Chicken Police - Paint it RED!

Chicken Police proved to be an outstanding, witty noir detective game and is much more meritorious than its title may suggest. Featuring exemplary voice acting, a prominent and purposefully cliche story, an original soundtrack and bountiful animal puns, its masterful cinematic experience is a true stand out in 2020 and deserves a place in your Steam library.

Pros:
+ Professional, captivating voice acting amongst the entire cast.
+ Witty and wacky humour, teeming with animal puns throughout.
+ Astonishing photo-realistic art.
+ Strong narrative with classic noir tropes.
+ Mixes visual novel elements with classic adventure games and minigames.
+ Original & elegant soundtrack that perfectly fits the setting.
+ Interesting interrogation scenes.
+ Ample dialogue with over 8hrs of voiceovers.
+ A multitude of references to classic noir films, detectives and more.
+ Credit message bringing awareness to the alarming rate of animal extinction.
+ Collectables.

Cons:
- Cannot replay interrogations to achieve a better score.

Story

Chicken Police is truly, a wild adventure. Playing as Sonny Featherland, a seasoned detective and chicken who stumbles across an intriguing case. Despite being only a few months from retirement, Sonny takes it up and is forced to reunite the 'Chicken Police', rekindling with his old partner and fellow fowl, Marty MacChicken. The two have extremely cliche, opposing personalities but it works well and if you're into this type of humour, it will definitely cause a few chuckles along the way.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2283826834

Players explore Clawville, the civilised town, home to many different species of animals. It is split into tiers, much like our own society. The townsfolk still fall victim to their old ways and prejudice regarding 'interspecies' relationships (predatory and prey species), of course imitating that of interracial relationships. Insects are also at the bottom of the food chain and are commonly disregarded and discriminated against. The foundation and lore behind each character is rather fascinating and expertly crafted, with many diary entries for each individual, allowing players to become truly immersed in the fable.

The story focuses on one case, involving threats to the well sought-after dame, Natasha Catzenko (yes, it's a cat). As it always is, the case is much more complex than our protagonist first imagines, taking a sinister turn, bringing many of the characters true personalities to light. The famous chicken duo must question and investigate everyone if they are to unveil the truth behind Clawville and the source of the threats.

Gameplay

Whilst it is a point and click title, Chicken Police does make a conscious effort to branch out and include other gameplay elements, including some minigames of shooting practice and even car chases. The map is used to easily navigate between each area, clearly marked with pivotal story locations and some extras places to explore.

Each location has an abundance of objects to interact with, that will instigate fully voiced narration. Even clicking the same object 2-3 times would commonly cause new dialogue, it was never the same bland description. This was extremely effective in quickly establishing the personalities of the main characters, Sonny and Marty and removed any insipidity that frequently plagues the genre.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2283828269

With each character, there are 4 options, look, speak, ask and sometimes, interrogate. I never felt any sense of repetitively through my 7.5hr playthrough, despite constant conversations and dialogue, the game flows terrifically well and kept me enthralled from beginning to end. Interrogations are also done well, whilst it is not anything ground-breaking, it is still complex and engaging and players must tailor their line of questioning to the personality of the character they're speaking with. A handful of options are presented to us and we must choose which to say, some will sway from the topic at hand and cause a reduction in 'points' and some may just simply not match the character, angering them. Upon the conclusion of each interrogation scene, a ranking out of 5 stars will be displayed, demonstrating how effective the line of questioning was. However, it was slightly disappointing that these specific scenes could not be replayed to achieve a better score.

It is clear after playing and important to state that Chicken Police is much more like a visual novel than a typical adventure game. The focus is evidently on the exceptional quality of the dialogue and whilst the investigative elements are present, majority of the game is divided into searching areas and speaking with others. This is by no means a critique and I wouldn't wish it to change, however for potential buyers who do not enjoy reading/VN's, I recommend watching some gameplay before proceeding with the purchase.

