This is The Police is a very unique approach to a game about the police, the game takes points from games like The Sims or the Sid Meyers Civilization series and combines it with a gritty story line that holds no bars.

Developed by Weappy Studio's and Published by THQ, the game has seen previous success on Steam through the greenlight program in 2015.

Now here we are in 2017 with the game being ported to Xbox One.

Everything is essentially the exact same as the steam version.

 

Gameplay consist of micro managing the city of Freeburg, where you play as detective Jack Boyd. Jack has the uneasy task of earning $500,000 before his soon to be retirement which will be in 180 days. During this 180 days you will take part in the police hand of crime management. You will be responding to everything from minor crimes to Mafia tied crimes. On top of all of that, you must also deal with a corrupt mayor, seeking to push his own agenda.

This is The Police really gives you the opportunity to delve into each aspect of dealing with a city of crime. You will even have to deal with every departments and crime organization trying to bribe you. You can even take the evil route to the crime problem, such as accept bribes, ignores certain emergency calls, etc. During my play through I did find myself getting a little overwhelmed from time to time. It seems like once you are just finishing one call, you will immediately be called to another emergency or you will have the DEA hounding you.

During your 180 days before retirement, you will be able to deal with the Mafia, sketchy business owners asking for some questionably legal help, and the regular crimes happening in the city of Freeburg. All this while you are given a motivation of collecting half a million. A number you will likely have to do some less moral things to achieve.

Most of the gameplay is simple. I can not call it great, but it certainly isn't bad either. You dispatch officers to calls and occasionally get a multiple choice about how they should proceed while at the scene. While these are some of the more interesting, the results of a call are always one of a few options. The criminal can escape or be captured, the cops can get killed or survive, and a bystander can be killed or survive. There is nothing in between, it's dead or alive without any injuries or details on how many civilians got killed.

Further, there is an investigation mini-game, in which your detectives find photo frames and you have to personally arrange them in the right order to unlock the next step- An arrest of whoever did it. I've found this personally to be incredibly difficult, with vague frames and sometimes missing information. This is sadly to the point where I have now stopped playing the game as I can not solve investigations without help from someone else. While I applaud the idea of this puzzle, I personally just can not enjoy it.

 

 

Graphics and Audio were a nice strong point to the game as well, the graphics have a nice cel shaded look to them and audio provides real voice acting. Achievements are not a walk in the park, This Is The Police will require a few playthroughs at the very least, as there are achievements that will task you with beating the entire game without using SWAT or a Paddywaggon. Then there are achievements for beating the game without responding to false emergency's and using all services. There also seems to be a glitched achievement for the Xbox One version, the achievement is for responding to all legitimate calls. At the time of writing,170 gamers on True Achievements own the game and no one unlocked that achievements, although every other achievements has been unlocked by at least one gamer on the site.

 

Overall This Is The Police is a worthwhile experience that takes the player on a unique ride and gives the player a opportunity to see every aspect of fighting crime in a corrupt city, did I also mention the actor who does the voice of Jack Boyd, also is the same actor who voiced Duke Nukem? When I look at the retail price for the game and all the content the game offers, its hard not to recommend this game. I only found myself overwhelmed by all the content just a few times, and it was mostly cause I just wasn’t paying enough attention to instructions. Players with more experience in management games shouldn’t have any trouble at all.

 

7/10

 

Written by John aka YoDz

 

john@nastymastadaddy.com

 

Twitter @akayodz   Xbox: YoDz

 

A download code was provided by the developer for the purpose of this review.

 

This is the Police can be purchased from the Xbox Store Here

 

Release Date - Wednesday‎, ‎March‎ ‎22‎, ‎2017

Price - $19.99

Download Size - 4.03 GB

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