HOPKINS FBI

Special Agent Hopkins has just been put on the biggest case of his life: find and kill Bernie Berkson, the most vicious and dangerous criminal in years.

Hostage showdowns, murders, terrorist acts: Special Agent Hopkins has to get around a nightmare of traps and twisted surprises in the course of his investigations if he wants to find Berkson and save the planet from certain doomsday. Let's just stay that if Quentin Tarantino had ever created a video game, it would have been "Hopkins FBI".

You play Hopkins, modern day hero and full time righter-of-wrongs, in an  adventure that will take you to the four corners of the world. A rich and varied universe awaits you, as you come face to face with over 50 characters, many dangerous, all one-of-a-kind. Try to keep cool as you strive to unlock challenge after challenge in face of ever-mounting suspense and action.

"Hopkins FBI". You're supposed to use your brains, not spill them.

~ from the back of the box

 

Violence in video games has been causing respectable people to clutch their pearls since long before somebody discovered that putting a big effin' gun in Doom was a good idea. Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and even Night Trap have all enjoyed their fifteen minutes of infamy, but somehow 1998's Hopkins FBI slipped through the net of discourse. This is particularly surprising because the game that came from French developer MP Entertainment would make them all blush. Released in 1998, Hopkins FBI is a point-and-click detective adventure with comic-book imagery shamelessly covered in blood and boobs, so much so that the censors came knocking at UK doors giving the world two very different versions. 

The story begins with FBI Special Agent Hopkins at home, reflecting on the strange disappearance of Bernie Berckson, the terrorist responsible for a nuclear attack on California that killed 50,000 people. Berckson had been captured thanks to Hopkins, sentenced to death and apparently executed by electric chair, only to pull off the rather impressive trick of surviving two shocks and vanishing. Where we meet Hopkins is at the start of a new investigation involving a bank hostage situation and a growing trail of murdered scientists and acquaintances. Bernie soon emerges as the culprit, and what initially looks like a fairly nasty serial-killer thriller gradually becomes something considerably more bonkers. The murderer is part John Doe from Se7en and part campy Bond supervillain, complete with an underwater secret lair where his baffling master plan involves human clones, death and resurrection. Hopkins himself goes on a trip to the Realm of the Dead, where the metaphysical business of life and death becomes part of Bernie's grand plan.

The city map lets you select your next destination to drive to (left).

Press I to open your inventory and choose an item to be added to your context-sensitive cursor (right).

The presentation is considerably better than the writing occasionally deserves. The artwork was produced by a team of illustrators including French comic artist Thierry Ségur, whose design work is best known to English speakers in movies such as Brotherhood of the Wolf and Silent Hill. The result is a handsome-looking adventure with detailed environments and a distinctive comic-book aesthetic. The camera tends to sit further back than in many of its peers, allowing you to admire considerably more of each location but making some objects frustratingly small. Characters are frequently presented in large illustrated close-ups during conversations, while the city itself can be viewed from above as Hopkins drives around between locations. The sound design is competent, but its the soundtrack that really stands out. Rather than settling for anonymous MIDI muses, the game uses licensed 1960s rock, including The Troggs' "I Can't Control Myself" and "Lost Girl", The Blues Magoos' "Tobacco Road" and Rare Earth's "Feelin' Alright". The cheerful Sixties tunes playing over scenes of murder and mutilation are so wonderfully inappropriate that you can almost hear Quentin Tarantino applauding from the editing suite.

The basic interface is straightforward, although its not without its quirks. Hopkins is moved with the left mouse button, with the default GO action allowing you to point him towards wherever you want him to walk. When the cursor passes over an active object it changes and displays the relevant field, while the right mouse button cycles through the actions that are actually available. Thus a closed refrigerator might offer OPEN and GO, while an opened one might offer SEARCH, CLOSE and GO. If you have an inventory item selected, it will be added to this list as a graphical icon as opposed to the tiny capitalised text of the others. This context-sensitive approach works well, but you can only have one item from your inventory added to this list at any one time. It's perhaps a blessing as your inventory - accessed by tapping I - can get relatively large, but still I never managed to fill up all of the available slots. The system is clever enough to reveal new actions as the state of an object changes, although combining objects involves a slightly awkward dance of selecting one item, closing the inventory and reopening it to select the other. There are also only six save slots, and they cannot be given names, so frequent saving is a good idea.

Access the FBI's computer to play a multi-stage clone of Breakout (left).

The underwater base has a FPS connecting different areas instead of a map (right).

