Policenauts

Policenauts is an adventure game written by Hideo Kojima, released for PlayStation by Konami in 1996 as a reworked version of the earlier computer and PC Engine release, blending a detective thriller with space science fiction. The player takes on the role of former police officer and astronaut Jonathan Ingram, who returns to Earth after years spent in cryogenic sleep in orbit, having aged only a fraction of the years that passed in the outside world, and becomes a private detective entangled in a conspiracy reaching all the way to the orbital station Beyond Coast. Along the way he must rebuild relationships with former colleagues and loved ones who have been changed by time during his absence, and come to terms with just how far the world has moved on without him.

The game plays as a classic point-and-click adventure with investigation segments and sudden light-gun-style action shootouts, as the player searches scenes, interrogates characters, chooses dialogue responses, and decides how the story proceeds. Kojima develops themes here that he later put to use in the Metal Gear Solid series – cinematic storytelling, long, film-like edited dialogue sequences, and playful fourth-wall breaks, where the game reacts to what the player does with the controller outside the expected context of the game itself, including unexpected nods to reality beyond the screen.

Audiovisually, it was one of the most ambitious adventure games of its time, featuring fully voiced characters, a carefully considered cinematic camera, and atmospheric music evoking the noir mood of a detective investigation. The game also includes thematically more mature passages befitting its detective genre. Although Policenauts officially never made it to the West and remained a little-known entry in Kojima's body of work for a long time, it earned a reputation among fans, thanks to unofficial fan translations, as one of his most distinctive and most underrated works.

Why play: Fans of Kojima's work can, thanks to an unofficial fan translation, experience one of his most distinctive and most underrated adventures, with a noir atmosphere and cinematic camera work.