Why is it that the policemen/detectives/inspectors in point-and-click (and possibly other genres too, this just came to mind as I was playing Broken Sword 5) video games are mostly portrayed as characters incapable of even basic reasoning, reduced to being focused on idiotic suspicions, stubborn in following only their much appraised natural instinct/talent, instead of accepting and changing their reasoning/responses based on the evidence and insight brought up by the player character?
Why is it that you have to constantly find ways to trick these types of characters to be able to progress?

Can anyone point out some good video games in which detectives are not portrayed as completely incompetent?
Video games in which they might actually be helpful?

deleted

The Raven:Legacy of a Master Thief comes to mind. The lead character has some brains.

I'd go further back from Clouseau and go all the way back to Lestrade. And for basically the same reason, too! If the authorities could do their job, the player (or Sherlock Holmes) wouldn't need to. That's why the Police Quest games seem to be the only exceptions, since the player is the authority.

Harvester is point & click. The sheriff is plenty competent, but also crooked in a ridiculous degree.

https://youtu.be/yZAdzOSOiZw?t=498

The Police Quest series? I don't know if they count as the player/lead character is a policeman himself...

For movies, I've grown tired of policemen or security always being fully incompetent, they hardly ever are able to do anything about the bad guys but get killed easily. Like in ATM, when the security comes to the place and the victims try to communicate with him... of course that idiot lets the baddie get close to him and kill him easily. Stupid stupid stupid.

Carlito's Way was a nice exception, at the end the policemen (or train security?) are actually able to shoot down the main(?) baddie who is trying to catch Carlito. Not that it really helped Carlito in the end...

Sorry for spoilers but I had to get this off my chest.

That reminds me, I've still got to play Police Quest 2. It, along with its predecessor and sequel were designed by an actual policeman. It's a lot of fun too if you like adventure games.

Apart from that I can only think of Blade Runner, but there you plat the role of a detective type person who also interacts with other detective type persons. None of which seem incompetent. Only scary if anything :P

Ever since the guards in the PSX Metal Gear Solid all sported a depth perception of about 5 meters max, the adventure game cops seem pretty reasonably competent fellows to me. :)

I don't remember the police inspector from the Blacwell games (which I assume you played, since you've got a Blackwell avatar) as incompetent. The guy is reasonably smart, but just totally out of his league when the main character starts talking about ghosts.

Pretty often, the police is not incompetent in those games. It's just that they react badly when some-random-dude-who-breaks-in-crime-scenes-and-steals-evidences says the real murderer is a mind-controlling warlock or a space alien conspiracy. Just as you would in the real world ^^

As others pointed out, that's a trope that's been around for as long as mysteries have been written. Back when it first started out, I imagine it was a sort of impressive thing, like "Wow! This guy outwitted even the best of police, who are doing this job professionally!" Before it got beat into the ground, that is.
To be fair, how impressive would the main character seem if he/she WASN'T smarter than most of the NPCs?

Yup. And playing gaming's version of an independent detective means you don't get bogged down in procedure and rules. It's all of the power and none of the responsibility, but dammit, I get results!

I love the Blackwell series. I can't really fault the detective in that series because stories about ghosts and magical mumbo jumbo are pretty hard to swallow for any regular person.
I feel like this trope has been beaten to death already and I enjoy seeing any form of media where there is more than just a Sherlock type character solving the cases. Don't get me wrong, I love Sherlock Holmes (watched the movies, the British show and the american one - Elementary), but I also like to see teams of cops/detectives solving cases on their own.

I'm not asking the NPCs to be better than the player character, that would probably not be fun to play, but to be able to adapt better to what information is being revealed to them and not be so stubborn and deadset in their own one sided thinking. Hmm... the depth perception of the guards in the PSX Metal Gear Solid seemed pretty reasonable considering the view distance of the player and the level of graphical detail available at the time due to the limitations of the hardware it was running on.

Nowadays it's harder to justify very limited depth perception, other than making it easier for the player to progress, since the hardware requirement is no longer an issue.

The sheriff in this year's Kathy Rain I feel is an exception. While he seems unhelpful initially and has legal reasons to not cooperate with Kathy, he is professional, follows protocol, and is ultimately helpful to the plot.

The burgomeister from Quest for Glory IV also fits this. He's immediately distrustful of the Hero who mysteriously shows up in his town, but still presents himself as an official representative of the town and acts professional and fair during certain moments where the other townspeople rush to judgement.

Hmm, Kathy Rain seems pretty cool, wonder how I missed that one. No Linux version though. Wishlisted for now. :-)
Quest for Glory is maybe a bit too old-school for me in terms of the game design. I consider myself decent at point and click video games but don't know if I'm ready for one with dead ends if I missed a certain object in a scene and can't return to it without loading an old save.

My first point-and-click video game was Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars and I was instantly hooked by it. Played through the second and third game of the series. Watched the 4-th one on Youtube since the gameplay was so cringeworthy but I wanted to see the story, and now I'm playing through the 5-th one.
Also played through the Syberia series, Blackwell, Deponia (I was close to really stop playing this one a couple of times due to how much of an imbecile and complete douchebag they made the main character be), The Book of Unwritten Tales and a couple of other pixel art style indie games.

wtf? a ROMANIAN talking about BASIC REASONING? i'm surprised your keyboard didn't break when you typed those words maybe keyboard not made in romania? anyway... i once finished police quest 3: the kindred. not amazing but worth a play and no, there weren't any romanian cops in that game so they couldn't possibly lack basic reasoning ok?