker was helping her with. It turns out Ms. Parker was trying to help Barbie get custody of her daughter from her soon-to-be-ex-husband, and wanted the results of a psych evaluation. Barbie’s husband claimed Barbie was “poisoning” their daughter’s mind against her, and also didn’t like Barbie’s occupation. Nothing like a bitter divorce to drive one to murder, right? Carey asks for more information about the husband, but Barbie won’t say much more than he’s an ass and a police officer. She doesn’t want to discuss him, but insists she’s not protecting him: “If he’s too lazy to satisfy me, he’s too lazy to hurt Ms. Parker.” Carey is just like, “Okay, seems legit,” and drops it.

You knew this was coming.

Barbie promises to call Carey if she hears from her husband or thinks of anything else, and then invites Carey to come back and see her act.

Back at the Parker Center, Carey tells Chester that the car belonged to Louella Parker, and that Jane Doe 1201-K matches her physical description. Chester says she’ll get Ms. Parker’s dental records and send it to the morgue. Regarding the arm bone, they both anticipate that it will match with Ms. Parker’s DNA. However, there is nothing new regarding toxicology save for the substance is synthetic. “Thanks Julie,” Carey says. “You called me Julie!” Chester replies. “I can’t believe it!” And there we conclude the romance subplot of Police Quest IV. Do you want to know what else is over in Police Quest IV?

• The Yo Money subplot
• The Dennis Walker subplot
• The Ragtop Spiff subplot
• The Barbie Cann husband subplot
• The police investigation

All of it. Here’s a possibly related image:

So I wander from place to place, discovering nothing. Nobles isn’t at the morgue, but Sherri gives a message: “He sent Jane Doe’s juices to SID.” Gross! So no leads, no nothing, no problem! Given that things have hit a roadblock, why not go location-hopping! There’s lots of fun stuff to do in scenic L.A.! Maybe we can take in a movie because, you know, because! Get ready, friends, for a sharp turn into Crazy Town, USA.

Oh, okay, someone’s at the Third Eye Theater now. I’m glad I decided to randomly show up here in the middle of a murder investigation. I’m warning you all, this is where Police Quest IV, which up until this point has been a reasonable competent police procedural, devolves into pure stupidity. We’ve still got a lot more to go, so strap yourselves in as we crank the Nonsense Dial up to 11.

Some stuttering kid is working at the theater and the music gets creepy. Carey notes that the guy looks like “one big kid.” Carey shows his badge (2 points, 382 total), and says he’d like to ask some questions, such as “What movie are you showing?” You know, important police stuff. “Last Year at Marienbad,” the guy stutters. “No Dirty Harry?” Carey asks, somewhat disappointed. He shows the clippings, but the ticket booth guy says the movie changes sometimes daily. When Carey tells him he wants to ask more questions, the hitherto unnamed ticket booth worker tells Carey to enter to the left.

Now creepy music plays because this game telegraphs everything with the subtlety of a mountain being dropped on your head. Looking around, Carey notes that everything is really clean, and that there are no smudges or fingerprints on the glass. When I click the “Eye” icon on the guy, the narrator says “There’s something funny about this Mitchell Thurman—

One challenge flag isn’t enough here.

That’s more like it. Now I’ll let him finish.

“There’s something funny a bout this Mitchell Thurman, but is it funny ha ha, or funny weird?”

You see the obvious problem here, right? The game never informs the player that Mitchell Thurman works at this movie theater. Why does Carey magically know who he is? Did he read about Thurman’s place of work somewhere, maybe in the case file? If so, couldn’t Carey have shared that with me so I didn’t spend a tedious 20 or so minutes wandering around from location to location using this game’s clunky interface?

Serenity now, Alex. Serenity now . . . we are almost near the end.

Thurman has a few things to say, none of them useful:

• Officer Garcia: Thurman says he doesn’t know him.
• Police: Carey asks Thurman if he’s ever been arrested. Thurman says no, please look around, and that he has nothing to hide. He also stutters a lot and just sounds weird.

SPOILER: He’s the guy. But there’s more game to play, more stupid game, so let’s keep going.

