When comparing Beat Cop vs Sproggiwood, the Slant community recommends Beat Cop for most people. In the question“What are the best casual games on Steam?” Beat Cop is ranked 18th while Sproggiwood is ranked 31st. The most important reason people chose Beat Cop is:
Even if it's set 30 years ago, Beat Cop manages to make a statement about issues relevant today. Problems like race, police brutality, and corruption are dealt with with a good dose of satire and introspection. It throws the player into a hostile environment and asks them to make important decisions under extremely high pressure and difficulty where doing something immoral is often seen as the simplest and fastest way of reaching your goals. The quota-based system is reminiscent of the statistics-based systems many countries employ to measure a cop's performance. This blurs the line between moral and immoral choices. Do you choose to take the high road? Or do you make an immoral choice in order to reach your goals faster? This way, Beat Cop shines a light on the many difficulties policemen have to address every day and the game does so while remaining impartial and without throwing needless accusations around.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Deals with relevant issues
Even if it's set 30 years ago, Beat Cop manages to make a statement about issues relevant today. Problems like race, police brutality, and corruption are dealt with with a good dose of satire and introspection. It throws the player into a hostile environment and asks them to make important decisions under extremely high pressure and difficulty where doing something immoral is often seen as the simplest and fastest way of reaching your goals.
The quota-based system is reminiscent of the statistics-based systems many countries employ to measure a cop's performance. This blurs the line between moral and immoral choices. Do you choose to take the high road? Or do you make an immoral choice in order to reach your goals faster? This way, Beat Cop shines a light on the many difficulties policemen have to address every day and the game does so while remaining impartial and without throwing needless accusations around.
Pro Players are required to make meaningful decisions that have meaningful consequences
In order to progress in the game, players have to make a variety of difficult decisions. For example, accepting a bribe may improve your relations with the Mafia but reduce your overall reputation with your fellow police officers. You can choose to play a good cop that plays by the rules, but it's not easy. You can issue tickets even for cars that are not breaking any laws, but those tickets count towards your daily ticket quota. Issuing them may have long-term consequences.
In order to reach their daily goals, the player must make the choice they think will get them closer to it. Whether that is the moral choice or not is entirely up to the player themselves. The right choice will reward the player, the wrong choice however can greatly penalize and set them back.
Pro Perfectly captures the feel of classic cop shows and movies
Beat Cop successfully captures the general feel of '80s shows and movies about cops. It's got all the stereotypes people find and enjoy in those shows and movies. All the cliches make it seem like it's straight out of Miami Vice.
Pro PC perfect port that actually holds up 1:1 to its PC counterpart
The Android version of the game is a PC perfect port where in there have been zero changes to the gameplay or content. This is a full PC title on mobile.
Pro Can be easily played offline thanks to no need for an internet connection once the game is installed
For those that like their games to work when there is no internet connection Spoggiwood is a good choice as it requires zero internet connection.
Pro Good class choices that mixes up the strategy of the game quite well
There are six different available classes in the game, making for a different experience when each one is used due to their different skill sets.
Pro Controller support
Pro Fully supports all aspect ratios, so no worry about if the game fits your devices screen in full
Some games do not fully adapt to the wide range of aspect ratios available on Android devices (the 4:3 screen on the Nexus 9 being a standout with this issue) which leads to letterboxing of some kind. Sproggiwood does not have this issue as it support all aspect ratios.
Cons
Con In-game time management could have been handled a bit better
Five minutes in-game are equivalent to a couple of real-world seconds. This makes time go awfully quickly in Beat Cop. The idea is that time needs to go quickly in order for the player to strategize and think hard about which choices they will make during a single day. This fact is further emphasized by NPCs repeating again and again that you will not be able to complete all of your tasks. The problem is that it's perfectly possible to complete all given tasks in even such a small timeframe.
You have a daily minimum number of tickets you have to write, if you reach double of your daily quota the game will reward you for that. But because in-game time management is poor, it's quite easy to even quadruple your daily quota which seems to not have been predicted by the game creators since the game gives no rewards whatsoever for reaching more than double your ticket quota.
Con No immersive mode
There is no immersive mode in the game which means the navigation bar will show taking up screen real estate on devices that do not have hardware navigation buttons.
Con Some may consider it expensive
Sproggiwood is priced at $10, which some may consider a high price point for mobile, though the game is a full PC title and priced $5 under the PC cost. A demo would have been a good option to try the game out, but sadly there is none available.