“I’m a bad bad cop.”
No, there’s no comma in there for a reason. I’m not accentuating that I’m a bad cop, I’m describing just how bad of a bad cop I am. In this case, I’m a horrible bad cop. I’m the kind of bad cop that the mayor despises, that my own department doesn’t want to work for, and that even the mafia doesn’t feel like buying off.
To put it in laymen’s terms: I can’t even be good at being bad.
That’s possibly an apt summary of my thoughts about This Is The Police: it’s stuck in the middle, and never quite makes it to one end of the spectrum or the other.
There’s a lot of promise in a game where we can be a police chief in a city increasingly growing corrupt. Racism, murder, drugs and money are all central factors to a society spiraling into downfall, sort of like a hyper version of our own. This Is The Police wants to ask us about our moral standing in a world like this. It wants to, but it never really does. Instead, it often feels like it gives us choices between bad decisions and worse ones, plotting us on a scale of crookedness between very similar ends. And when the off chance pops up that we can choose justice? It never seems to really matter. It’s a simulation game that perhaps simulates things all too well, but doesn’t make that simulation any fun.
TITP stars Jack Boyd, a police chief in his final few months on the job. As Jack’s old ways are being forced up against a rapidly evolving, higher technology social justice world, he gives himself one out: become as corrupt as possible for cold, hard $500k cash. He wants to give himself a comfortable life when he retires (or is pushed out) and realizes that alliances and cutting corners are the only way to get there.
Integrity? Nope. Not here.
The game similarly combines two worlds together to mixed results. Jack’s story is told through comic book style vignettes into his life, from dealing with a failed marriage to developing ties to the mafia. He’s almost there, almost to the end, and just needs to cross that finish line. Jon St John does stellar voice acting, breathing life into Boyd as an almost Heisenbergian anti-hero. We learn to dislike him very quickly, yet still cheer for him in little ways. His story is definitely intriguing, and plays out like a serialized TV show with often overly cliched situations and characters.
The plot is woven, albeit loosely, into the simulation aspect of the game. From hiring officers to sending them out on patrol to training teams and even hosting barbecues, maintaining an important job like a police chief seems to be grueling work. It’s important, though, as everything comes with some sort of cash reward or payment towards our $500k marathon. Helping the mafia can net us great cash or get us in trouble, whereas a weekly salary is consistent but mind-numbingly slow. The first few in-game days of the sim are easy, with plenty of police to clean up the city and money coming in towards our goal. However, as the days and weeks move forward the calls begin repeating and extreme monotony sets in. Things get worse as calls compound, and with our finite number of cops we start to miss missions. This makes the mayor’s office unhappy, and prompts the city to cut budgets (and officers), exponentially altering the odds against us quickly. I often, often, often would run out of officers (available or living) to carry out a job, frustrating me to no end.
Similar occurrences happen with the mafia and even within the police force. Keeping everyone happy is an impossible chore, and being successful at any one thing can be just as difficult.
The two aspects cross paths on a few occasions, with Boyd’s story leading to broad thematic strokes over the sim side, but never really feel unified. In fact, I never really feel like I’m having much effect on either Boyd’s personal life or the goings-on of the police force. It’s there, it’s happening, and it can often frustrate me, but I give up “trying” in the middle, just going through the motions to get to the game’s end.
Weappy’s This Is The Police has depth in its machinations, an enjoyable plot, and some damn fine voice acting, but it falls short when it tries to expand on any one of those aspects over a longer period of time. For a game that spans 180 in-game days, it becomes overly repetitive and tiresome after the first few, so much so that many of those included me just walking away from my computer until the day ended. The ideas are all there, but the execution isn’t. I can’t be a bad cop because I’m not patient enough, I guess.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher.
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