This Is the Police (PC)

If you live in the United States, the police – their world, their culture, their authority, their relationship with their communities – have seen some major media attention over the past few years. Whether it’s a trigger-happy cop shooting a black man at a routine traffic stop, or cops being targeted for assassination by radicals, everyone seems to have an opinion about what the cops should have done in each situation. This Is the Police is the first title from Weappy Studio, based not in the US, but in Minsk, Belarus. While most of their understanding of American cop culture seems to be derived from movies and TV, they really do manage to capture the morally grey atmosphere that a police chief in a violent, mafia-infested American city might find himself in.

180 Days to Go

You see, the mayor is not the only person breathing down Jack’s neck. Freeburg is in thrall to various violent criminal factions, and they won’t let you stay neutral in their affairs. The first of these crime bosses you meet is a man named Christopher Sand, a modest, genial old fellow who nevertheless has a reputation for punishing those who get in his way by having their entire families brutally murdered - kids and all. Most games with a system moral choices allow you to be good, bad, or somewhere in between. This Is the Police, on the other hand, forces you into a position where your choices aren’t between black and white, but grey and dark grey. Try to be a hero and stand up to the Sands, and you’ll be dead within the first two weeks. Do Sand’s bidding in the hopes of staying alive, and expect to get a visit from Internal Affairs. The difficulty lies in making it all the way to the end by keeping the various factions decently happy.

This Is the Police is full of the clichés you’ve come to expect from police dramas – Jack is a rather gruff old man who likes to curse and drink; his wife has left him for a younger man but he still misses her; City Hall is full of self-serving, craven politicians and bureaucrats; and the only thing keeping you from despair and madness is a healthy dose of apathy and cynicism. The game is actually pretty well-written, and full of references that hint at the writers’ depth of knowledge, with allusions to Rudyard Kipling, Victor Hugo, and other classic authors. It can also be pretty entertaining at times, especially when you read the details in the text boxes.

It's Good to Be the Chief ... Right?

Each time you respond to a call, there’s a short description of the situation, and you can decide how many officers you want to send in response. This will depend on the crime allegedly taking place, obviously – a bank robbery will require more officers than a naked old man walking down the street. Sometimes you have to make decisions on the scene – do you go in with guns blazing, or attempt to reason with the suspect? Or do you drive the cruiser through the front window? An officer arriving at the scene will often request backup, and sometimes calls are false alarms. So you have to be careful. When you dispatch officers, you won’t be able to use them for other calls until they come back to the station, and the proximity of the call to the station will determine how long a call takes to complete.

Purple calls are the most interesting – they indicate investigations, and you’ll need to assign detectives to them. Once you have a detective on the job, the investigation mechanic works like this: You piece together a sequence of events by placing photographs on the wall in the correct order. When the investigation begins, you will only have the first and last photograph. As it continues, you will come up with additional photographs, but not all of them are useful, and some are deliberately misleading. To figure out the proper sequence, and to sort the good photos from the bad, you need to consult witness statements and reports from the crime scene itself. When you have your suspect, you send the lead investigator in along with some officers to make the arrest. Sometimes these investigations will allow you to take down entire criminal organizations, which will give you a really nice monetary bonus.

There are also gang wars, and you’ll be forced to choose a side. It’s not as easy as it sounds, though. You’ll have to carry out various tasks over two weeks for the crime lord you want to support, but you also have to avoid alerting the other one of your true allegiance. So you have to work for both of them, yet still ensure that the horse you’re backing wins in the end. And remember, working for these guys is illegal anyway, so you can also get arrested.

Staff Infection

Each officer’s portrait will indicate their level of Professionalism, which gives you an idea of how successful they’re likely to be in carrying out tasks. You can also see their Energy (i.e. fatigue), so it’s good to give them a day off every now and then. Other characteristics might include drunkenness, which will impact their job performance, and if you click on a portrait, you can see that officer’s political affiliation and performance history. There are also hidden characteristics such as laziness and the like which you’re just going to have to figure out for yourself.

Also, much like the game of Guess Who?, each officer will have a set of physical characteristics, such as age, sex, and race. These factors will come into play in various ways — older officers can be let go without any real cause; the mayor might request that you put all your Asian cops on one shift to impress a visiting dignitary, or conversely order you to fire all your black cops because the white supremacist gangs are promising to raise hell if you don’t. Be careful, though — it’s important to keep your officers happy in addition to pleasing the mayor and the gangs, or else someone might rat on you.

If an officer dies, quits, or is fired, you won’t be able to use him or her anymore, but you won’t be able to use their replacement either until the next time that shift works. You can hire replacements at the Police Station on the “Affairs” tab, where you can also find the features, such as the ability to make requests from City Hall. The gangs also offer certain services, such as “crime traps”, which allow you to have a pesky officer killed in the line of duty.

Minimalist Art and Smooth Jazz

The UI is crisp and easy to use — things are easy to read, and it’s easy to find the information you need (if it’s available at all). My only beef was that the mouse moves a bit slowly, and there’s no way to adjust mouse speed or sensitivity. Overall though the simple graphics style is really interesting, and should work just as well on older machines as newer ones.

The way music works in the game is really cool, too. Each day, you get to choose a record from your collection – most of your songs are jazz, ragtime, or classical, and you can also purchase more of them from a music catalog using your in-game money. The music usually fits in well with the character of the game, which has a sort of Sim-City meets The Wire meets The Maltese Falcon feel. The voice acting is good too – though for some reason the mayor sounds exactly like Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Of Save Files, Tutorials, and Groundhog Day

This severely damages the replay value, since there’s no real challenge if you know what’s going on. For example, early in the game is a “hostage situation” that sounds dangerous, but turns out to be a kid who’s been grounded for not eating his broccoli. Each time I play it now, I just send one inexperienced cop, and get the same result. Or since investigations are the same, I don’t even bother reading through the evidence, since I already know the sequence. They really missed an opportunity here — if only the calls were randomized in some kind of way, the game would be infinitely replayable. Then again, this is a single story, so maybe the whole idea is to get you through the game by learning from your mistakes at various junctures, which would be really hard to do if events were random.

Finally, there’s a really helpful tutorial option that walks you through each new concept as you play the game, so you don’t waste any time in a separate tutorial sequence that doesn’t “count” You also get a deputy, who offers you various bits of advice throughout the story. You can also use him to help you find snitches in your own ranks, organize a barbecue for your officers, etc.