Developer: Weappy Studio
Publisher: Nordic Games, EuroVideo Medien
Platforms: PC, OSX, Linux
Tested on: PC
This Is The Police – Review
There are many strategy management games and most are in the form of sports management games. This Is The Police fits the same genre but it is not your average strategy management game. Weappy Studio, a small independent game development studio from Minsk decided to add several themes that can walk hand-in-hand and developed a strategic adventure game featuring the police, politics and mobsters and tons of choices to make.
Story
The image of the police department of Freeburg has been receiving some heavy blows and the press vultures on the failures of the police chief Jack Boyd and his deputy Kendrick. The latter one has found himself in quite some predicament and is under investigation for working with the criminal mastermind Mister Sands. At the same time, the Mayor has announced an early retirement for Jack Boyd. The chief has 180 days left in his career and he plans to make the most of it. His close friend Kendrick decides to leave town while he still can but not before helping Jack with certain connections so he can build his pension of half a million dollars before it’s too late.
As the player, you control Jack’s thoughts and choices as he continues to follow his duties as a police chief by responding to emergency calls, managing, hiring and firing officers and detectives, discuss financial business with the city hall, start and solve investigations while gathering evidence against the rising criminal gangs, all while indulging the Mayor and his need for quiet.
Graphics
Visually the game is an odd combination of an intense visual novel without greater detail and while it’s not quite as appealing as many other resource management games, it is still an impressive combination of abstract forms and colors. The simplistic and minimalistic style of the game allows for a smoother gameplay which in turns allows for a better focus on the task at hand. Reoccurring animations that are part of the visual novel inspiration can become a tad annoying however. The user interface during gameplay is simple and clear as day, with several options hidden deeper in the initial layout.
Sound
Voice-overs tend to be a major feature in video games that offer narrative driven stories and you can see that these voice-overs are a huge part of the visual novel styled cut scenes. However the same voice-overs are completely lacking during the gameplay itself, creating yet another odd mixture of designs. Unfortunately the intonation of the voice actors feel misplaced and the subtitles do not quite match the written dialogue which can be somewhat confusing. To top it off, the voices themselves don’t seem to quite match the character they are portraying. In this case, the Mayor sounds ruff while the leader of a criminal gang sounds far more sophisticated and although these traits can certainly be part of their characters, it just doesn’t fit.
The lack of voice-overs during the gameplay itself is noticeable but the quiet is often interrupted by various police sounds such as the ringing of a phone, sirens of police cars, gunshots and other effects that will get your adrenaline pumping without much action. Before each day starts, you can choose to play a vinyl record to be your ambiance sound of the day but there are not that many choices, even if you can buy some more.
Gameplay
This Is The Police is at its core a resource management game and that is what you’ll be doing for the majority of time. For a large part it is also a dark visual novel but this feature is only noticeable during the cut scenes so they are quite part of the actual gameplay. There’s no need for a keyboard but the traditional mouse is your trusty companion.
Resourcing in this game means hiring and firing officers and detectives but depending on your choices, you can also pay a criminal gang to kill them. If that’s not quite your way of handling things, you might get lucky – or unlucky – and get your officers killed while on the clock. That being said, not all crimes are what they seem to be. As the chief, you’ll see a miniature version of Freeburg. Every so often, a call comes in and a pop-up shows the location of that call and the amount of time you have to assign someone to assess the situation. Certain calls are prank calls or simply false alarms and sending your team out can cause certain harm since they will be unavailable during their drive from and to the police station. The easiest way to determine how difficult a task might be is to check how many units you are allowed to send. Other calls seem like a simple task at first but your officers can request backup once they’ve assessed the scene. From the very start, you’ll have access to a SWAT team which you can send out but the catch is that you can only do this once a day.
Dependant on the choices you make, other equipment might become available for you to help aid your officers. The choices you make are heavily depending on your personal morals, will you aid the criminal masterminds in their quest for dominion or will you not let them have all the fun. It might not seem as such but the game offers several “factions” you can prove your loyalty to and during 180 days, that loyalty can shift like you would turn your head.
The game is fairly realistic when it comes to outcomes. If you’ve done your job well, your officers will capture the criminals and nobody dies but there are times where the suspects manage to escape. They can also kill cops and civilians during shootouts so you may want to be careful if you are advising your officers on how to approach a certain scene. Officers can request to take a day off and while some reasons are legit, other reasons are far-fetched and you’ll need to deal with their behavior as best as possible. If an officer has done a great job, you can promote them by assigning stripes and officers will try to perform better if they are placed with a higher ranking officer but don’t just hand these stripes out because you want to. Let them earn it!
Not only do you have officers under your command, you also have a couple of detectives which will investigate homicides. These detectives will interview witnesses and collect evidence from the crime scene. You can read through all the clues and once done, you’ll be given a set of frames which you’ll need to finish the sequence. These frames can be incorrect so it requires some practice to get used to this crime-solving mechanic.
Managing a police department requires some dabbling in politics. The city hall can give you assignments and if you meet their desires, you can request an extra job slot or an increase in your income. Politics is not the only thing to play with. All-in-all there are six affairs you can manage, including the police station. For the latter one, you can sent officers to trainings or throw an unofficial BBQ. Careful though as the money spend on these will come from the pension you’re trying to scrape together. Needless to say, the game offers a plethora of things to do.
Conclusion
Finally a police resource management game where we can send the uniformed men – and women – to traps or fire them illegally while pissing off the city hall. In This Is The Police, the choices you make as the chief of police are your own and can steer the game in various different ways. The goal however stays the same; scrape together half a million dollar as your retirement fund. As far as resource management goes, the game offers a plethora of things to do and you won’t grow bored any time soon. Certainly a game with a high replay value and a good amount of content to dabble in.
This Is The Police - Review,
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