• Customers: No unfamiliar customers this week.
• Louella Parker: Carey asks Thurman if he knows her, and Thurman says it’s “terrible what happened.” This is really strange and if you ask me would give probable cause to bring him in for questioning, seeing as how she hasn’t been confirmed as the Jane Doe yet, but Carey just thinks, “Everything’s cool.” Seeing as he couldn’t even be arsed to read Thurman’s file, I’m not surprised.
• Information about Luella: Carey presses further. Thurman, rather creepily, says “She was so lovely” and that “it’s so sad.” What was sad, Mitchell? WHAT WAS SAD?
• What’s Sad?: Here, Thurman starts crying. John tries to calm him down, but Thurman starts talking about his dog. “It’s horrible what they said.” About your dog? WHAT ABOUT THE DOG, MITCHELL?
• What About Dog?: Oh, Carey is actually asking the questions I would be asking. He asks if the dog harmed Ms. Parker. Thurman says no, but a neighbor said that Thurman hurts his dog and doesn’t feed him. Ms. Parker came to help “tell them the truth.”
• Truth: “What is the truth?” Carey, getting all Pontius Pilate here, asks now. A pretty heavy question for a stupid game, but hey, you do you, Carey. Thurman insists that his dog is just naturally thin, and he does feed the dog a lot of “big juicy bones.”

Okay, Thurman dismembers people and has his dog eat them. Good Lord, man, just take this guy in.

• Last Luella Contact: Thurman says it was maybe a few weeks ago. He gets on Carey’s case for asking him so many questions . . . has something happened to her? Instead of saying “You tell me, Mitchell,” because the guy already knows, Carey tells him Ms. Parker was murdered. Here, Thurman puts his head in his hands and starts crying. It’s horrible, blah blah, then he says all the crying made him thirsty. He asks Carey if he’s thirsty, and that he’ll get Carey a cup on the house.

Here, Thurman makes some tea. Carey can’t talk to Thurman at all, and the game won’t progress until Carey drinks the tea (3 points, 385 total). Tea prepared by a mentally unstable serial killer.

This felt a little more appropriate than a challenge flag here.

The tea is refreshing, the narrator notes, if a little bitter. Maybe it was drugged, you absolute imbecile, you clown, you [EXPLETIVE DELETED]. Seriously, W in the actual F is going on here?

Oh, but it gets better, for real: Thurman says “Don’t you feel better?” and then offers to let Carey watch a movie on the house. “Everyone deserves a treat once in a while.”

Yes, a treat of being murdered. Right around here I wish the game would put me out of my misery.

So Carey watches a movie (3 points, 388 total). These screenshots prove I am not making any of this up:

A visual representation, for you visual learners out there.

This is all so dumb.

The movie is literally just a bunch of shots of a dude dressed in a red dress with red high heels smoking a cigarette.

What 

The

Hell

Is

Going

On with this game, and who thought any of this was a good idea, and please someone help me make sense of it all.

Oh, it gets worse: It turns out Carey fell asleep. So he hallucinated this thing? The tea was drugged? It came to him in a dream? Is he August Kekulé or something? Kekulé was a famous German chemist who discovered the chemical composition of benzine in a dream of a snake eating its own tale, also known as an ouroboros. Here, Carey is just a poor blob of pixels in a stupid adventure game.

Thurman is all “You fell asleep, it’s time to go now!” and kicks Carey out because he has to get ready for his next show, and that Carey falling asleep has gotten him behind schedule. So Carey vacates the premises and the theater is now locked. Good going Detective (I typed that in the narrator’s smarmy voice). What the hell just happened? There aren’t enough challenge flags in the world to explain why Carey goes along with this.

Let me ask you another question: it’s obvious as a sledgehammer to the frontal cortex that Thurman is the killer. And so a cop comes poking around, is getting close, and instead of killing the cop like he’s killed two other cops, Thurman, our deranged, sick, twisted serial killer who dismembers people, is all “You know what? You look thirsty. Here, have some tea,” like he’s a mid-century English grandma, and then is all “You have a hard job, my friend—why not watch a movie, on the house, in the middle of your murder investigation.” And I’m all, “Please, Jim Walls, please come back!”

