Give Me My Buddy Cops

[Fightgarr]

Now, as a fan of B movies I am very familiar with a particular genre of movie. The buddy cop movie. Classics (I use that term very loosely) like Lethal Weapon, Miami Vice, Rush Hour and pretty much any of the late nineties/early 2000s Will Smith films showed us the genre fairly straight-faced. The genre has been parodied and satirized many a time in movies with things like Hot Fuzz. The genre has a great potential for gaming. A somewhat tongue-in-cheek approach with a decent good cop/bad cop mechanic could create an excellent co-opertive story.

[img_inline width=230, height=180]http://www.gameguru.in/images/sam-max-wii.jpg[/img_inline]Now its at this point that I have to acknowledge that the genre has not remained untouched by the gaming world. The gaming world showed us Starsky & Hutch, Sam & Max and even the partners for House of the Dead: Overkill come to mind. But that isn't what I'm talking about. Those are games that have buddy cops in them. I'm talking about a game that's goal is to be the buddy cop game. It is a game where much of the mechanics relating to story arc unfold based on the way that two players interact with the world. Using separate personalities to interrogate, persuade or just come up with a plan I think would be an amusing and interesting concept within a game.

So what are your thoughts? Do you guys enjoy the buddy cop flick as I do? Do you think that a game based around buddy cop mechanics could work? Do you think my concept in particular could work?

 

[APPCRASH]

I do enjoy the buddy cops films. Also a game would be awesome. It guarantees co-op! The only draw back is that the two cops are not always equal. I mean who would you honostely pick from Lethal Weapon, renagade bad ass cop Riggs, or worry-wart depressingly old Murtaugh?

 

[Fightgarr]

I do enjoy the buddy cops films. Also a game would be awesome. It guarantees co-op! The only draw back is that the two cops are not always equal. I mean who would you honostely pick from Lethal Weapon, renagade bad ass cop Riggs, or worry-wart depressingly old Murtaugh?

This is true, for a true buddy cop game to work, you would need personalities that are of equal levels of intrigue while remaining very different and, in many cases (pun is always intended), opposed.

 

[quiet_samurai]

I have always thought the world needed a good buddy cop game. Something with good action and clever dialogue like most of the movies in the genre.

 

[SilentHunter7]

I thought Hot Fuzz was epic.

I agree that we can use more of such movies, but I don't know how well they would translate to a game. Cop movies tend to have a lot of down time, which would not do well for a video game.

 

[Fightgarr]

I thought Hot Fuzz was epic.

I agree that we can use more of such movies, but I don't know how well they would translate to a game. Cop movies tend to have a lot of down time, which would not do well for a video game.

Its true that many things don't translate well into games that we would hope would be a masterpiece. However if you could build on concepts in games like Sam and Max which had some shallow good cop/bad cop mechanics, you could create an interesting dialogue system. Adventure mechanics could put together putting together clues, stealth elements could be added in areas of infiltration. Gun play is an easy shoe-in for gameplay mechanics, as well as driving/shooting a la the Starsky and Hutch games. It sounds ambitious, but even if each element was fairly shallow, its putting them together as a whole that creates an video game experience simulating the feel of a buddy cop movie. As much as I love Sam & Max, its an adventure game about buddy cops, its not a "buddy cop game".

 

[NewClassic_v1legacy]

The problem here, like any other interesting and clever idea, is it's not impossible with modern gaming technology. It's just improbable because of modern gaming conventions.

Don't get me wrong, gamers would probably eat this idea up without a moment's hesitation, and then again en mass with buddies to get to play in groups. The problem is it requires a lot of coding. As I'm sure Meatloaf is well aware, planning just 6 separate strings of dialog for a single input-output discussion requires in excess of 15 lines of code per line of dialog just to facilitate multiple jobs and options. Doing this with multiple dialog options, several possible paths, and different interrogation techniques would require mountains and mountains of code (not to mention voice acting, script writing, and animation or facial recognition for higher-budget titles).

This translates to several hundred, if not thousand, extra hours on a single title, which guarantees no profit or has not user base from which to build its sales marketability. This translates to high-risk for the developers, and low to no yield for the company's profits and shareholders. So from a business perspective, the idea is sadly a bust.

I think this has to fall in line with my theory on AI NPCs, an idea that is wonderful in potential, but ultimately low yield because of it's niche following rather than global coverage for consumer response. Maybe a good indie title could pull it off after years and years of planning and execution, but I doubt we'll see a title like from major publishers this until it's outright proven to be a smash-hit, or the high-risk outfits like Peter Molyneux or Will Wright get a hold of it and run.

Ah... Curse you economy, for hurting my entertainment...

 

[Robert632]

i like the idea of buddy cop movie's, but there are a lot of predictable plot point's and joke's, at least it's predictable when it's a white cop meets black cop movie.

 

[megapenguinx]

I think that Sam and Max captured the buddy cop movie perfectly. The threat may have been somewhat serious but they never approached it seriously. The thing is most of these newer games (like Gears of War, Killzone 2) try doing the buddy cop thing, but they only really get the combat aspect of it. They take themselves way too seriously and so you don't get the full buddy buddy aspect of it all.

 

[Fightgarr]

i like the idea of buddy cop movie's, but there are a lot of predictable plot point's and joke's, at least it's predictable when it's a white cop meets black cop movie.

Which is what makes parody so easy, and what gives way for excellent joke opportunities. Predictability is to the advantage of parody.