Chief of police, Jack Boyd, has issues… His wife has left him, his deputy is corrupt, crime is spiraling out of his control, his back hurts… And now the mayor is forcing him to retire. But Chief Boyd isn’t going to roll over and die, he’s going out with a fight. He has six months to secure a nice retirement fund, $500,000, just enough to support him comfortably, make peace with the mob, solve some murders, rebuild his life and maybe… just maybe… keep his job. Welcome to This is the Police, the gritty police drama game that comes at just the right (or wrong) time. In order to keep his city safe, accrue his nest egg and get back in control of his life Boyd is going to have to do some dirty deeds, make some hard choices and play some underhanded politics. The game, by WeAppy, is wildly ambitious, extremely intriguing and sadly inaccessible. While it’s a title that ultimately falls flat in a few very painful ways, This is the Police is ultimately charming and engaging enough that it still impressed me quite a bit.
At the heart of it, This is the Police is a management simulator, but stay with me while I extrapolate. Every day you will have a roster of officers and detectives who you must assign to 911 calls. Regular officers, who make up the bulk of your force, will handle everything from suspicious individuals to acts of domestic terrorism. When a call comes in you will receive a description of the incident and be tasked to send an appropriate number of officers within a time limit. On top of that, your officers have a professionalism rating; higher rated officers will be able to handle more difficult tasks and with less backup. Once you’ve assigned the officers they’ll answer the call and hopefully apprehend the suspect, protect civilians and return safely, starting a cooldown timer before they can be assigned again. Things can go pretty badly though, and officers who are outmatched on calls can result in escaped suspects and even police casualties, draining your available resources and hurting your reputation. Meanwhile, your detectives will be sent to investigate more involved crimes like burglaries, murders and arson, assembling clues that you will need to piece together in order to solve the crimes and make arrests.
The day-to-day mechanics of managing your police force is fun enough, but as the game progresses it gets a little tiresome and definitely struggles to hit that sweet spot of providing enough challenge without overwhelming you (More on that later). But This is the Police offers a lot of variety to keep things interesting. As a man of power, people will call on you for favors, sometimes it’s as innocuous as city hall asking you to provide a few officers to work a parade route, but it could also be the mafia, asking you suppress rival gangs or ignore their own criminal dealings. Doing these tasks will net you favors and even cash, but they will tax your resources and can oftentimes bite you if you aren’t cautious with your services. Furthermore, you have your own internal struggles to work with, keeping your officer roster well-staffed, in good health and happy. If you mistreat your officers, overwork them, or fire them without reason, you might find yourself the subject of an internal investigation, which could cost you salary or your budget. You do have options to fight back though, including bribing people into silence, or even paying the mafia to kill the officers for going against you. There is actually a lot of these type of these extras that take place, far too many to list, but it’s here that the game really derives its charm and intrigue. Its feels that something new is always occurring to keep things interesting, making each day more morally challenging than the last…
Stylistically, at first the game appears a little drab, but it quickly establishes its character with relatively simple but distinctive art and an excellent soundtrack. Everyday you will pick the an album to listen to for the day, choosing between a catalogue of blues, jazz and classical music. At first the art feels generic bordering on bland, but shortly afterwards the style starts to click. Story beats are presented in comic frames, voice acted by talents ranging from the esteemed Duke Nukem’s Jon St. John, who feels completely at home as the main character, to second string characters who feel a little forced, but overall satisfactory. At first glance the production may not immediately impress, but once the game finds its groove they really hit a sweet spot with a mix of the distinct graphics, suave music and and fun story intrigue.
I have to give This is the Police credit; I anticipated a sanitized version of ambiguous, even morally egregious scenarios, overlooking some of the less-than-PC aspects of policing in the 21st century. To my surprise, the game has no compunction about including racism, sexism and bigotry in a way that I felt was candid (These aspects are depicted as realities is Boyd’s world, left to the player to determine how to proceed) but also true to the world the story inhabits; the game never wags its finger at you for making a choice that Tumblr wouldn’t agree with, but lets the chips fall as they may within the context of the story. I feel the need to warn you that, if you feel passionate about this subject, you may not be happy with the way that the game refuses to vilify police brutality. You can do bad things in this game and sometimes they’re just a means to an end. Personally I feel that the title is frank in a brutal way that feels vastly more honest than the pitchfork-and-horns way that most games would portray it. Conversely, I might complain that much of the brutality of policing doesn’t feel well-represented in the game’s main story: when you’re running the daily calls you might electrocute a suspect with a car battery to get crucial evidence, but when Chief Boyd is trying to find out why his wife left him seem like the same guy who would backup the mob, fire officers based on race and murder detectives for testifying against him.
The biggest issue with This is the Police, and the one which unfortunately damages its score the most, is its merciless and (in my opinion) stacked difficulty. The day-to-day minutiae of answering calls and managing your officers is probably not the strongest part of the game in the first place, but it is the biggest, and it determines your ability to continue the game (Indeed if your force falls into too great of disrepair, the game ends). The first issue is the slippery slope you start down when you lose officers; if you fall in disfavor with city hall they cut a position, meaning you have to let an officer go. If you are already short on officers you’re likely to start failing more calls, and losing more people and thus doing even worse, creating a painful feedback loop that becomes very difficult to break out of. Even on a second attempt at the game where I felt like I had a solid understanding of the mechanics, it took only a few bad days to put me on the path to failure. In a game where it took me almost 10 hours to get halfway through the game, the thought of replaying all that work is almost exhausting, and I don’t know that most players would have the patience to restart from here.
The second issue, and I feel the worse of the two, is the fact that each day in the game follows a set script: day 45 will present the same set of 911 calls with the same challenges for every playthrough. While I don’t think this would have to be an issue, it does upset me a lot when the game presents me with three mundane calls all requiring two or three officers in a row, then drops a mass riot or an act of terrorism requesting 8+ officers, SWAT support and a paddy wagon, basically just to rub in my face the fact that they set me up to fail. And while I can often get by with three well-trained officers on these calls, given the fact that keeping a stable of six officer on any given shift can be extremely difficult midway through the game, this feels more like deliberate antagonism than an enjoyable challenge. This tactic is used all to often, making it so difficult, and so frustrating trying to keep my department together. Halfway through my second attempt when it became apparent that I wasn’t going to make it through it was too demoralizing for me to start a third try, and unfortunately that’s what I end up taking away from this title…
I really, really want to emphasize that This is the Police is probably the most exciting concept that I’ve played all year. Probably in several years. I love the idea of this game. I love the grit, I love the story, I love the fact that Weappy dares to set a story in a controversial setting without taking a high-handed moral stance. I just can’t abide by the fact that it’s too damn stacked against me. I enjoy the story, I love the look and feel of the game and I absolutely adore the dark subject matter, but the unwelcoming level of challenge makes its really hard to advocate for this game. That said, it should be retailing on steam for about $15, and for the amount of content it’s a really good deal and even if though I haven’t been able to get all the way through, at that price it feels like a steal. I sincerely hope that the devs balance this title out and fix some of the oppressive challenge, because I truly think they have a great title here. While I can’t rate this game as high as I would like, if it sounds like your kind of title, I would definitely suggest you take a look.
This game was reviewed using a preview code provided by the publisher.
