Reviewed: March 20, 2005
Reviewed by: John Bowlin
Publisher
Strategy First
Developer
MiST land
Released: January 25, 2005
Genre: Strategy
Players: 32
ESRB: Teen
4
6
4
4
4.5
System Requirements
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
Cops 2170: The Power of Law is a turn-based strategy game with some minor RPG elements similar to the X-COM or Jagged Alliance games. The setting for Cops is a futuristic corporate-controlled cyberpunk dystrophic future. In Cops you play the role of Katy, a fresh recruit for the police force who has a sincere desire to fight crime and do good things. Unfortunately, neither the game nor the story gives much opportunity for Katy to live that dream.
Cops 2170 is published by Strategy First, who have a vast library of strategy games of all different kinds. Strategy First knows strategy games, but unfortunately it seems that they let this one get out without proper attention to the details required to make a game like this really fun and work.
Cops 2170 features:
- A large living futuristic world with more than 60 NPC’s.
- Limitless character development possibilities.
- 200 quests to keep the player moving along the non-linear story.
- A large arsenal of lethal weapons.
- Camera control with full rotation and zoom.
- Numerous vehicles from police cars to heavy space marine tanks.
- The ability to put together a team of 8 agents with different specializations.
- 14 large detailed maps that offer numerous tactical possibilities.
Cops 2170 doesn't have any tutorial or instructions of any kind. When you click the New Game option from the main menu, you are shown an introductory video and then dumped right into the game engine with no clue as to how to proceed or what to do. Eventually you will find the one NPC that you need to talk to actually get the game started and he gives you some vague instructions, which are not repeated so you had better pay attention. There is no way to repeat a conversation in this game so if you forget something, you're just out of luck.
After you talk to the chief, you walk around and find a couple of people to help you on your mission. You can also talk to the medical staff for some cybernetic implants and medical supplies, as well as talking to the weapon master to get some guns and ammo to equip your team. Different teammates are better at different things, so you had better pay close attention to their stats and skills before equipping them. No, there are no hints that you need to do this. Cops 2170 is strictly "trial by fire."
After you have equipped your team members and yourself, you must talk to another NPC who will then teleport you to the starting mission map. From there you must locate the NPC who will give you the situation and tell you what you need to do. Basically, kill every hostile thing on the map. Once you get to the mission map, you'll notice the first major flaw with the game. That is, you are stuck in turn-based mode for moving around if there are any hostiles anywhere on the huge battle map, even if none are even remotely close to range with you. So just moving around to find the enemies is an act of patience.
The next big flaw that you probably already encountered even back in the headquarters is the fact that the camera does not have ANY automatic control. You are forced to manually move the camera all the time. It will not follow your characters. You'll move a character and it will start to go off screen, and you will then have to move the camera to catch up to them manually. You will be constantly fiddling with the camera as you play this game. You'll have to rotate it. zoom it, un-zoom it, scroll it vertically, scroll it horizontally. Yep, you have full control of the camera. Indeed. You'll spend a great deal of time fiddling with it just so you can see where the heck your guys are.
The third major flaw in this game will become apparent the first time you engage an enemy. Basically, whoever shoots first, wins. If you move up close to a bad guy, and don't have enough action points to actually shoot him, expect to be slaughtered on the bad guy's turn. Not that the AI is anything to write home about, but the weapons are so deadly you will need to constantly save your game and reload anytime you get wasted. Any time you make ANY progress, you must save or risk losing it the next minute.
Inventory management is a pain. You have little boxes that you can store certain items in, and different items take up different shapes and numbers of boxes. So you will have to manually rearrange the items to get the best fit of items in your limited space. I found myself walking around the map, moving my character over some dead guy, then clicking the inventory button and shuffling things around to try and pick up the stuff that was on the dead guy. Repeat ad infinitum.
Another not so fun thing is that as you wander around on this huge map, other stuff is happening behind the scenes. Other cops are killing off the bad guys, and you may find that as you wander around you have nothing left to kill because the NPC cops have already "taken out the trash". Oh and on that note, forget about the Miranda rights or taking anyone under arrest, you know, cop stuff. Instead your only method of enforcing the law is acting as judge, jury, and most importantly, executioner. Yep, that's right, there's no way to bring a suspect in, you must just waste everyone that's "bad". Even on the early mission where you've got a "bad cop" and have been recruited by the internal affairs to deal with him, your only option is to walk up to him and pull the trigger. No bringing him in, no even hearing his side of the story first, just "BAM!"