“The computers are extended gutters and the gutters are full of stupid puzzles and when the hard drives finally scab over, all the adventure game players will drown. The accumulated filth of all their stupid puzzles and nonsensical plots will foam up about their waists and all the adventure gamers and bloggers will look up and shout ‘SAVE US!’ . . . and I’ll look down and whisper, ‘No.’”

For the sake of completeness, I reloaded and walked around the theater. There’s a door to the right of the screen that is a locked storage closet (remember this for later) that does not give you a closeup of the door, and there is a short staircase leading to another locked door behind some curtains to the left of the screen, that does give you a closeup, thereby rendering it more memorable.

However, Carey can’t do anything else with it.

Back to the main game: I am at another impasse with zero clues, so I begin the time-honored adventure game tradition of revisiting every location. This is bad adventure game design, at least when the game gives no indication that some locations might have new stuff. After finishing the game, I can tell you that Police Quest IV does, but it is very subtle. Maybe too subtle, at least if you have long gaps between play sessions like I did. Thurman talked about his dog, right? Put a pin in this.

I revisit SID, the Health Center, the Morgue, and come up empty every time. I even go to the Police Academy, which still isn’t offering self-defense classes.

I totally would’ve gone next.

Back at the Parker Center, I poke around with the computer, but get nowhere. I talk to Hal, who tells me he’s having a bad hemorrhoid flare-up, but is otherwise as useful as usual. I click Ms. Parker’s case files on Hal, and he says “You run ‘em down, junior. I’ll make some calls, see what I can find.” The weird thing, Hal, is that Carey is physically and/or mentally unable to read the files. He could “run ‘em down” and find out where Mitchell Thurman, the weirdo who possibly drugged Carey and more than likely murdered five people lives, but we’ll have to find an alternative method of locating his residence. Oh boy, is it an “alternative” method.

I check in with Lt. Block on a whim, and he actually has something more to say than his generic grumpiness. Now, the Lt. says he wants to talk about Carey’s little “stunt” in front of the morgue. Carey is, apparently, obstructing the First Amendment, and needs to control his temper and work with the press and not against them. Let’s leave aside the fact that (a) journalists are scum, and (b) Ms. Bilden is going out of her way to stoke up a panic in L.A. to feed her own ego and bring some joy to her pathetic life. When Carey complains about Ms. Bilden, Lt. Block defends her! Thanks for throwing me under the bus, Donald. He then asks Carey if there is any truth to the rumor that the killer is a woman.

I choose “No,” which is apparently the right answer (5 points, 393 total). Lieutenant Block then says he trusts Carey now, and figures that the killer is a white male, aged 24-36. “Watch yourself Carey,” he closes before dismissing Carey, “we don’t want to lose another one.” Aww, you’re all heart Lieutenant. Or you don’t want to deal with the paperwork and the media firestorm. Either/or.

This is great and all, but I still have no clue about where to go. There is nothing anywhere, and I went everywhere. In my frustration, I looked at a walkthrough. Do you know what you’re supposed to do at this point in the game? No? I’ll tell you: you have to go back to South Central L.A., a location that hasn’t been relevant since, oh, game day 2, go to the alley where Carey found the bullets embedded in the wall, and pixel hunt for a length of rope among the trash that hadn’t been there at any other time in the game.

That’s right, folks: this game embodies the worst sort of adventure game design that people who hate adventure games love to point out: just randomly going everywhere and clicking everything on everything in the hopes that something happens, instead of actually using your brain to solve puzzles. Also, pixel hunts. See the rope? See it?

It totally just pops off the screen, doesn’t it? I take the stupid rope (3 points, 396 total) and then embark on a series of the most absurd adventure game puzzles in the history of the genre—and that includes more absurd than anything Roberta “Logic? What’s that?” Williams could ever come up with, or that cat hair mustache puzzle in Gabriel Knight 3. One thing I will say for this game is that there are no walking-dead scenarios that I’ve found, but that’s about it.

