Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel

Police Quest is a hard sell to modern gamers.  Hell, it's a hard sell to classic adventure gamers or just about anyone who doesn't want to have to save, load, and restart seemingly every other minute.  Of all the Sierra adventure games, only Codename ICEMAN rivals it in pure difficulty due to some frustrating procedural elements that must be followed to a T.  I highly recommend the series of games, but adventure enthusiasts who haven't played text input adventure games before should probably steer well clear of the text-version of Police Quest and gun instead for the VGA version.  Even then, they might want to skip ahead to the pretty great 3rd and 4th installments of the game, which are much more friendly, and are frankly better games all around.

Strictly speaking, as a long-time gamer, the text-input versions of Sierra's classics don't hold up.  The VGA versions, which featured point-and-click adventure gaming in its earliest forms, fare quite a bit better and are relatively playable by just about anyone.  The aforementioned difficulty of Police Quest 1 & 2 in particular lies within its strict adherence to police procedure.  When you venture out of the police station, you must check your tires regularly, fasten your seatbelt, and in general, obey all the traffic laws unless you want to get rear ended or sideswiped by... dots.  Yes, the driving sequences were originally done with minute pixels, and it looks just as terrible as it sounds.  The procedure extends to other elements of policework, which fare from mildly interesting to pretty darn intense (especially in a potential park shootout scene).  Missing one step could mean the difference between Sonny Bonds dying, getting fired, or bringing in a criminal.

Police Quest, while occasionally humorous, lacks the silliness of the other "Quest" games.  It's not gentle, it's fairly one-sided, and it was created in an era of time when cops were still seen as heroes, creating a certain sort of idealistic charm in its major players and a black-and-white "us versus them" mentality.  Other games in the series would explore darker themes, but the original is a bit refreshing in its hopefulness that good policemen will always save the day.  There are also some elements of detective work that become fully fleshed throughout the series, making this game sort of the half-assed grandfather of modern detective games.  You won't find a lot of complexity to the plot or the criminal shenanigans, but as a historical footnote, Police Quest I surely is an interesting game.

Gamers attempting to play Police Quest will want to bone up on the ins and outs of DOSBox and how to get it to work properly on modern machines.  VGA versions are fairly easy to get running properly, but the text-input version is rendered almost unplayable due to gameplay elements being super-accelerated for some odd reasons.  It's not difficult to track down, either, as GOG offers it (along with the other games in the main series).  Although I'm harsh on the way the game has held up over the years, Police Quest held a lot of promise that would later be realized in the 3rd and 4th games of the series.  It won't be for most people, but if you're interested in the history of the detective procedural and police games in general, you should definitely check it out, or at least its sequels.