PLATFORM: PC, PS4, SWITCH, XBOX ONE (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
You know those old paintings of dogs playing poker where they’re all kicking back around the table, wearing human clothes, drinking, smoking and shouting at each other like something out of a nightmare? Imagine that, but replace the dogs and tables with a whole menagerie of different animals in a variety of environments, all rendered in photorealistic super-high definition to make the whole thing even creepier than it sounds…
Chicken Police is a buddy-cop noir adventure (really, it is…) that follows Sonny Featherland (a chicken, naturally), a grizzled veteran of the Clawville Police Department who is forced to work alongside his former partner, Marty MacChicken, to solve a very peck-uliar (sorry…) case. Inspired by noir classics of the 1940s, the entire game is presented in black and white, which suits the old-school point-and-click / visual novel gameplay perfectly. The Chicken Police themselves, and the surrounding cast of goats, mice, rabbits, birds and more are delightfully ridiculous (although always just ever so slightly unsettling), and may well prove to be some of the most memorable characters we’ll see in any videogame this year – you’re certainly not likely to forget them any time soon. Full of absurd humour, Chicken Police’s tongue is very firmly planted in its own cheek (or beak), again blending well with the overall tone of the game.
Like most visual novels, it’s very heavy on the (fully voice-acted) dialogue – moving between locations, you’ll interact with all sorts of shady characters and scour the surroundings for clues by clicking your way around each screen, occasionally solving a quick puzzle here and there and, ultimately, crack the case. If you’re a fan of classic PC point-and-click games and don’t take things too seriously, Chicken Police should be right up your street!
