Game 11 of 2023: Chicken Police: Paint it RED (2020)

Chicken Police: Paint it RED

Developer: The Wild Gentlemen
Publisher: Sega
Platform: PC
Genre: Adventure, Visual Novel

Difficulty: Easy
Date Started: Apr 14 2023
Date Ended: Apr 15 2023
Hours: ~6

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 8.5/10

Chicken Police! Police that are chickens! It's the famous Chicken Police!

In Chicken Police: Paint it RED, you play as Sonny Featherland, an aging cop (that's also a rooster) only a few months from retirement. In the tradition of hardboiled detective stories, Sonny is doing his best Phillip Marlowe/Humphrey Bogart impression, speaking in the patois unique to the prohibition era underworld.

Chicken Police: Paint it RED feels straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel, which is obviously the intent. Full of the tropes and bon mots of old pulp novels, Chicken Police mostly plays it straight. Sure, there's plenty of humor and clever (and not so clever) references and eye-winks, but this is more homage than satire. And you know what?

It works. It really does, and I liked it a lot.

You though I was kidding when I said he was a chicken but I wasn't, though. I wasn't.

The setting is, quite frankly, fantastic. The story takes place in Clawville, a city inhabited by a diverse spread of anthropomorphic animals. Clawville is something of a grand social experiment where predators and prey live in (relative) piece. Humans apparently existed in the distant past, but are now relegated to myths and legends. Andromorphic insects live in the Hive, a ghetto where even cops dare not enter. Insects are subject to extreme racism and poverty, and are depicted as having to take desperate measures in order to survive including and not limited to selling their larva to food manufacturers for cash. Jesus, that's dark. Everything is rendered in shadowy black and white, except for a splash of color here and there.

Multi-species harmony doesn't come without a price, though. Clawville has a figurehead king, but is actually ruled by the Council of Twelve, most of whom are in the pockets of murine mega-gangster Hobart "Ibn" Wessler.

Sorry, he's just too cute to be afraid of.

Sonny and his partner Marty are up against a corrupt system, attempting to figure out who is threatening Natasha Catzenko, nightclub owner and the girlfriend of Ibn Wessler. The gameplay is mostly point and click adventure, with some minigames and visual novel elements. Most of the time, you're traveling around the city questioning people, adding clues to your cluebook. Occasionally you get to interrogate a suspect, and your questions determine how much of the story you actually learn. Sonny gives you clues as to the suspects personality, and you have to choose your questions carefully. This is mostly straightforward, but I found a few instances where Sonny would be like "Yeah, now's the time to go in HARD!" followed by a bunch of softball questions.

I found the minigames to pretty weak to be honest, and the game would be better without them. You get into a shootout/car chase twice during the game, and I kept failing until I finally realized I wasn't supposed to shoot the bad guys, just their car. There's a minigame where you zip up an escort's dress, and it's just sort of... pointless. It's not hard, it doesn't accomplish anything, and you don't have to do it.

Like, why would I do that? Why would I NOT shoot the bad guys, with machine guns, that are trying to shoot me? Wouldn't that be easier?

Natasha Catzenko also gets a musical number that I found embarrassing. Like, the song was so bad I cringed(but well produced, the whole game is well produced actually).

tl;dr: Great game for adventure fans. Really liked it and hope there's more Chicken Police adventures to come.