Beat Cop is a game that teaches us how the life of the neighborhood policeman can be tough, especially if the area you have to manage is a piece of land where Mafia and the ghetto gangs make war, if the little criminals make life it lasts to the traders, the people are uncivilized, the boss screams at you because you have to make at least ten fines and you have the food to pay to your ex-wife, who’s tired of seeing you always at work.
But since we can not choose the table on which we play our game, at least we can decide how to play it.
Maybe instead of making that fine we close an eye and pocket money, maybe instead of arresting the mafia let him go to ask for a favor later, maybe let down the low-level crime while the big guys fill our pockets, or we decide to do the hard and pure, people will appreciate it, but there is always the risk of dying from lead poisoning just days after retirement.
Beat Cop is an interesting adventure that reminds us that life is made of choices
FINES AND OLD LADIES
Beat Cop is a cross between an adventure and a management game. On the one hand there will be the story of the protagonist, an agent accused of a crime that has not committed that must redo a name and try to figure out who has framed, the other will be the daily management of all the tasks related to the road that we will have to patrol.
Being set in the ’80s, the game takes advantage of all the genre clichés of buddy cop movies in the Arma Letale style: a head always angry, unpleasant colleagues, machismo, street jargon and stuffing it all with pop quotes of all kinds(in a building all the tenants have the names of the protagonists of Aliens), to the delight of those who appreciate these details.
But under its ironic and postmodern rind, Beat Cop hides a decidedly more interesting heart that will unfold over time. Being able to meet all the tasks required is sometimes difficult, even if the game could be much more punitive,
to get to the end of the day in the best possible situation we will continually choose between selfishness and altruism, between helping others or ourselves, between the way easy and the most difficult. Minute after minute, choice after choice,
Beat Cop tells us about the difficulties we experience every day, tells us that the opportunities do not wait for you, that life is hard and that each of us faces a lot of small and big “quests” that the rest of the world ignores.
With all the emphasis placed on our decisions and their consequences Beat Cop looks like an expanded version of Paper Please where the variables multiply and branch with an effect that sometimes leaves us extremely confused and intimidated. So many things to do, so little time.
ONE HAND WASHES THE OTHER
Another interesting aspect of Beat Cop is undoubtedly his social criticism towards a job, that of the neighborhood policeman, which should be done with extreme care and that instead is shredded by metrics that have little to do with keeping the situation under control . An example of this situation are mandatory fines.
Every day our boss will assign us a minimum ceiling to be fined under certain conditions , such as fines for non-stop or for wheel wear, but if we fail we will not only be treated very badly, but we will also lose money.
This has two repercussions on our work, the first is that we end up focusing only on fines and maybe we do not chase the thief who has just snatched an old woman, the second is that if we do not find enough cars in non-stop we will be tempted by the idea of make a fine to someone who has done nothing. Sometimes we will be fine, sometimes it will go wrong and we will be discovered.
The same criterion applies to attempts at corruption: the system is based on metrics that we can not know and that simulate the randomness of life.
There are those who steal for years without ever being discovered and who at the first hurdle ends up in the spotlight, it will be up to us to choose whether to walk on the razor’s edge and maybe put aside some money or not.
Then there are all those tasks that you do not want to do but you will have to complete to avoid trouble, like taking care of the grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s and will force you to stuff yourself with donuts, while maybe a girl is robbed in the alley below. And of course whose fault is it if things go wrong? Always and only yours.
