Besides gaming I really like to watch movies, I like all kinds of movies and I really like Mafia and especially the movies from director Martin Scorsese. Good Fellas, Gangs of New York, The Departed and many more. When I saw the trailer for the game: This Is The Police, I immediately saw the resembling to these movies.
In the real-time management game, This Is The Police, you follow Jack Boyd, a police chief that works in the crime-filled Freeburg. You are just 108 days away from your retirement, but because you got screwed over by the corrupt mayor you are now forced to make 500 000 dollars in your final 6 months as chief in order to be able to enjoy your well-earned retirement.
As a police officer, you have to manage the resources to make Freeburg a “save” place. You have to decide which crimes needs which cop to handle. If it is just some shoplifting you can send your worst cop because it is just not that important but if the daughter of a multimillionaire is missing, you have to send your best cops to the job. If you send your best cops you risk them being shot or even worse getting killed and you end up with just the useless fat pigs to run your “business”. The whole game is based on you making decisions. If things get out of hand you have to give your cops further instructions.
The gameplay of this game is pretty passive, you must make decisions but most of the time you are just reading what is going on or what instructions you need to give your cops. It is not like you need to react very quickly or give tons of commands in a short time period. Making the right decision is key in this game. And that is why this game got very boring very fast, it’s always the same gameplay just with another story. This Is The Police feels more like reading a novel where you have to make a decision once in a while. Luckily the story of this game is very good and I got intrigued but I struggled to keep my eyes open while wrestling with the boring management stages of the game.
Verdict:
In my opinion, gameplay is key to a good game, and the gameplay is fun for the first 20 minutes after that it is just always the same. I am really disappointed because I really had high expectations because story and graphics style just looked so amazing. If the developers make a game with story and graphics of the same level and were able to fix the boring gameplay this could be a very good story focused indie game.