So where do I go? Back to Griffith Park, of course, where the dog that is obviously Thurman’s is back.

“Sit, Ubu, sit!”

Recalling Thurman saying his dog is always hungry, I give it dog pretzels (2 points, 398 total), but nothing happens. I then manage to find my way to Thurman’s house, not by reading his case file that Carey has been carrying around for a good hour or so now, but by—and I have the screenshots to prove this—making the rope into a lasso, throwing it around the dog’s neck (5 points, 403 total), and letting it carry Carey to Thurman’s place, set to the tune of jaunty country-western rodeo music.

Proper police procedure, ladies and gentlemen!

Gritty realism! The reason Daryl F. Gates needed to be brought in!

Ripped from the headlines!

I quit, guys. I quit.

But not really, we’re almost at the end. Of the game. Not of the dumb puzzles. Police Quest IV never runs out of those.

Here is a point of no return. The dog leads Carey to an alley he can’t leave, because the exit to the street is blocked by a locked gate at one end, and by plot armor at the other. The dog runs through a doggy door crudely cut into a set of locked double doors. This “strange little dead-end alley” is “a bit like a cage.” Like the Sartre play, there is no exit, from the alley or from this game’s nonsense. I mean, Carey has no radio? No back-up? He can’t call in any help? He could die here. But no one cares. No one but me and Jim Walls, somewhere out there laughing hysterically: “I told you Gates is no replacement for me!” he says, twirling his mustache as he designs another driving interface.

I use the “Talk” icon on the doors, and while Carey announces himself, no one comes out. I also use the candy bar on the dog door—which Carey can’t squeeze through—to try and lure the dog out for some reason, but this doesn’t work either.

I look at my inventory, and I’m embarrassed at how long it took me to figure this out. I check the drumstick first, and seeing that it has dried glue on it, I slather on some more (3 points, 406 total). I then use the only other item I’ve put glue on onto it, the broken side-mirror from Carey’s car (5 points, 411 total). The game informs me I’ve made “a handy tool,” a 180-degree mirror. Only in an adventure game. It still doesn’t help me when I use it on the doggy door. What I needed to do was use the prybar from Carey’s detective’s toolkit to open the door (3 points, 414 total). This was an obvious solution, and my trouble with it is solely on me.

I’m in, and the room is pitch dark. I hear a sound like a bar dropped, meaning Carey for some reason drops his prybar because of, what, fright? Klutziness? Or more plot armor?

It’s a good thing the flashlight works. There is a series of rooms you can explore, moving the mouse around to simulate moving a flashlight beam, traversing the rooms whenever you move the spotlight to the end of the screen.

This is totally a murder den, people. Things I find in these three or four rooms:

• A relief map of the world.
• Large and small cardboard boxes, some empty, some filled with Christmas ornaments.
• The metal door we came through, now locked.
• A locked wooden door.
• An empty bucket that smells disgusting.
• An old, broken mirror.
• A hot water heater.
• A water pipe that is very hot.
• A wooden workbench that is scarred and battered.
• An old rotten rug.

Carey has to jimmy the lock of one door open with his detective kit’s putty knife (2 points, 416 total), which breaks the knife, but takes Carey to a stairway.

“The stairwell leads to the unknown,” the narrator tells us. But it actually leads to a kitchen.

Very anti-climactic.

And in the kitchen Thurman’s ravenous dog runs out and freaking eats Carey (I’m assuming), giving a death screen with some of the most horrible sounds I’ve ever heard in an adventure game. So what do you do? Naturally, use the drumstick mirror to check if the coast is clear (5 points, 421 total), which makes it so the dog isn’t there and Carey can get in without being mauled to death. What a stupid puzzle.

Now we can explore. We’re helpfully told by Mr. Snarky Narrator that it looks like a “friendly little kitchen,” although the countertops are slimy and sticky. Nothing to see here, really: just a bunch of pots and pans we can’t go through, drawers and cabinets we can’t open, and a severed head in the fridge (2 points, 423 total).

