really niche for sure but if you survive the first like 5 hours i think there's a lot to like once the game finally picks up the pace. yeah the plot is a ripoff (and so was Snatcher's lol) but i appreciate how Kojima applies it to his idea of space being this brutal anti-human place that renders any colonisation effort into a pyrrhic endeavor very much.
Really don't get all the negative comparisons to Lethal Weapon or the plagiarism accusations. Like I won't pretend the similarities aren't there or the plot doesn't hit a lot of the same beats, but I watched Lethal Weapon for the first time before playing this and they're really two completely different experiences. Like it's not even close. Jonathan looks like Riggs, sure, but they act nothing alike. They both have an aging black partner, but their relationships with them are completely different. They both have a dinner scene at the partner's home in which they emphasize how bad the cooking is, but the purposes of both scenes, the character's interactions within them, and even the point of the food being gross are totally dissimilar. I won't claim Kojima's a beacon of originality or anything, but a story consists of a hell of a lot more than a basic summary of plot points. At most you can argue that Policenauts uses the bones of Lethal Weapon's narrative as the basis for what is ultimately a completely different experience. It's like saying a total conversion of Doom is a ripoff even if it changes the genre from a fast-paced shooter into a first-person exploratory RPG. Derivative != ripped off.
To make my point clearer, while I think I preferred Snatcher overall, I'd still argue Snatcher's more a ripoff of Blade Runner than this is of Lethal Weapon. Both games still completely justify their own existence, but at least Snatcher's noir tone, setting, themes and overall air of paranoia and melancholy make its experience WAY more similar to its influences than this one is. If nothing else, the biggest defense is the fact that Lethal Weapon is an action movie through and through, while Policenauts' action scenes are just occasional breaks between what is predominantly a slow-paced sci-fi police drama.
GOOD