Retro Review - Policenauts

Hideo Kojima is perhaps one of the most committed people to his work in the video game industry, over the years he has been able to form a very big reputation and part of that is due to his video games, which always have a pretty deep storyline, with a lot of symbolism and crazy plot twists. Death Stranding, his latest video game is proof of that. But this man, is the creator of Metal Gear, one of my favorite games, but long before that, he also made video games in which you can also notice his great "work" in creating very cinematic video game plots (being an aspect that is still very current today). Today I will talk about a game by Hideo Kojima which has certain elements of "interactive movie", graphic adventure or graphic novel. A video game whose plot is based on the story.

Today's Retro Review is about: Policenauts.

As a good creator of deep stories and plots with many plot twists, Hideo Kojima, created a science-fiction story with all the typical things we already know of this game developer, which often tends to create stories with many symbolisms that at various times becomes confusing. Policenauts focuses its story on Ingram, which in the year 2013 served as spacial police (Policenaut) and was assigned the mission of protecting the first space colony called Beyond, but to Ingram's bad luck there was an accident which left him stranded in the vastness of space for 30 years. After so many years he was found and still kept his youth thanks to a hibernation capsule. Now Ingram after so many years is now in charge of being a private detective, being aware that everything has changed. One day he receives a visit from his ex-wife, who has remarried another man after so many years of Ingram's disappearance. Ingram's ex-wife Lorreine asks him for help since her current husband is missing in Beyond. Although Ingram is reluctant to accept the job, it is because of Lorreine's murder that occurs shortly after his visit that Ingram focuses on solving this murder and the mystery behind the disappearance. Ingram will have the help of a former co-worker: Ed Brown, being these two characters Ingram and Ed Brown a total inspiration of the characters of Lethal Weapon, both in design and in certain aspects of personality.

This game is "retro anime" in its purest state and I like that a lot. Policenauts looks great in each of its pixels, its retro cyberpunk aesthetics is magnificent and too flashy, watching this game is like going back to the past and at least personally it caused me a lot of nostalgia when I was playing it. As I said before, Policenauts with its 90's retro anime style, has a beautiful drawing style, each screen that this game shows us has an excellent atmosphere, very well drawn and with great detail.

Being a game of the genre "graphic adventure" or more accurate would be to say: "visual novel" (although it also presents other genres of video games), the characters do not have many animations, but we will always see cutscenes of the highest quality, this game is really a gem. I did not know this game until recently, I was very surprised to learn that it was a game of Hideo Kojima himself, is for this reason that I wanted to play it and really worth it, however it is not a game for everyone, although I will talk about this in the "gameplay" section, however, being a game in the purest retro anime style, for all fans of this type of style is a game that should play it.

The music in this game is simply spectacular, seriously, what a soundtrack, one of the best I've heard in a video game by far, far superior to any other, and I said this without wanting to exaggerate, but really the soundtrack of Policenauts is of the highest quality. The soundtrack of Policenauts, at certain times reminds me of the soundtrack of Cowboy Bebop, as some of these melodies convey sadness, loneliness, melancholy, but also somehow convey action and that something that feels like "being in space". The dubbing of the characters, like the vast majority of projects where there are Japanese voice actors, is an outstanding job, with voices that fit very well with the characters and the situations they are living. There is not much to say in this aspect, since as far as Japanese voice actors are concerned, they have always been among the best in the industry.

This is the aspect that many people may not like, since Policenauts is not a conventional graphic adventure like the classic LucasArts games, it would be more correct to call Policenauts as a "visual novel", since it has more elements of this genre of videogames than "graphic adventure", however, like any other game of the genre "graphic adventure", in Policenauts we will also be in a "point and click" environment to be able to perform most of the actions corresponding to the gameplay of this game.

But being, again, a game of the "visual novel" genre; Policenauts is based entirely on narrative, so we are going to have to read a lot, but a lot, in this video game, there is a lot of text, since the story is quite extensive and as is typical of Hideo Kojima, its plot is full of symbolism, plot twists and even absurd things.

Like any point and click game, it is necessary to investigate the scenery in search of clues and information, information that is directly hidden in some part of the environment or information that we can get from a character. There are many lines of dialogue that we can recreate with the NPCs, I'm not lying when I say that this game is based purely on narrative and for this reason it may be a boring game for many people. However, to vary the gameplay a bit, there will also be "FPS" sections where we will have to shoot at enemies, these "first person shooter" sections are quite simple, as they consist of a fixed scenario in which we will have to shoot at certain enemies. Similarly, we must also solve some puzzles of a certain degree of difficulty.

Policenauts is really a jewel that deserves more knowledge, it is a "nicho" game known only by those fans of this type of video games that could be considered as a "cult game". A game with a great narrative depth and that both in the visual aspect, as in the sound aspect is something really magnificent.