This is the Police review – game about police we've all been waiting for

Although unemployment in Freeburg is less than 1%, social unrest is an important piece of the local political puzzle. Almost everyone in this city has some shady connections and/or had their palms greased at some point – the town hall is overflowing with people only waiting for a chance to grab some extra money on the side, and the city itself is one step from being taken over by the mafia. You have to admit that the circumstances under which our hero, veteran police officer Jack Boyd, has to operate are far from advantageous. Now, after many years of hard work, he is finally being allowed to retire. Or perhaps "forced” is a better word. It’s a shame, actually, as he was a man of highest moral standards. Up until now that is, because having been wronged like that changes a man, making him want to repay in kind. His task won't be easy, because sowing confusion and disorder in the police force is a challenge; what's more, it comes with considerable risks.

Half a year of scams

In This is the Police the developers give us an opportunity to play through the last 180 days of work as the local chief of police. This adventure, however, is not completely predictable. A variety of factors can significantly hinder or – on the contrary – make it easier to carry out our daily duties... as well as some matters that need to be handled from a less than official position. This game is in fact a unique combination of role-playing and strategy, and it will be the former aspect that I will focus on at this point. The developers chose a very interesting way of leading the narrative – we are the ones responsible for the direction in which the plot unfolds. Virtually from the game's very beginning, our choices determine what people the hero encounters and whether he will actually go all the way trying to exploit his shady ties with the mafia, or remain faithful to the city that employs him and his duty as a police officer.

Fun fact: It takes three attempts to start up any car in Freeburg.

Throughout the game Jack Boyd constantly finds himself is between a rock and a hard place – on the one hand, it is difficult to reject requests from his closest friends, on the other – this means brushing up against the law he swore to uphold. The mafia fights for influence in dubious ways, and the city authorities take extra care to keep police engaged while on duty, using them for their own private purposes. The story is told through images and conversations between the characters. The result is top-notch, and the plot is presented in a rather unusual manner, yet befitting a cop and crime story. Most of the credit goes to the excellent work of the voice actors, with Jon St. John, the voice of the iconic Duke Nukem as the game's main character, shining particularly bright. In this aspect, the game did a wonderful job.

All done? All right, boys and girls, take him in.

Come in, Boyd!

Just how brutal and unfulfilling can the work of a police officer get we find out in the game's strategic mode where we supervise the work of policemen and policewomen on the streets of Freeburg. We engage in tasks every day, using two shifts of officers and detectives – it is important to properly distribute our men between both groups, as they can have different levels of experience, different skills and varying degrees of willingness to work. Unfortunately, even the best police officer is not a robot – often our employees fail to show up at the police station without any previous notice, and our desk is full of various leave applications; the reasons for absence represent all colors of the spectrum – from cases of notorious forgetting that you need to feed your fish, through a blown up water pipe, to a child that got involved in an accident. Of course, it is up to us to decide whether a given person will be able to enjoy a day off, and any such decision will be reflected in the morale of the officers.

The daily roster that patrols the streets of Freeburg does not depend solely on our decision. Often we have to simultaneously deal with the choices made at the city hall; most of which are completely absurd from our point of view, but act as means of calming social unrest. We regularly deal with situations, where, due to the rise in racist tendencies, we must dismiss all black police officers from duty; feminists on the other hand are able to effectively coerce decision-makers to pass a law requiring half of the police force to be made up of women. One more thing we're never short on are the pending disciplinary proceedings against our hero, associated mostly with illegal dismissals, and policemen called to the hearings will be unable to help us on the streets.

Just a simple scene... but the narrative!

Assigning your men to individual tasks is very easy and fun – from time to time various "hot spots" appear on the map of Freeburg, which need to be dealt with by the men and women we dispatch. Various crimes require a certain number of police officers to handle them – this number is determined by the number of open windows where we drag the portraits of our subordinates – of course you can always send in a skeleton crew, but if the officers are inexperienced, the decision may be burdened with considerable risks. The effectiveness of a police intervention in This is the Police is measured based on several factors – a 100% successful intervention requires us to apprehend the criminals and avoid any casualties among either civilians or police officers. Failing to achieve any of these objectives results in a reduction of the amount of experience points held by each of the officers involved in the intervention. During an intervention we are often dealing with unexpected situations – we are regularly asked to dispatch additional backup in response to dynamically changing conditions, or we can learn that an alarm just turned out to be false. The officers also ask us for advice in crisis situations – choosing the right solution e.g. during a negotiation with a man attempting to commit suicide or a criminal influences the positive or negative conclusion of the whole story.

It's your call, chief. What do we do?

Calling all stations, calling all stations

Aside from daily operations, the police also responds to additional calls, coming from completely different sources. Sometimes the mobsters will ask for additional support to deal with their competition or attempt to bribe us in exchange for looking the other way in certain situations. The city officials, in turn, will send numerous request for dispatch to secure their daughter's birthday party or guard a particularly valuable shipment. Accommodating all those interests is of course impossible, not only because they are mutually exclusive, but simply because we don’t have a sufficient number of officers on duty. Many times we have to choose between the goals of the force and private interests, which, from the protagonist's moral standpoint, is extremely difficult. Then, there are problems with unruly subordinates who need to blow off some steam – we deal with that by organizing barbecue parties or sending our men to additional training courses. Anything to avoid bad blood in the force.

An interesting element to the game turns out to be investigation missions, which we tackle by dispatching detectives. They discover new details with each passing day, and our task, based on the information they have gathered, is to deduct a reasonable chain of events related to the case. Although it's nothing more than a simple puzzle, the analysis of the acquired evidence is necessary to solve the cases, which sometimes change their course several times during our investigation.

Freeburg may be small, but we're never short on work!

Admittedly, the combination of strategy and role-playing game is something the creators of This is the Police can be proud of – the gameplay is dynamic and often quite surprising, and our choices actually have an impact on the story as it unfolds day by day. It is true that the strategic layer can sometimes get schematic as we repeat the same actions in our interventions, but the variety of emergency situations remains wide enough, making it impossible to get bored.

The bigger picture of the game is complemented by the original visuals, consisting of vector character and background designs. Although very simple, it definitely fits the mysterious atmosphere and works well with what we see on the screen and hear from the voice actors. This allows us to run the game even on older computers, which is a significant asset to the title.

Playing the detective can be very satisfying.

This is the Police shows that even a simple premise based on management of a group of police officers can be presented from a very interesting angle, featuring a well-told story and a lot of diverse moral choices, in a way that allows the player to control what happens in the game. The work from studio Weappy is one of the most interesting indie games of recent months, regularly surprising us with the changing gameplay conditions. If you want to see for yourself that being a chief of police is a really challenging way of making ends meet, and at the same time you simply expect to have fun, This is the Police will surely prove to be an excellent choice.