Beat Cop – Review (XB1)
The following is a submission from Community Contributor Nathan P. Gibson.
Beat Cop is the latest pixel art indie game to hit the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this year. The work of Pixel Crow, the game had previously been released on PC way back in 2017 but is making its first appearance on home consoles. As an homage to 80s cop shows, it is an attempt to remind players of a genre that has largely disappeared from television screens in recent times.
Beat Cop essentially tells the story of a down on his luck police officer who has been demoted back to patrol as he attempts to clear his name. For the most part, it follows a simple pattern of gameplay that revolves around arresting any criminals who cause trouble on your watch and ticketing cars that are parked illegally or are violating traffic laws in some other way. Along the way, a deeper plot unfolds as a complex conspiracy comes to light, revealing exactly why you have been placed in this position.
At its heart, Beat Cop is a micromanagment game that tries to emulate the likes of Papers, Please. Unfortunately, it is just not very good at doing so. Each day you will be set a series of tasks that you have to complete in order to earn money. This will usually mean getting a quota of tickets and one of a collection of other tasks, such as escorting a visitor around the neighborhood. The main challenge, as the game reminds you at every opportunity, is that it is supposed to be impossible to get everything on your to-do list completed. Other officers berate you for trying to do your job, saying that you will have to pick and choose what you do. As you will soon find out, it is more than possible to get through everything you were assigned on almost every single day.
This is mainly a result of Beat Cop just being incredibly easy. Ticketing cars for parking illegally is a simple tasks that requires simply checking the meter or seeing if the vehicle is in a prohibited zone. Even the later mechanics that are slowly introduced aren’t much more difficult. Determining whether tires and lights are road legal happens with just the quick press of a button. It is usually possible to double your quota and take care of any other criminals who might appear on your patch relatively easily.
There is also very little jeopardy. The worst thing you do to people is give them a ticket or arrest them. Some individuals may offer a bribe for you to turn a blind eye, yet this has none of the weight of Papers, Please where you have to carefully balance the pleas of the impoverished victims trying to make a new life for themselves against you and your family’s well being. Being a bad cop by raking in as much money as possible has no consequences either, despite what the chief might say. This means you can just do as you please without ever having to face the music.
The fact that much of the story, such as the scenarios of the missing diamonds and the senator, takes place out of sight without any real intervention from the protagonist is another major gripe. It pits players into carrying out their repetitive slog through each day without any real payoff. Everything interesting that will happen comes up in the form of conversations, either from characters that briefly show up or from telephone calls. There’s a bit of a twist and multiple endings based on some of your actions but you don’t really exert that much influence on the world around you.
You really do feel as if this title would have been better if it had decided whether it wanted to be rather than straddle between two different genres. It has the basics to be a good management game, where you have to carefully delegate time to carry out tasks, or it could have opted to be more like and old style point and click adventure where you slowly uncover the story. By trying to do a bit of both it falls horribly flat.
Some players are also likely to be offended by the steady stream of racial or sexist stereotypes and derogatory terms that are used throughout the campaign. The developers obviously know that including these elements will be controversial as they include a disclaimer as it starts up, explaining how they have been included in an attempt to stay as close to the 80s cop shows from which the game draws inspiration. The first racial slur that showed up came and went so quickly that I assumed I had just misread the text box. However, more problematic words soon made an appearance and it definitely made me feel uneasy. It just feels like Beat Cop could have been just as effective a portrayal of the era without including them and that these elements simply were not needed. Especially when the game does absolutely nothing to explain how damaging the use of this type of discrimination was or the harrowing effect it had on people.
Although Beat Cop is a rather accurate portrayal of the 80s cop show genre it fails to capture the imagination. Nothing you do really seems to matter all that much in the grand scheme of things and the day job of ticketing cars and arresting criminals is just not as diverse as it needs to be. It soon delves into becoming a repetitive chore that may well be too much for many people, leaving just a few who will be inclined to see it through to the very end.
Nathan P. Gibson is a Community Contributor and grades Beat Cop at a score of 55/100.