And the combat, which should be a highlight of a tactical-strategy RPG, is pretty boring. Because combat is so very, very deadly, your only option is to save and reload your way to victory. Make a good kill? Save it, because you could end up with a party wipe in the next turn. You can't even see more than a few feet ahead of you, and enemies and objects pop in and out of view apparently at random as you rotate your view around.
Lets talk about interface for a second. This game has a pretty intuitive interface for the majority of what you do, pointing, attacking, etc. But there's a lot of must have features that are hot-key only and the only place they are documented is on the "hot-key cheat sheet" at the back of the manual. Important stuff, like knowing you can hold down the A button when you click to move to get All of your party to move to that location. But that doesn't always work, because path finding is so bad that if a team member is getting blocked they might decide to just go back the other direction instead.
The one good thing about this game is that there are a lot of quests. I mean a lot. Everyone you talk to wants you to do something for them it seems. And the quests and the story is non-linear and is somewhat interesting even if the dialogue is so bad it will have you laughing out loud (unintentionally) at times. The problem is, though, that sometimes you can fail a quest and not even know it. For example, on the first map you get a radio message about some officer that has crashed his vehicle and needs assistance. Fail to get to him in time and he ends up dead, and you don't even know you missed him. And to make matters worse, he's an important NPC who can help you out later on in the game.
Cops 2170 has a futuristic "blade runner" cyberpunk feel to it and the graphics do a pretty good job of evoking that kind of a mood. The artwork is pretty mundane but it does at least get the point across pretty well. For example, the cop vehicles all look appropriately "futuristic" as well as the different city scenes and such. But there is a sameness to all of it that eventually just blends into one big urban mess, and the graphics are also dark which darkens the mood (intentionally, after all, this is cyberpunk). Some of the critters you will find are unique looking, like the cybernetic rats with high-powered guns who want to blow you away.
The game supports up to 1280x1024 resolution, which you set from the auto-start menu options (not selectable once you go into the game). You can also set other video card related options. The graphics look like they are from a game about 3 or 4 years old, there is nothing really spectacular here but the graphics are serviceable and do not detract from the gameplay experience. Of course, the camera situation makes it difficult to appreciate the graphics since you're constantly fighting just to see what it is you need to see to be able to play.
The screenshots give a very good impression of what the game looks like, since it is turn-based there's not much in the way of animation to look at. Yes, your characters are animated as they walk around, but since only one thing at a time is ever moving, there's no major difference between the game as played and the game as static screenshots you can view.
The music for Cops 2170 is not too bad; it does at least evoke a futuristic cyberpunk theme. It's not as cool as say the blade runner soundtrack, but it's still pretty interesting. You'll hear a lot of it, though, and eventually it wears thin. The sound effects though, are almost not there at all. Sure, you hear an occasional sound, like when you fire a gun, but most of the time the game is extremely quiet. There is an ambient sound track that plays behind the scenes, and you do hear some occasional cop radio chatter, but the game world just doesn't really feel alive because it's so deathly quiet much of the time.
The one thing about the sound that is pretty irritating, however, is the vocals. There's a lot of dialogue in this game and much of it is spoken by voice actors. However, it sounds like they hired the programmers to do the voice acting, it's just that bad. The wording is stilted, it doesn't flow well, and there are lots of uncomfortable moments of silence during the conversations. Even the main voice actress who plays Katy sounds stilted and forced. It's so bad it makes you want to reach out and choke the characters. And you have to listen to it, because you need to pay careful attention to what gets said or you will not know what to do to do your quests.
There is no multiplayer, and no difficulty settings to go back and try the game on a harder setting. There's essentially no replay value to this game. The game itself seems pretty large, I would expect to take around 30 hours to complete this game. That is, if you can get past the extreme learning curve and difficulty level from combat being so deadly. For a full priced game, you would expect a lot more these days, like multiplayer options or a campaign editor or something of that nature.
Cops 2170 is a game that has a great concept, but extremely flawed execution. I initially thought how cool it would be to role-play as cops in a cyberpunk setting. I mean, there's just not a lot of RPG’s out there in this kind of a genre. Unfortunately, due to bad camera, bad AI, bad combat, and bad dialogue, this game just isn't much fun to play. The story is pretty interesting, and for a hardcore tactical-RPG nut you might be able to put up with the bad to get to the few good things this game offers, like the abundance of quests. However, for the RPG newbie or for people who do not have a lot of patience for bad interfaces, I recommend you avoid this title and try something a bit more user-friendly.