I haven't played it with the lightgun, but I'd assume not since Policenauts uses free aiming rather than choosing between nine sections of the screen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bones Justice
I haven't played it with the lightgun, but I'd assume not since Policenauts uses free aiming rather than choosing between nine sections of the screen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bones Justice
I am having a blast with the game! But I have an issue, hope someone can help me. I am using Mednafen with MedGui Reborn. But once the game asks to me to change the disk... how this can be done? Thanks!
Edit: I made a M3U, but that file is not loaded becase that error: Error opening CD: Unknown CUE sheet directive "CD_ROM_XA".
Hey Nightwolf,Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightwolf
I initially came across this problem too, though I didn't get that last error that you ran into with the M3U. I used the patched download from here:
http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/...nslation-v101/
What I did was simply create a new M3U file with this information in it:
"Policenauts (Japan) (Disc 1) (English).cue
Policenauts (Japan) (Disc 2) (English).cue
Policenauts (Japan) (Disc 3) (English).cue"
Just like that. Stick it in the exact same folder as the regular CUE files. Then drag the M3U file into MEDNAFEN. Use F8 to open the virtual tray, then F6 to change discs.
This should work, I just finished playing through the game this way. PM me if you have any problems.
Well, I just finished playing through Policenauts and here are my thoughts:
If you loved Snatcher, you'll love Policenauts. They are extremely similar in structure and the way the plot unfolds. There's seven acts in Policenauts compared to Snatcher's 3, but the last 4 or so in Policenauts unfold pretty much the same way that they do in Snatcher.
I'd say that Policenauts plot is a bit more philosophical in nature than Snatchers, but it's themes are a bit more plausible to our times. If Snatcher was Blade Runner + Terminator, then Policenauts is Lethal Weapon + Coma + Die Hard + Robocop.
Kojima does a great job at creating this entire new world in Policenauts that feels very plausible, with lots of talk on bioethics and medical issues with modern technology while living on a very well-constructed space colony that feels plausible 100 years from now. I found it fascinating that Kojima made Bioethics the biggest focus of the game. He seems to have a liking towards the topic, as Snatcher has a bit of that in its plot as well.
There are a few implausible scenarios/plot holes in Policenauts however that bring the game down a notch, or you could say enhances its cheese factor.
-They never explain how the main character Jonathan returns from being lost in space and frozen in a spacesuit Rip Van Winkle style for 30 years. I thought this was the biggest plot point, as it made Jonathan's backstory mysterious. But Kojima simply chooses not to resolve it.
-Your main sidekick Ed gets shot and lands in the hospital on life support, only to miraculously recovers hours later in time to assist you in the exact same way Carl Weathers saved Bruce Willis in Die Hard to end the game.
-The main killer in the game is the son of the hospital director. This is the most bizarre twist in the game, and he murders her minutes after you find this plot twist out. She dies, and the other characters in the game have absolutely no reaction. For some reason Jonathan and Ed also trust Chris, despite the fact that she chums around with main villain Tokugawa early on in the game. Her existence as a character I find to be the biggest flaw in the game. It would have been better if she simply wasn't written into the plot.
-One male cop and ally dies cheesily in the arms of female cop and also ally, and he professes his love for her.
-Main character Jonathan divorces his wife and she moves to the space colony. At the end of the game to save her life, Jonathan finds out his ex-wife's daughter from his her second marriage is actually his biological daughter, somehow. This is never really explained.
Other than that, it was entertaining. The shooting sequences are way better than Snatcher's 9-box screen was, but are also considerably harder. With a controller you simply drag a cursor around a screen free roam and point and shoot. Policenauts story peaks at the halfway point, then the final 3 acts suffer from the same flaws that Snatcher's Act 3 did. Thankfully, Policenauts storyline and ending were far better weaved in than Snatcher's tacked on Act 3.
^ Thanks for the review Baloo. I have to get around to beating this game. Now I enthusiatically look foward to it.
If I had to give it a rating personally, I'd probably give it a 7/10. There are some really fun parts of the game, but the techno babble gets heavy early on in the game, and it suffers from a lot of the same pitfalls most visual novels do. I was worried the payoff wouldn't be good and almost put it down about 4 hours in. Too much flavor text description, lots of randomly clicking around before an event happens, villains who spend the entire time explaining their evil motives in a long, drawn-out soliloquy, that classic movie bad guy-style way. and so on and so forth. But that's more of a critique of the visual novel genre than Policenauts as a singular game, as Snatcher had the same problems as well. Again, I enjoyed that Policenauts was much more plausible than Snatcher was, as that game's technological descriptions didn't really have the finesse that Policenauts did to go with the plot mechanisms.