Mr. Thurman sure has some strange culinary habits, but to each his own, you know? Who am I to judge other people’s culture? One man’s cannibalism is another man’s haute cuisine. Carey nonchalantly makes a note of this (2 points, 425 total) and continues his grand tour of Chez Thurman.

The only thing you can do in the living room is note that it looks straight out of the 1950s. There’s even an original La-Z-Boy. Do note the bars in the window, however, and the fact that there is nothing under the couch. Moving on.

Next, we come to a hallway blocked by Thurman’s hungry dog. You can’t proceed because the dog growls menacingly, and you can’t leave the apartment by any other way. Let me get this straight: Thurman’s front door is in that creepy basement, and there’s no other means of egress? Is this up to code? And I ask yet again, why doesn’t Carey have a radio? Sonny Bonds would’ve had a radio.

Sonny Bonds also would’ve taken his clothes off anytime, anywhere, for any reason at all.

I try several things to get by this dog: I have actual, legitimate food in my inventory! No more pretzels, but I have this useless candy bar Carey’s been carrying around since the first game day! No. I try Carey’s keys, but no. I put on the Kevlar vest, which, as the narrator narrates, “should provide some protection,” but I can’t use it to sneak past the dog. No, do you know what you do? You give the dog Hickman’s sedatives (5 points, 430 total).

That’s right: your best friend’s bottle of pills you’ve been carrying around the whole game gets shoved down a dog’s throat, putting the furry bastard to sleep.

Here, Fido. Heeeeeere, Fido Fido Fido . . .

I certainly did not see cruelty to animals coming, but hey, when you’re fundamentally incapable of exiting a house in, presumably, downtown Los Angeles, you do what you’ve got to do to survive.

I end up in this creepy red-lit bedroom. Is this place next to a Kenny Rogers Chicken or something?

There’s a hole in the wall that exposes electrical beams, but nothing else. The closet, though, is where things get interesting.

After a completely unnecessary quasi-close-up, we get a real close-up of the closet interior.

There’s a shoe that looks familiar. I make a note of it, but Carey cannot take it with him. The hook rug (yes, that’s what it’s called) can be moved (3 points, 433 total), revealing the world’s most obvious trap door.

Gee, who saw this coming?

Down the trap door (4 points, 437 total), which, again, Carey goes into with no backup or plan or clue what’s going on, is a strange basement full of dusty boxes of stuff that looks like it hasn’t been moved or touched in a long time.

This part of the game does a decent job of creating a palpable sense of dread, but it’s undercut by how stupid everything is. And get this: the basement leads . . .

. . . to the theater! Theater of the absurd, more like. And there’s someone there! Oh my goodness, are you all right, sir or ma’am! No: we’re told that the woman appears to be asleep. She doesn’t respond to Carey’s call, or him shaking her. Carey takes the time to jot this down in his notebook . . . and then just moves on.

Sorry, I had to.

This is where I lost even more patience with Police Quest IV. There’s a lot of wandering around in an empty movie theater where some weirdo drugged Carey who, let’s not forget, voluntarily drank the creepy murderer’s tea and watched a movie in the middle of his investigation, and just found an inert woman sitting in said murderer’s theater, and instead of leaving to call 911 or the cops, you know, the real ones who aren’t idiots, Carey decides to take some notes and then investigate further, leaving the unconscious, unresponsive lady behind.

Let’s look at the facts: lividity will show that this woman was murdered here before being moved. She was probably drugged with a substance that is killing her. She’ll probably, based on the increasingly large dismemberment of Thurman’s other victims, not to mention the head in Thurman’s fridge, be tortured, killed, and chopped up in horrific ways. And oh by the way, who’s head is that? None of the murder victims so far in this game have been decapitated. Thurman has killed someone else. Man, the LAPD sucks.

The theater is empty, and I get the creepy vibe they were going for, but again, it’s ruined by the undercurrent of dumbness. Look at this screenshot above: I poked around at a lot of stuff, including the cans on top of the glass case on the left. I was told they were glued to the top or something, so I thought nothing more. Remember this.

