This Is The Police is a strategy/adventure title that is almost 100% management, and boy, there is a lot here to manage. You assume the role of hardboiled police chief Jack Boyd, a gritty cop at the end of his career; in fact, he’s 180 days away from most likely sinking into an alcoholic haze for the rest of his life. But first, there's a city to clean up, and arguably more important, there's that $500,000 cushion to earn in order to get comfortably into retirement. How you make that money is ultimately up to you.
You spend most of the game in menus, looking at a large 3-D map of the city and a list of your officers as you decide what crimes warrant what type of response. There are regular old beat cops for burglaries and the like, in addition to shootings, fake calls and all kinds of run-of-the-mill events that demand your attention, plus political ties to sever or maintain, mob bosses that must be taken down or placated and a million, other small relationships that need you to keep an eye on. It’s a stressful foray into micromanaging, and you play a cop who probably isn't the man to turn the city around, if it even can be. Much like a cop in a real city, you can’t save everyone, and sometimes, even the right decision is the wrong one.
The Story & Flow
The game features a great cast of characters that you will be interacting with day in and day out, but you never have enough resources to handle the two shifts a day you are responsible for, whether it’s warm bodies, qualified men, money or time. Things happen fast in This Is The Police, and no matter how well you are faring, something else is always just about to explode, whether it’s a visit from the local mob boss, or the Mayor demanding four of your valuable officers to chaperone his daughter's wedding.
You are always responding to some crime or another, and the devil is in the details here; you have a variety of ways to respond to a given situation, and if you aren’t paying attention, things go to hell in a hurry. For example, a rape case needs investigative type officers, whereas you wouldn’t send them to a call about a liquor store getting knocked over. Words like “violent” or “gun” are key indicators of what type of force you should respond to a given crime with, and if you’re not careful, you’ll end up sending a drunk, overworked cop to a shooting by himself and end up with one less man on the force.
When a crime comes in, you’ll have access to paddywagons, SWAT teams and officers in uniform and in plainclothes alike. After you get the call, you have to assess the threat and respond accordingly, while keeping in mind that sending what you deem “appropriate force” may very well hamstring you 5 minutes later when multiple crimes come in rapid fire and you have no one in the station to respond. On top of that, the game gives the men and women in your charge different personality quirks and issues, which affect how well they perform. Some cops will want to take the day off, some have drinking or other problems, and just like any job, some of your employees will just quit. You have to keep your men happy while also keeping half a dozen other powerful men happy, from mob bosses to city hall. You can choose to give an officer that day off he's been wanting, you can fire him for simply asking, or anything in between.
Every man and woman under your command has a number that represents how effective they are at their job. Let’s say Sanchez is normally a good cop, but you’ve been overworking him, he's dead-tired, and he has a drinking problem. All of these factors are going to impact his effectiveness and overall rating of the officer. There are ways to boost this stat (handing out badges, basically) but that only goes so far. The tough choices come faster and faster as things heat up, and sometimes you have no choice but to roll the dice on sending a sketchy cop to back up his blue brothers, which may result in the entire situation going haywire. This all boils down to some tense, addictive gameplay, where oftentimes the best you can hope for is to be moderately overwhelmed.
Graphics & Sound
The graphics are not amazing on their own, but they fit the game quite well. The look of the main map is kind of a dioramic, cartoony style, and everything is very drab and gray for the most part, which is a really effective in setting the tone for this crime-ridden city. The characters all have a cardboard cut-out style, but everything is clean and crisp, and it’s very easy to see what is going on, from following your squad cars across the map as they respond to a crime, to selecting which officers you want to use on a given call.
The voice acting here is top notch, which is great, because the game relies heavily on it. Everything about the game feels right for the period and place. Tough guy cops bark orders and smoke big, chewed up stogies, your character monologues in a whiskey and smoke roughened voice like he just stepped out of a paperback noir, and everyone from the hardboiled, crusty captain to the slimy mob boss who is attempting to bribe you sounds just right. The music is mostly old-timey jazz, and you can purchase new records and change what you want to listen to, which sounds like a small thing but ends up doing wonders for the setting and immersion.
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