Beat Cop

You play as Officer Jack Kelly, who has been framed for stealing the senator's jewels. While the investigation is going on, he has been relegated to parking ticket duties. Primarily performing mundane tasks of issuing parking tickets, then later are issuing tickets for worn tyres or broken lights, Kelly must meet his quotas for the day. There will be seemingly random events going on such as thefts in which you must chase and arrest the criminals, and story related events. The clock is constantly ticking, and you have to balance between time-sensitive events, and finding time to dish out the tickets to meet your daily quota.

The street is ruled by two gangs. The Italian Mafia-style gang who run a Pizzeria, while extorting money from local businesses, and “The Crew” who run a pawn shop which is a front for their drugs business. It's worth noting that the game is full of racist stereotypes (The Crew are a black gang), and also contains drug references, sex references, and a ridiculous amount of swearing.

The gangs are rivals, so accepting to help one will mean the gang look more favourable on you, while the rival gang will hate you. The gangs can be a good source of income too, but I choose to play as a legitimate, incorruptible cop.

You play the game with the mouse only. It's click to move/interact, and double-click to run. Running depletes your stamina bar which quickly refills. Although, over time, you do get tired quicker, which can be partially remedied with food.

When you click on a parked car, you have the options of checking the licence plate, lights, tyres, parking meter, and can choose to dish out a ticket, or search the car. Checking the licence plate and searching the car is only required for certain events; when you are told to investigate a suspicious car. Checking tyres and lights will pop up a sequence of images for you to decipher if they are damaged. When issuing a ticket, the drivers may appear and beg you not to complete your action, with most offering a cash payment as a bribe.

There's many aspects of the game that draws comparisons to “Papers, Please”. The gameplay is mundane chores within a time-limit, the pixel art aesthetic is vaguely similar, the fact it is set in the past and in a fairly poor economic area. You have to deal with shady characters and decide who to trust with a risk versus reward aspect to it. Beat Cop has more going for it since you can walk about, but yet it never seems as interesting and captivating as “Papers, Please” was.

I think one problem is the game's length. It takes several hours to do a complete run of Beat Cop, so you don't feel inclined to play through it multiple times to see the different endings. The majority of the game feels to samey too. Initially, the game seems to do a good job of introducing new ideas, and new elements to the story. After a few in-game days, the days just feel the same so it quickly becomes dull. The game is set over 21 Days, and this is just too long.

Another problem area is the bugs in the game. I failed a few Days due to bugs, so be forced to replay several minutes of tedious gameplay for something beyond my control was frustrating. There's times where you get two time-limited tasks at once and can't complete them both; so end up being punished for it. Sometimes criminals rob stores at the border where you don't get enough time to catch them. There was a bug where my character got stuck and couldn't move, and there was one Day where cars just didn't appear so I couldn't ticket them! There are some visual bugs such as cars driving straight through the parked cars.

One failure was because I didn't know how to use the gun which seems a common complaint. You click the gun, then a targeting reticule moves back and forth, but the gun only fires if you click the gun again (and not the criminal), which seems unintuitive. Weirdly, this was the only point in the game the gun was used.

Since the game is long, I expected quite a deep story with many twists and turns. You do get frequent reminders that you must find the jewels and return them, but I didn't see any hints other than that, so I had no idea how to progress that part of the story; and surely that's the main part! I did agree to help out a reporter with police corruption but then I never saw her again. As a consequence, I reached the end of the game without clearing my name. On the final Day, you meet a new criminal who doesn't seem to have any link to any story thread. It seemed really jarring to be thrown a completely different case to end the game. It just made the rest of the game seem rather pointless, especially when the criminal is yet another racist stereotype; yes, it's an Asian who wants to blow up the city.