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Published
by DreamCatcher Games
Developed by MiST Land
Release Date: 25th February 2005
Price: £19.99
On
the PC it's not often that we get to look at a turn-based
strategy title. All too often these days the main turn-based
games are designed for the consoles (usually PlayStation
2). Thankfully titles like the Civilization games can still
be enjoyed on the PC but if you're looking for tactical
turn-based strategy games with some RPG elements you'll
be hard pressed to find a handful of quality titles that
have been released in the last few years (only Silent Storm
springs to mind). Can Cops 2170: The Power of Law be one
of these rare titles? Let's take a look.
The
game puts you in the shoes of a young woman, Katrin (known
as Kati) who has just graduated from the police academy.
This isn't an ordinary police academy though as the game
is set in the future and you're situated on Mars. Welcome
to the future then but it's not a future that anyone of
us wants to see. This is a future where the government have
a rather unhealthy control over society. People have microchips
embedded into them which allows the government to keep control
over them. Kati, just out of the academy, expects the world
to be a black and white situation with the good guys on
the one side and the bad guys on the other. It soon becomes
obvious that it's not that easy though and things that seemed
clear cut are anything but that.
Cops
2170 tries hard to be a futuristic Jagged Alliance. In some
ways it does a good job of this but ultimately it's not
as satisfying and those expecting a game to rival the Jagged
Alliance series will be ultimately disappointed that Cops
2170 isn't up to the same standard. The basic mechanics
of the game are solid and anyone who’s played a game
of this nature will feel at home almost immediately. The
game contains 13 levels, 60 weapons, 60 NPC's and a whopping
200 quests all set in a non-linear story. The RPG elements
are all here too and it's good to see that you can control
up to 8 characters at a time in battle. The battles do seem
on a larger scale (the environments within the game are
very large) than I would have expected too. The battles
themselves do seem to be dynamic and having played through
some a couple of times, different things happened which
does give added replay value.
Another
source of disappointment is that the characters lack charisma
and don't have that personality that they had in the Jagged
Alliance games. Actually that's the games biggest problem,
it lacks personality. The essential ingredients are all
there but it just doesn't have the personality to keep your
attention like the Jagged Alliance games had. Of course
'personality' isn't a tangible quality and the next persons
view will differ from mine but in my opinion Cops 2170 lacks
character and doesn't provide enough interest to keep you
coming back for more.
What
I will say though is that if this is your first taste of
the genre, then it will leave you feeling very confused.
The game makes no attempt to break you in with a tutorial.
It feels like you've started playing the game half way through
and that's a big mistake to make when releasing the kind
of game that doesn't come along very often. We didn't get
to see the game manual so I don't know if that provides
some information for beginners but the game itself does
little to make things easier if you’re unaware of
what’s going on. Newbies will wonder what’s
going on in battles as every action such as crouching, moving
or using a weapon, uses up AP and whilst this will be second
nature to many of those playing this kind of game, first
timers will get confused very quickly indeed.
One
key difference between the Jagged Alliance games and Cops
2170 is that whilst the Jagged Alliance games where in 2D,
Cops 2170 is in full 3D. Initially this might seem like
a good thing and indeed it should be but it's actually more
annoying than useful. To start off with the 3D engine isn't
that impressive to look at. This wouldn't be a problem but
it doesn't run very smoothly either, even on an ATi X800XT
graphics card, which is disappointing. Sure the game has
a few shiny textures here and there but on the whole the
game looks like it was made from a 3D engine that's at least
4 years old. One advantage of the game being in 3D is that
you have a first person mode. Again though this is pretty
pointless as it adds little to the gaming experience. The
first-person view feels limited and a last minute addition
to the game. Engage in a conversation and the camera swings
back to an overhead view. You can't see as much as you can
in the standard view and moving around is definitely a slower
experience. Some gamers will probably find it a novelty
for a while but many will try it once and never use it again.
There's
a lot of speech in Cops 2170, far more than you might expect.
Aside from the character conversations your comrades will
converse with each other. NPC characters will continually
chat away and communication seems never ending at times.
Very little of this is subtitled. Conversations between
Kati and other characters are subtitled but other speech
isn't subtitled. Text is shown in dialogue boxes that you
have to click to dismiss. The cutscenes aren't subtitled
either which is unfortunate. The game has plenty of other
text information in your journal and you are notified in
text when this has been updated. There aren't any captions
and again it would have been good to have seen them included.
Your
opinion of Cops 2170 will largely depend on what your expectations
for the game are. If you're a veteran of the Jagged Alliance
series and expect a title of the same caliber then you will
be disappointed that Cops 2170 falls short. People who haven't
experienced the Jagged Alliance games might be more forgiving
and at £19.99 it's certainly not a bad buy. However
given that you can pick up Jagged Alliance 2 and it's stand
alone expansion for £9.99, that might be a better
place to start. The lack of a tutorial in Cops 2170 is a
major oversight and might be off-putting for those whose
first taste of the tactical RPG (sometimes called sRPG)
genre is Cops 2170. There certainly have been better titles
in the genre and Silent Storm was one game that we looked
at last year which definitely offers a lot more to newcomers
to this genre.
Overall
Game Rating: 6.8/10
Cops 2170: The Power of Law is definitely a game that shows
a lot of promise but a rather basic 3D engine coupled with
characters that lack personality and no tutorials mean that
it's difficult to recommend to anyone other than fans of
the genre. However even these gamers will be hard pressed
to say it compares well with Silent Storm and Jagged Alliance
games (not to mention the old X-Com games).
Deaf
Gamers Classification:
(Click
here for details)
There's
a lot of speech that isn't subtitled in the game. Fortunately
though most of this doesn't matter and the information you
need to get through the game is shown in text. That's not
to say it doesn't spoil some of the atmosphere for deaf
gamers though.
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