Quick Look: Beat Cop

"I'm a Cop"

Hooker's a good cop!

ahhh why does it bother me so much that the skyline is viewed from the jersey side on the title card

I'm the worst kind of person

Looks pretty neat, but the dialogue feels like it is lacking some. Rather want to play some Sierra stuff like the Police Quest games/SWAT 3.

Jeff if you're a cop you have to tell me

*Sees precinct number*.... Nice.

well so happy Easter or spring Sunday giant bomb...here is a game about bad cops......

This just makes me appreciate how well made Papers, Please is. A lot of games go for that style but I haven't yet see anything quite nail it as well is it did.

Happy Easter Xbox to all.

A damn good cop!

I know This is Jeff's second time playing through the intro, but I would have liked if he didn't click through the dialogue so quickly. The writing is a large part of these types of games and I didn't really get a good sense of its quality.

I kinda like what this game's going for but maybe the 80s vibe just isn't for me. Like a lot of the 80s cop show trappings are totally cliche today, so maybe the story and dialogue adhering so closely to those tropes is why it comes off as kinda lame to me? I dunno.

I'm with Brad, I think this game would be cool in a Papers, Please style where the core gameplay is of a routine 'daily grind' and the main and side stories are woven into it. I do like the adventure game stuff in this though; I might pick this up if it's cheap enough.

WTF, DID this game call a set of criminals Darkies...I'm good. *EDIT* and now they are saying things about mandingo....wow

An 80s inspired pixel art game with a mature tilt. How unique.

Holy shit, don't fill your game with racial slurs no matter when it's set. Who fucking wrote this, Nigel Farage?

Yeah, totally agree, I went from possibly wanting to play this to being completely repulsed by this thing. I mean I have no problem using that sort of language as characterization for important story characters who are purposefully being depicted as racists for plot reasons. But just casually throwing racial slurs into flavor text that's being spewed out by random passersby on the street? That's kinda vile.

People are already getting upset over the racial stuff huh? Yeah it's lame and applied a bit too heavily but I guess that's part of the 'lame 80s cop show that would be terrible today' feel they went for. I dunno, this comment section might combust soon so here's this.

@pancakepatriarchate: Sorry, but that doesn't really cut it in my eyes. Quite the opposite, in fact. The fact that some people are so flip about this sort of language is precisely the problem, and that disclaimer only exacerbates the problem, by calling into sharp focus just how casually the developers took these sorts of issues. The message that they ought to be sending is that they take this sort of thing seriously, instead that text just shrugs the whole thing off.

It's very easy to say "don't take life so seriously", but it is the definition of privilege to have the supreme luxury of not having to take racism seriously. I don't think the developers of this game are racist, far from it. They're just being far too flippant about something that honestly I don't think they fully understand. Saying "don't take this game so seriously" is not too far away from 4chan-style "they're only memes so lighten up" racism.

Again, context is everything. If this had been a game that was actually exploring this world of criminals and crooked cops in all its grimy detail, and it'd had a tone to match, it probably wouldn't be an issue. But this is a game filled with ironic TV cop tropes and jokey 80s nostalgia, it's got Top Gun on a movie marquee and Dirty Harry and John McClain on the buzzers, and in that context, the racism kinda comes off as part of that nostalgia. They can't have it both ways.

watching the rest of this ql... oo boy. the skyline is not the only indication that these devs have never been to brooklyn. oof.

Hey, comment section. Relax, don't take life so seriously.

@pancakepatriarchate said:

People are already getting upset over the racial stuff huh? Yeah it's lame and applied a bit too heavily but I guess that's part of the 'lame 80s cop show that would be terrible today' feel they went for. I dunno, this comment section might combust soon so here's this.

Yikes. It's so tone-deaf to release a videogame about the police and not only ignoring racism when it's set in USA but also dropping racial slurs in a hypocritical manner when you demand others not to take your game seriously.

@pancakepatriarchate: That disclaimer is weird. I watched a lot of cop shows in the 80s. They did not use words like "gook" causally. Especially the more fluffy shows this is referencing. More "serious" shows did deal with racism on occasion, and then some slurs might have been used by bad guys, but a lot of 80s cop shows were pretty escapist, and racism rarely came up intentionally. Not to say they weren't racist in their way, because there was certainly a lot of stereotyping of minorities, but the use of racial slurs was absolutely not common.

