Beat Cop

Sadly I didn’t put much time into “Beat Cop”. While the game is amazing in its detail and design, the game actually starts to feel like a job! I can attribute this mostly to my own taste and opinion. I can still appreciate some of the nuance this game offers. I think “Beat Cop” deserves an 8.5 for being strong enough to captivate anyone who craves good character development and witty dialogue.

Simulation of a simple patrolman matures as wine while playing. After the initial embarrassment, you are fully immersed into the problems of one neighborhood and a framed cop. [Issue#274]

Captivating atmosphere, mood, tension and humor, and a many exciting story lines - these are the main pros of this excellent police adventure. Later in the game, you’ll get tired of the repeated circling around parked cars unfortunately, but this one major flaw in design can be overlooked thanks to the overwhelming dominance of the positives.

Beat Cop is a quiet little indie game and punches way above its weight in terms of presentation, theme, and fun.

Beat Cop is a splendid mix of pixels, old cop movies and interesting gameplay. I finished this game with a big smile on my face - the return to the cinema of my youth was spot on. Crude vocabulary and tons of stereotypes worked great thanks to dark humor. If you're looking for a cool retro adventure, you've just found one.

A few bugs aside, Beat Cop is a highly engrossing and addictive adventure, a cross between classic ’80s action and routine cop duty that makes for some extremely interesting gameplay as you get sucked in and even get attached to everyone in your little part of Brooklyn. Proper management and investigation skills are rewarded with satisfying results and advancements in various intriguing narratives, and the gameplay is the kind that’s enjoyably simple to learn and fun to work with. Long story short, even if this is more of a tribute to the like of Harry Callahan, it’s Sonny Bonds who should feel proud that Pixel Crow made an enjoyable game about police work that does his legacy justice.

Beat Cop is an intriguing and entertaining re-imagining of the police TV shows of the ’80s, with a clever design, some action and lot of choices for the player. There are always too many things to do, and too little time to do them, and as any real cop knows, boredom is part of the process.

A wild game that manages to retain all the glamour of the 80's while still being funny and deep. Maybe it has some technical flaws, but still works.

Beat Cop is a very nice strategic adventure that tells a great truth: life's hard, it's full of choices and you can't save everyone. What will you do if you have to decide between the greater good and a personal benefit?

Beat Cop is less “Dirty Harry” than it is “Police Academy” or “The Naked Gun”, which makes for a good contrast with This is the Police – another “dirty cop simulator” of late. [Issue#220, p.62]

In all, Beat Cop is a sharp, retro-centric look at 80s Brooklyn, with all its exciting cocaine, prostitution, gang wars, and overly synthesized tunes, but Beat Cop doesn't rely on nostalgia to succeed. It's a title that stands on its own, and casual racism and sexism aside, it handily competes with similar time-management titles that have been released in the last few years.

A charming premise and tongue-in-cheek exploitation writing, stumble on frustrating bugs and repetitive gameplay mechanics. There is value here for the dedicated 80’s exploitation cop film buffs but the kinks will have to be ironed out to make this game worth recommending to a broader public.

Half enjoyable adventure, half clunky mess, Beat Cop is a talented rookie in need of a long talk with HR.

The writing is rarely funny, and the actual predicament Jack Kelly is in takes quite some time to get going. There are also some glaring spelling and translation errors to be found. The 1980s had a very distinct style, and it’s not captured very well here. As for the gameplay, the point is that you’re balancing a boring work life and a stressful private life, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring to play. There are some interesting choices to be made here, and some of them have real consequences, but actually getting to them feels too much like hard work.

I had high hopes for Beat Cop. As someone who loves Tarantino’s over the top nonsense, this title held so much promise. If the gameplay was tweaked here and expanded upon there, this review would have an entirely different tone. But as it stands, Beat Cop drew its own chalk outline and willingly laid inside it.

This success, and most of the game's terrific efforts, are unfortunately squandered by the game's failure to advance its story or give you any guidance on how best to navigate its challenges. Theoretically, you could replay through the game in an attempt to discover the best path for yourself, but chances are, you won't want to. The major events of every day are scripted, and there isn't enough that is enjoyable about the gameplay to make you want to repeat days any more than you have to. One playthrough is likely all that you'll want to get out of Beat Cop, and there is a good chance that it will leave you feeling unsatisfied and cheated. This game could have been great, and for the first week or so of the game I thought that I had stumbled onto a great little indie gem. As I progressed, however, the game's intriguing story disappeared, giving way to a pointless grind that ended abruptly and unsatisfyingly. Beat Cop takes the hopelessness simulator one step too far, and it is for this reason that it I cannot wholeheartedly recommend it.

Beat Cop is meant to be a tribute to cop shows from the 1980s, complete with snarky dialogue and questionable characters. When it comes down to it, however, it’s a stressful sim that’s heavy on time management and largely unforgiving. There are multiple endings you could discover, but after several hours with the game it’s hard to muster the patience for even one.