Policenauts Review

The pitch is a buddy cop film transposed to a space colony, and it commits completely, down to a partner dynamic lifted from a specific pair of American movies and a plot about organ trafficking and corporate rot. Jonathan Ingram wakes from twenty five years of accidental cryosleep, finds his ex-wife dead and his old partner running a police force in orbit, and the investigation that follows is one of the most talkative games ever made. That talkativeness is both the appeal and the barrier.

This is hours of reading, with a menu of verbs and an enormous volume of optional dialogue that contains most of the characterization, and it was never officially localized because the sheer word count made the business case impossible. A fan translation exists and is excellent, which is the only reason it has any Western reputation at all. The shooting sections use a light-gun style targeting layer that is functional at best. Play it for a script that treats grief and complicity seriously, not for anything you would call gameplay.