So, this show is claiming to be based on specific source material as a way of justifying its presentation, but then it's introducing this element that wasn't in the source material.

Man, that priest saying "We get transferred a lot too." (13:06)

Code 1-8-7. Murder-Death-Kill. Code 1-8-7

Meat Cop.

Man, I really like the way the building reflections in the windows move when you do. That's such an unnecessary attention to detail that makes a game with the simpler visual style stand out. Too bad the actual gameplay doesn't look too interesting to me. The writing also seems a little not great for a game that looks to have a fair bit of dialogue.

@blindx0r: Not sure about the shows, but the movies did. I watched 48 Hours again not too long ago, and Nick Nolte dropped N**** into every 3rd sentence. And that was a mostly a comedy! It was hardly the only one. Even The Bad News Bears was like that; though that was the '70s. That's not even getting into how F***** was used all the damn time as a joke punchline.

That said, I don't think this game should be doing that too; even as an homage. If certain, specific characters are saying that, with the point being that they are racist, that's fine. But when everybody in the game is saying that, and its all part of the nostalgia, then that just makes the game itself racist. Even unintentionally.

@fezrock: Sure, movies did do that. But there was a huge difference between what you could show on network TV and what was in R rated movies. TV shows absolutely did not do that (nor, obviously, did they use "fuck" as is done in this video game), and that's what the disclaimer claims the game is drawing its influence from.

Gb west being terrible again! :D

It's worth noting that the only reason that movie isn't completely abhorrent is because Eddie Murphy's character is so empowered – he's clearly the more intelligent of the two characters and he's not afraid to spar with Nolte's character verbally and physically. That we get to see him fight back is what defuses the language.

You could say that the doughnut is bleeding like a pig.

I want a GTA that looks like this.

The generally weak writing that I saw in this Quick Look, and it's casual use of some racial epithets in an attempt to add grittiness isn't really much of an issue. Perhaps they're being flippant, and are using this kind of thing poorly, but it's not like this unknown game and its occasionally amateurish attempts are causing any harm if you see that it's just kind of a failed attempt at being edgy. It's not "the definition of privilege" to disregard this game's use language. It's just something that I personally can pass over and ignore because I can see it for what it is - questionable writing that's not terribly worthy of any serious consideration or outrage.

The first (scripted) character arrested is a black man, for a shoplifting. Thought it was leaning a little racist out of the gate, but then the dialogue started. The second (scripted) criminal is also black. C'mon guys, you have to acknowledge and address this kind of thing beyond "this is the stated setting of the game." It's not like it's handling it in a mature and serious manner that confronts the issue. It's casual and flippant window dressing with slurs. That it's so easy to gloss over how deep that racism is embedded in this game just in this video says a lot too. Talk about it, don't just audio grimace at it. You say "some of it isn't great" but you guys said that at least 5 times... maybe more than some of it is bad.

@sabeau said:

Why would that be racist?

Damn, was hoping this was a GBE quicklook. Game looks awesome though!!

@assinass: @assinass :Never seen a cop show in the 80's say darkie on tv. Its not about the outrage, because I play GTA and should be offended over that but I get it. But this just seems poorly written with badly misplaced racial jokes. Just not for me, everyone has a limit. And it sucks because this is just my type of game otherwise.

Critics don't get to decide how art is made.

@sabeau: they are supposed to be part of a black gang. Like the bloods and what not. Are we going to pretend there aren't real life equivalents? You saw his standing with the gang went down. Maybe you shouldn't jump to conclusions like that.

@sabeau: Notice that the beat chief was also black. Black people can be both criminals and leaders of society, it does no one any favors to forget either of those things.

This is pretty cool

@tothenines: That's not an excuse. It's a red flag that ended up being validated outside of any fiction explanation. What investment do you have in the game that stops you from seeing how that might be seriously flawed reasoning? There is no historical element here; "80's cop TV shows" are not an historical object of worth in this sense, as previously described by others in this thread. This game is not even accurate to that, because it is being even more racist, as described. As I said before, if it can't handle the issue in a mature and serious manner, it should not even bring it up at all. At best, it comes off as "missing the mark." There are higher standards for this medium, and others, now that we aren't all children ignorant of the world around us anymore. The developers of this game made a conscious choice to do what they have, and it's a bad choice.

I still want my Law and Order: SVU game