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The Future of Law Enforcement

Greetings, presumably law-abiding citizens. Video games enjoy indulging in some speculative sci-fi from time to time, but usually we're looking at what the military might become in ten, fifty or a thousand years into the future. Less often do we see what happens to law enforcement. Whether they become fascistic arms of whatever corporations of dubious morality are now in control of that particular wing of the public sector, or they're still regular joes trying to do a tough job that'll only get tougher when all the criminals have lasers and biotic implants, the cops usually don't get a day in the spotlight unless that spotlight is the laser sight on your high-powered cop-killer rifle and that really doesn't count, really.

Here are a few games that, while not necessarily putting you in the shoes of a futuristic cop, are a little more sympathetic to the thin blue line of tomorrow. But not like the thin blue line that comes from a gun with a blue laser sight. C'mon, we've talked about this.

If you have any more suggestions (and boy there's gotta be several thousand I missed), feel free to post it in the comments below. Or don't. "It's Your Move, Creep" (tm).

List items

  • Rather than spend this whole list dropping RoboCop quotes, why don't we just get Murphy out of the way with early? Much like in the film RoboCop? The eponymous half-man, half-robot, quarter-baby food enthusiast, three-sixteenths-philatelist, all-cop Alex Murphy was designed to be the ultimate in law enforcement, give or take a giant bipedal walker robot or two. Unfortunately, even Bixby Snyder would have to agree that most RoboCop games aren't worth a dollar.

  • Project Eden, from the original developers of the Tomb Raider games, is a bit of an odd duck. Though by all appearances a generic sci-fi shooter, the player is put in charge of four police officers with disparate skillsets who work together to progress ever downwards through a vertical city on a routine check that turns out to be anything but! (Sorry, I lapsed into "Trailer Voiceover Mento" for a moment there.) The game subsequently feels a bit like Halo by way of The Lost Vikings. While the third-person gunplay's aged badly, the puzzle content is as clever as ever. It had a PC version, so I'm keeping an eye on Steam in case it ever shows up.

  • ESWAT (I can only assume the E stands for Electronic) puts you in the boots of a regular cop who eventually gets promoted to the powered armor division. The way this Sega shooter increases your character's durability and capacity for violence but drops mobility has an interesting effect on the game's difficulty curve. Does it get harder when you become a nigh-indestructible Gundam? Well, yes and no. (Mostly yes.)

  • Of course, there are worse acronyms than "ESWAT" for your hypothetical futuristic Special Weapons And Tactics teams...

  • A Blade Runner is a special police operative who chases down and retires (so to speak) rogue "replicants": androids that are all but human, but for a considerable boost in strength and endurance and an inability to help turtles in the desert or something. Most Blade Runners are the keenest deductive minds the police forces of the future have to offer, except when Dave Snider is controlling one.

  • Cyber crimes are the worst kinds of crimes. Ever tried to arrest a meme? Probably not, right? Because that would be stupid. Ripper isn't stupid though (eh...), as its reporter protagonist chases down a killer that randomizes every playthrough, making it a really satisfying whodunnit. While the playable character isn't a cop, fortunately Christopher Walken is here to represent the finest in internet law enforcement. Just try to do cybercrimes while his giant digitized head hovers over you.

  • I should've stuck a few more entries between Snatcher and Blade Runner. This is going to be a tough game to write about without repeating myself. All right, here goes: A JUNKER is a special police operative who chases down and retires (so to speak) rogue "snatchers": androids that are all but human, but for a considerable boost in strength and endurance and an inability to keep their creepy skull faces hidden.

  • Mass Effect doesn't put C-Sec - the crimefighting governmental division on the Citadel, the expansive space station/center of galactic civilization - in a good light, with disgruntled ex-officer Garrus quitting in disgust to join your team of vigilantes and paramilitary agents. But as bureaucratic as they are, there's a few friendly C-Sec NPCs you'll be interacting with during intermittent Citadel visits.

  • Fortunately, I didn't waste any of my hot Kojima knowledge with that half-assed, copy/pasted Snatcher bit, so here goes: Kojima likes putting 80s action movies into his games and this is one of those that does that. But in the future? If you wanted to see Riggs and Murtaugh in the zero-g land of tomorrow during cop stuff you can't comprehend without a translation patch, Policenauts is probably your game.

  • It's hard to say if the Judge Dredd games really glorify the brutal law-keeping actions of one Judge Joseph Dredd, but when the streets are full of perps (and, uh, undead demons from another dimension), he's a good guy to have on your side. As long as you aren't jaywalking or dropping litter or doing some other misdemeanor that somehow still carries a fifty year custodial sentence in the cryo-cubes. What a crock of Drokk.

  • Apparently there was also a TimeCop game. Watch out Ron Silver(s)! Oh wait, you're dead now. But maybe TimeCop can go back and prevent that from happening? TimeCop can do anything, including the splits. And appearing in shitty licensed SNES games. Either is enviable, really.
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