Weappy’s This is the Police came out earlier this month and jazzed me in a way that few games do. The story of Jack Boyd, respected chief of Freeburg police, struggling to keep his position, manage his force, secure his retirement and deal with the corrupt powers at work within his city had the makings for the agonizing, uncomfortable choices that an open-ended story can achieve only when told through the media of video games. Unfortunately, while the premise is great, the actual execution left something to be desired – Namely the unforgiving difficulty which brought me to failure in two separate playthroughs. When my last attempt had come to an end I was at around day 100 of the game’s 180 day tale and with so most arcs left unresolved. It hurt to give up on Jack, I wanted to know how his story ended, but I couldn’t muster the strength to go through the wringer a third time.
Skip ahead three weeks and the game has had at least a few patches since it released, and I felt willing to give it another shot. I spent the weekend taking a second look at the title, sincerely hoping that it would fix its prohibitively high difficulty wall, and see me through the end. Third time’s a charm; Weappy has taken steps to mitigate the arduousness and I was able to make it all the way to the conclusion. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it was worth it…
Addressing my initial issue, This is the Police has throttled back on it’s biggest problem: adding and losing officers. After two unsuccessful playthroughs, I was a pretty seasoned commander who made far fewer mistakes than I did previously, but even so, when I did botch tasks the game was slower to punish me, and it was easier to recover from setbacks. No longer does a bad day or two of policing cost you an officer slot. On top of that, the game now offers you several opportunities early on the bolster your ranks. Where as Jack was originally struggling to keep enough people to answer 911 calls, for a few dirty favors he was able to put together a fully-staffed force, and this made the game vastly more playable. Unfortunately, when the game isn’t punishingly difficult, running your police force is actually kind of boring. The game has a lot of content, but the mechanics behind answering calls and solving mysteries don’t stay fresh for nearly as long as the game makes use of them. It’s not that the game isn’t fun, it just isn’t fun for that long, and not enough happens to spice things up. The last third of the game, while now accessible, is really just a long, plodding slog to see what happens to Jack, which sadly…
This is the Police starts with a lot of story. Jack Boyd isn’t just a screen for the player to project themselves on. When the game starts he’s got a wealth of character, and his own tales to tell. While at first you spend a lot of time working through the aspects of Jack’s relationship with city hall, his attempt to win back his wife, keep peace with the mafia, etc., after about the 66% mark most of those stories are disregarded, or at best written off with no satisfactory conclusion. For example, there is an intriguing story about a budding relationship between Jack and another character that builds up a large portion of the story and then is written off without ever having a meaningful impact on the plot. I’ve already seen this defended as true to life, and while that may be true it’s deeply unsatisfying in a story. Instead, in the end it turns out that only one plot line ever really mattered in the game, and I would assert that it’s easily the weakest and least interesting in the whole game.
A quick scan on the Steam discussion page suggests that while some people did get what they wanted, most players agree that we’ve been robbed of closure. If those players are anything like myself the disappointment we feel isn’t because we didn’t get a happy ending, but because the game can barely bother to give us an ending at all. The final piece of the game, which involves staging a major assault against one of two sides in a shadowy political struggle, concludes with virtually no acknowledgement that anything meaningful has happened. It’s such a cursory conclusion that I wondered why they even bothered to have an ending at all, and it made the long, bland final hours of gameplay sting all the more.
They also still have their fair share of weird glitches
In my review, I said that I really adore the concept behind This is the Police, and I still do. But again, I’m still disappointed by how it plays out. It’s a title I really want to enjoy, but there just isn’t enough to love. I commend Weappy for the effort, because I don’t think the game’s failings would have been easy for any studio to overcome, and I would be very excited to see them come back with a refined sequel, but in the end, much like Jack Boyd, maybe it would have been better if I did nothing.