Policenauts also has this absurd, pervy feature that would only fly in Japan: The ability to grope the breasts of almost every woman in the game. You can play through the game without stumbling upon it, as I didn't even realize it on my own playthrough, aside from one scene where you have to pick a mechanical mosquito off of the Hospital Director's blouse. I'm not sure why this was included in Policenauts, but it feels unbelievably unnecessary, and of course very Japanese in nature. I think an official English localization would have cut this nonsense out. I know the fan translation would have included all of the content.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baloo
Hi Bakoo, thank you for your reply. I re-downloaded the files. Then I found what I was doing bad: files are .bin.ecm files. So I downloaded a unecm file decoder to turn those files into .bin files. After that, making the m3u and... voila! It works perfectly fine now! So.... lets go to continue playing it back!!
Again, thank you :)
Baloo: the Japanese versions of Snatcher left out a lot of details that were found in supplemental materials. The Sega-CD versions added some of it into the game.
Policenauts likely had backstory info, like how Jonathan came back, in manuals and misc packed with some versions of the game.
a 7/10 is ridiculous imo. easily 9/10 and yes it is explained how jonathan got out of his cryonic sleep, that's what you meant right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Baloo
It is not a 9/10 game. I love the visual novel genre, and I think that Policenauts has solid characters, great design, a solid soundtrack, and some really great parts, some solid twists and turns. The character design is cool, the story is memorable, and there are some great cutscenes. But there are some plotholes, and some gameplay flaws. It's not necessarily this hidden gem of a game that everyone needs to play. It's a more niche game for a niche audience. I really like the atmosphere of the game, but it's not something that I can recommend to everyone. The pacing is still darn slow, and the gameplay is not streamlined as you click all over the place and go through tons and tons of needless dialog for no reason. The characters would not shut up during the diffusing of the bomb sequence. There was way too much flavor text in that part.
There are just some things about the game that don't make it a 9/10 for me. Like I said, if you love Snatcher, you'll love Policenauts. But there are a few plot holes, and the pacing is slow.
As for Jonathan Ingram, Yes I'm referring to him being frozen in the space suit. They only say he was rescued and that his suit was sabatoged by Salvatore to malfunction which is why it initally happened. But I'm referring to the fact that he drifted off into space and they somehow miraculously found him. What was that all about? Did they just drift through space looking for him? They just never seem to entertain that. It's akin to Rip Van Winkle, but he never grew older.
This article is too heavy-handed in its presentation for my tastes, but Policenauts does have some really odd and misogynistic dialog. And I still can't get over the fact that they deliberately threw in a feature where you can grope every woman in the game for no reason at all. It's bizarre.
http://ettugamer.com/2014/04/05/policenauts/
name me a visual novel game that you think is better than this. how did you rate snatcher?
I think the storyline is better than snatcher, the plottwists are definitely worse, characters are better except for redwood, who's too obvious imo.
also I love how policenauts story turns into organ trafficking maffia kind of thing and gets worse and worse. I also love the backstory with that handicapped son of ed
I not going to spoilerize this since it happens in the intro. He was in suspended animation in the rescue device that was connected to the suit, the ball that you see connected to his suit/MMU. Extensively expanding on how he was found, other than assuming it was by chance, would have added pretty much nothing of worth to the overall plot. Yes, more detail could have been added as optional background dialogue, but the exact hows, whys, and wheres of his recovery really weren't important in the understanding of the setting or Jonathan as a character.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baloo
IIRC Jonathan and Lorraine were never divorced, but yeah, this is a bit of a plot contrivance. The obvious assumption is that Lorraine was newly pregnant when Jonathan's "accident" occurred, but that would mean that realistically she would have had to have married Kenzo pretty much immediately or Karen would surely have noticed the birth date discrepancy. Considering that Lorraine claims that she moved to Beyond in order to be closer to the missing Jonathan, it seems hard to believe that she would have married almost the instant she arrived. That means that Lorraine would have had to have been heavily pregnant when she remarried, Karen never put the dates together, and no-one ever spoke about it. It pushing plausibility a little, but it is possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baloo
EDIT: That being said, why would Lorraine even hide Karen's true parentage? It's not like she was the result of some illicit tryst; her biological father was a pioneer who was assumed killed in an accident. She was the daughter of someone who would have been thought of as a hero. I think Kojima just likes twists a little too much.