Graphics & Sound

I definitely agree with the store page description, the best way to describe this visual style is 'weirdly-stunning'. Utilising real photos and photo-realistic 3D backgrounds, involving research into animals at zoos and days spent photographing the many creatures to create an incredibly realistic cast is astonishing. Combining this with the noir aesthetic, it ultimately crafts a striking, theatrical authenticity that I have not seen replicated before and left me taking screenshots of every scene. Inspired by L.A Noire, Aviary Attorney, BoJack Horseman and classic film-noir movies, Chicken Police expertly manages to make a name for itself and standout above other, more well-known anthropomorphic titles such as Blacksad
Although the style is definitely eccentric and unconventional, it is undeniably clear that the graphics and art included in this title is one of a kind.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2281936777

This expert craftmanship also oozes into the audio and the noir aura is further complimented through the voice acting and original soundtrack. Instantly, it is evident that the voice actors are professionals, and each character is a joy to listen to, with very defined personalities. This comes as no surprise, given that the actors are from the same studio involved in The Wolf Among Us, Horizon Zero Dawn and Warhammer End Times - Vermintide 2.

Technical

This game was played with the following PC specs:
Intel i5-9400 2.9 GHz
16GB RAM
GeForce RTX 2060 6GB
1920x1080 resolution
HDD
Windows 10

I experienced no issues, and it ran smoothly.

Conclusion

Simply stated, I cannot really fault this game. I am a lover of Indie titles and Chicken Police did not come across as amateur in any way, shape or form and I am almost in disbelief of its Indie tag. Everything from the cinematics to dialogue to the audio was masterfully designed and implemented from start to finish. I highly recommend this to everyone, especially those who enjoy noir aesthetic and witty dialogue. It is a standout title of the genre and undoubtedly deserves many more accolades than it has currently received. I eagerly await further releases from the developers and wish all the success on their future endeavours.

Rating: 9.5/10

This review copy was provided to the Devils in the Detail curator.

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34936724][quote]Follow my curator page, Cookie Reviews, if you enjoyed this review and want to see more like it

Ok ok listen, Zootopia but drugs, alcoholism, prostitution, murder, crime, and make it a noir detective game. Also make it have incredibly good voice acting, a good story, and make the subtitles have some hiccups every now and then.

If you are a fan of visual novels and have a soft spot for aging detectives, then I would definitely recommend the Chicken Police. It is well written with black/white visuals and a sound track that are true to the film noir style. The story is engaging and plays out in great detail with a wide variety of animal characters in classic roles (the sidekick, the sexy damsel in distress, the mob boss, the madam, the police chief, etc.).

I classify it as a 'visual novel' because 95% of your time will be spent clicking through dialog and clicking on hot spots to find out more about them. You point and click on a map to travel between locations and you continue clicking and listening for almost all of the 8+ hours it may take you to get through this title.

I love detective games and favor a balance between participation and observation (for example - the Darkside Detective, The Silk Rose Murders, the Tex Murphy games). For me, the sheer volume of dialog in the Chicken Police grew tiresome and I found myself speed reading and clicking rather than listening. There are about a half dozen 'active' moments and some cut scenes to watch. But, overall, it is a very passive game. As an achievement junkie, I clicked everything multiple times, spoke to every character again and again, and visited every location multiple times but still missed items. Since there is no 'chapter' revisit, the only way to collect the missing achievements is to repeat the whole game and hope for the best. This is not something that I am inclined to do.

The game autosaves so there is no chance to backtrack to a prior scene and some locations disappear once the story moves forward. I realize that this is the approach in many current games but I still don't like it. I became a bit frustrated with the lack of control instructions on the investigation and activity screens. When presented with these, you have to figure out what is required. I wasn't looking for solutions... just instructions on how to fire/reload a gun or what you were supposed to do on the investigation summaries. There is a 'hint' on these screens which gives a clever comment but no true assistance.

For the most part, the story moves at it's own pace and locations become available as the plot progresses. However, on multiple occasions, I found myself stuck because I had not clicked items in a particular sequence or initiated an additional conversation required to activate the map. This resulted in time spent clicking and clicking, trying to figure out what was expected (after I thought I had exhausted all options). At such moments, the Steam discussion forum was most helpful as other players had found the same sticking points.

To summarize, I'm glad I played and I enjoyed the story. Kudos to the development team for a job well done and making this title work with chickens, dogs, rats, cats, etc. If you are a gamer like me who prefers to keep moving during an adventure (rather than sitting still), you may want to consider your own tolerance for visual novels prior to investing in this title.