Most of the actual detective work revolves around inventory puzzles, environmental observation and unlocking events through actions and conversations. It's not always obvious either, forcing you to be obsessive when poking around each screen. The first screen is a good example of what you'll encounter. It takes place in Hopkins' apartment where a couple of pixels represent a screwdriver and your gun - both necessary items. Leave the apartment with just these and you won't get anywhere. You'll need to search beneath the sofa cushions for your car keys, which is one of the most mundane interactions in a game with bank robbers, mass murderers and saucy depictions of the afterlife. The game's most memorable puzzle sequence is a gruesome treasure hunt in which Bernie leaves clues leading Hopkins from one corpse to the next. The victims are hidden around locations such as a swimming pool, museum and cinema, and figuring out where to go can be far less difficult than figuring out what to do once you get there. At the abandoned swimming pool, for example, a dog has to be distracted with a chicken leg found in a bin before Hopkins can get at the equipment he needs, after which a mirror is thrown into the pool to reflect light onto the corpse. The logic is certainly imaginative, although "imaginative" is sometimes adventure-game code for "how on Earth was I supposed to think of that?"

This is where Hopkins FBI becomes rather hit-and-miss. There are no traditional single-screen logic puzzles to speak of, and much of the game consists of chaining inventory objects together or interrogating people until somebody coughs up the next piece of information. Some solutions are satisfyingly inventive, but others rely heavily on searching every available hotspot and trying objects in increasingly desperate combinations. The museum sequence is a particularly memorable example: Hopkins has to construct a makeshift Molotov cocktail and use it to ignite a fireplace, revealing another of Bernie's unfortunate victims. It is exactly the sort of solution that produces either a triumphant "Aha!" or an exasperated "Oh, come on!" depending on how charitable you're feeling. There are also a couple of diversions from the standard point-and-click formula. An optional Breakout-style game can be played on an FBI computer (I knew that's what they do all day), while the late game includes a first-person shooting sequence reminiscent of Wolfenstein 3D in which you actually have to use the keyboard. Older versions of ScummVM did not support this 3D section, replacing the sequences with a makeshift map, but the current nightly build has it fully restored. It's a little ungainly, with little feedback on whether you're getting hit by bullets, but it's a fun if brief change of pace.

You'll have to select and shoot your gun quickly if you want to survive the woods (left).

The gore is extremely over the top. The censored version cuts away just before this happens (right).

There is also the question of which Hopkins FBI you are actually playing. The game existed in uncensored and regionally censored forms, with the UK and Polish versions in particular having its bloody sequences disabled by default. The censorship does not simply remove the game's grisliest artwork wholesale. Many of the in-game corpses and their pools of claret remain perfectly visible, while particular violent cutscenes have been shortened or removed. You don't want to play without the gore, as these laughably over-the-top sequences make up the game's pulpy personality. Even so, I'd be remiss if there wasn't some criticism out there. The majority of the victims are women, and many are displayed dead, mutilated or partially undressed, while living female characters seem to have an aversion to bras. Contemporary critics have consequently accused the game of misogyny, and it is difficult to argue otherwise. 

Hopkins FBI is not a great adventure game, but it is a very memorable one. Its puzzle design is inconsistent, its writing can veer from intriguingly strange into outright silly, and the game sometimes seems far more interested in blood and boobs than in constructing a coherent detective story. The tonal shift from serial-killer thriller to comic-book fantasy is particularly jarring. One minute you're investigating a murdered woman in a swimming pool, the next you're wandering around the afterlife or infiltrating an underwater base belonging to a man who apparently has both unlimited resources and an alarming amount of free time. Yet there is something undeniably entertaining about the whole ridiculous package. The developers were clearly aiming for the sort of pulpy, ultra-cool crime-horror cinema associated with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez in the 1990s, while mixing in the flamboyant villains and outrageous science of American comics. It has a strange collision between Pulp Fiction-style crime cinema and Superman-style supervillainy. Hopkins FBI never quite reaches the heights of either influence, but perhaps that is why it remains so fascinating. It is brash, tasteless, technically uneven and occasionally infuriating, yet it has enough imagination, personality and sheer weirdness to make it worth investigating. Just don't expect the FBI's training manual to prepare you for a corpse hidden inside a wax statue.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses ScummVM to allow the game to run on modern PCs. Manual included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 11.

    04.09.2026 Version 2 - Updated ScummVM to Sep 4 nightly build.

                                         3D first-person-shooter segments now work.

                                         Updated ChamberNotes to reflect changes.

File Size: 418 Mb.  Install Size: 808 Mb.  Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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Hopkins FBI is © MP Entertainment
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me

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