Next up is the hallway to the men’s bathroom. Carey refuses to go in on account of the stench. This is utterly ridiculous. Carey can call inside using the “Talk” command, but there’s no response. I’m not a cop, and I’ve been in some pretty grody public restrooms in my time. I just held my breath and went in. I wasn’t investigating murders. Carey is: he should be stripped of his badge for being such a wimp. There’s also a door to the right that leads to the projection room that is locked.

Here's the door to the ladies’ room. I somehow didn’t get a screenshot of the inside, but the only thing of note, other than that it’s filthy, is that there is a towel dispenser with a keyhole that Carey tries to open but cannot. I wonder if I need to clog the toilet like Sonny Bonds did in Police Quest III to trick the janitor, a game which is looking better and better now.

I clearly need some kind of key, so I resume my wandering. Back in the actual theater room, I see a dress-clad Thurman—dressed just like the man in the weird tea-induced dream Carey had—carrying that woman from the theater. Real good idea to leave her behind, Carey: she’s as good as dead, you knob. You bellend.

Carey just saunters after him; you can’t run, but you can use the “Talk” icon to issue a halfhearted “Stop!’ and so on, but that’s it. Highly effective policing, Carey. Real grace under pressure. No wonder you were top of your class at the academy. I’ll bet Lieutenant Block could learn a thing or two from you, cowboy.

Darn it, now I’m talking like the narrator. I understand him, though: if I had to narrate this clown-show of a game, I’d be bitter and snarky too.

I understand this man.

Thurman takes the woman to the aforementioned door to the left of the movie screen, a door which is locked. So now what?

I’ll tell you what: there is one can on top of the glass case that isn’t stuck that Carey can take (7 points, 444 total). My misfortune was to initially grab the wrong one. That isn’t challenge flag-worthy, but I’m still ticked off. The can is dented and has been previously opened. Inside, if you click “Hand” on it in the inventory to shake it, is a skeleton key! Ah, the classic “skeleton key in a soda can” trick. Of course, why didn’t I think of that? How does Carey know even it’s a skeleton key, anyway? Because it’s made of a human bone, that’s why! No, it’s not—that would be too much even for this game. Suffice it to say, Carey just knows that this key will open every single door in the building. Except for one. We’ll get to that.

First, I go to the ladies’ room and open the towel dispenser (10 points, 454 total), and—ta-dah!—there’s a syringe! This must be what Thurman has been murdering his victims with! What’s in it? Who cares! We never find out. Suffice it to say, it’s poisonous. At this point, I’d have preferred a vial of steaming green goo with a big skull and crossbones on it. Carey bags the syringe (3 points, 457 total) for some reason and takes it into his inventory.

The skeleton key, despite being, you know, a key that is supposed to, by its very name, unlock all the doors, does not unlock the door we clearly saw Thurman go through . . .

This one.

. . . but it does unlock that storage closet to the right of the screen (2 points, 459 total). Inside is dark.

I am staring into the void. The abyss. This is it. This is what my life has come to. I only realized it while playing Police Quest IV. Jim Walls, please forgive me wherever you are. I am consumed by the darkness. Just staring at this screen shot is enough to drive me mad . . .

. . . or I can just have Carey use his flashlight. Clicking around a few times, we see, in one of the game’s only semi-effective jump scares, Thurman, who was, for some reason, standing in this dark closet (is this supposed to be a ham-handed metaphor or something?) even though he just went back to his house like two minutes ago, ready to really sock it to Carey (3 points, 462 total).

No caption necessary.

Seriously, why was he just standing there in a locked closet? Did he know Carey would come poking around? This is too stupid to even contemplate. I liked the void better. Moving on.

When Carey awakes, he is not murdered. Or even tied down. He is face-down in Thurman’s living room, unrestrained, with that stupid dog watching over him. I don’t have screenshots of this, forgive me, but now there’s a yellow ball under the couch. If Carey gets it (2 points, 464 total), throws it, the dog retrieves it and comes back, and you do it again.

Wait a minute: Carey gave that dog an entire bottle of sedatives. And it’s already awake?

Anyway, what you have to do is chuck the ball out the window, which has no glass on it, something that is not readily apparent, and the dog rather hilariously jumps between the bars after the ball (4 points, 468 total). I can’t believe this game had so much to do with a dog.

Carey stands, and at this point has no items on him whatsoever. Oh, you know what’s coming next:

This is twice now that Mitchell Thurman, a serial killer who has already murdered two police officers lets the police officer who has actually found him, live. This is worse than villain monologuing. This is a villain who wants to get caught. Because reasons, you know? Reasons. Even a comedy game like Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist had a puzzle where the villain at least ties our hero up.

If you go down the hallway into the red bedroom, Thurman is doing something to the poor woman who is obviously dead thanks to Carey’s stupidity and inaction. He turns and then stabs Carey, who at this point absolutely deserves it.

This death seems fair to me.

What you need to do, obviously, is head into the bathroom, which is halfway down the hallway. I missed this my first time around.

Can we just say that Carey’s suit is certainly a bold choice for a cop?

In the bathroom is a medicine cabinet with some hairspray (2 points, 472 total).

And nothing else. This is the saddest medicine cabinet I’ve ever seen.

This alone doesn’t stop Thurman, although Carey could just spray it in his eyes, thereby blinding him, instead of, you know, somehow creating a makeshift blowtorch and burning Thurman alive. But this is an adventure game! If you have the wherewithal to open Thurman’s fridge for a second time—which there really is no logical reason to do—there is now a lighter in the severed head’s mouth, obviously. Because adventure game. Stop trying to make this make sense, it won’t. I’ve tried.

Carey takes the lighter (2 points, 474 total). Somehow, I forgot to take a screenshot of this, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Police Quest IV has broken me.

Now, in a rather infamous and memorable scene, Carey combines the lighter with the hairspray to make a torch (5 points, 479 total). The game makes a point of saying and showing in text “DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME,” but it never told America’s impressionable youth not to try giving a hungry dog sedatives, so priorities, I guess.

You have to make this torch before going into Thurman’s red room of bed doom or else you get stabbed. Even with the torch made, it took me about five tries to torch Thurman because the timing is tight. If you do it all correctly (10 points, 489 total), this happens:

“Bye, bye, Miss American fry . . .”

“Took my hairspray to the bad game, now this killer will fry . . .”

“Your act neutralizes your assailant,” says the narrator with uncharacteristic understatement in both choice of words and inflection, and that’s all the closure we get. Why did Thurman do it? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. It doesn’t matter. Why does Carey have to rodeo a dog to get here? Why did Carey forget how to read? What was the point of all those reports? Police Quest: Open Season is less police simulator and more existential exploration on the randomness and ultimate meaningless of life, as seen through the eyes of a cop who may or may not be hallucinating while having violent episodes and dealing with his crippling motion picture addition. Because, honestly, who watches a movie in the middle of a murder investigation? I will never get over this writing choice.

Finally, blessedly, mercifully, Police Quest IV comes to an end. We are whisked immediately to City Hall where Daryl F. Gates gives Carey, who still hasn’t changed his suit, the Medal of Valor, little Valerie runs out to hug Carey, and it’s game over.

A shot of L.A. . . .

. . . and then it’s roll credits.

Whew. This game took a lot out of me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be over at the Short Stop playing a few games of ‘Stroids to unwind before cranking out a “Final Rating” post.

My to-do list:

• See the Coroner
• Visit Bobby Washington’s family
• Visit Hickman’s family
• Comb the neighborhood where Hickman and Washington were found
• Track down Raymond Jones III, aka Ragtopp Spiff
• Get into the Rainbow Café (turns out this was a red herring. Everything in this game is a red herring.)
• Get cigarette butt from Yo Money’s house (I think my opportunity to do this has passed)
• Answer the mayor’s questions without harming the case
• Go back to Ragin’ Records and question not-Flea
• Visit the impound lot
• Torch a murderer

Session Time: 4 hours, 30 minutes
Total Time: 14 hours, 20 minutes

Score: 489
Inventory: The makeshift blowtorch, I guess? I like to imagine that it’s stuck in Carey’s pocket during the ceremony. Oh, and the Medal of Valor, probably.