When I first started my cop journey, The Precinct reminded me in part of ABC’s The Rookie. There is a basis to the game that grounds itself in some form of reality before you get involved in a bank robbery gone wrong on your first day, blasting from behind the cover of your car, trying to take down armed attackers. It feels weird to begin your first foot patrol the day after that, handing out parking tickets and stopping a vandal, but to my understanding, that’s just how life goes on the mean streets of Averno City in the 1980s, inspired by the New York City crime wave of the same period.
The player takes the role of Nick Cordell, son of the murdered police chief of the same name, who joins the force as a beat cop. You spend much of the earlier moments streamlined across shifts as they introduce the main plot of your rookie cop getting involved in a RICO case against several gangs, while you learn all the different shifts you can take later on. Eventually, when the game opens up, the loop is based almost entirely around picking your beat and performing your basic duties with the occasional dispatch call needing to be responded to.
There is a story here that is present throughout, though it is pretty top-heavy, spending the tutorial establishing it. Once the game opens up, it becomes far less prevalent, only coming into play after completing milestones. The art style of characters in cutscenes is enjoyable, with each being passably voice-acted. This doesn’t really disguise that, at its best, it’s telling a rather generic story of cops that I feel like I have seen in many a show in the past. The game doesn’t really act like it is trying to tell anything deeper; this exists solely to give you some deeper purpose on your cop journey, which helps. It’s also not like you are stuck only in this story, as several other storylines crop up as you rise through the ranks. If you are familiar with games like L.A. Noire you might begin to see some overlaps, though that might be hard to ignore.
One thing I appreciated about the game was how it alleviates the tedium. There are a lot of mechanics and things like arresting people require you to enter all the charges, however, this can be delegated at the loss of experience you might gain from charging somebody with eight crimes. I never felt the loss was worth the conveniences of just doing that, though, which was great. Experiences go towards leveling up your cop, and truthfully, they all feel like they make the worst aspect of the game more manageable.
The game world itself looks gorgeous, presented from a top-down perspective in the vein of the original two Grand Theft Auto games. Thankfully, the game also improves on this formula, angling the camera on the action, offering some depth to the action-packed moments, and the intense ticket-writing scenes. The game also has multiple ways to explore as you drive, walk the beat, and occasionally take on the role of air support in a helicopter. During these shifts, you might collect evidence on targets you are trying to catch, where you can spend a shift specifically taking them down once you collect enough. There is no ‘time limit’, or metric that pressures you, so there is no forced panic on what shifts to take and when, something I was pretty thankful for.
This leisure approach doesn’t really cover up the fact that the game is very repetitive. Some shifts, such as parking, offer very little reward for a lot of walking, and should you get a 911 call, you might be far away from your patrol car. The game does give you tools, such as calling for a car to spawn near you. This can take a few seconds, and then you still need your AI partner to get in the car, which grinds a lot of time you get to respond, which usually caps at 30 seconds. If you arrive late, this doesn’t end the response either, locking you into a waiting period in which another car might pick them up, or you might get another sighting of the criminal. You’re left with a search area that, more often than not, a criminal has left that you can check aimlessly, but you’re waiting for it to be over.
911 dispatch calls tend to be the same, though they advance as you level up your cop throughout the game. This is to say, no matter was beat you were assigned to, you could get a call and go off into a car chase or a robbery. You’ll probably always take these, though, considering they can be a needed break from the extreme monotony of your shifts that involve wandering around an area trying to spot crimes. Then again, there is always the chance a routine traffic stop will devolve into its own brand of chaos.
Car chases proved to be my least enjoyed aspect of the game, mainly because of how poorly the cars handle. To start with, your first cruiser cannot keep up with ANY car in the city. More often than not, a police chase will start with a car speeding off and you following sightings until somebody else engages halfway across the city. Since crimes have degrees of engagement, unless you are changing armed suspects, you can’t even shoot at cars. This sounds like it’s not an issue until you realize in order to do anything, you need to keep close to a car that outpaces. You need to stay close to summon units or spike strips, closer still to hit the car. These can be fixed with unlocked cars later or commanding a sports car, a level you can unlock, but the trade-off is a car too slow but with slightly ok handling compared to faster cars that swerve right off the road when you turn. This becomes so much more pronounced in optional race events, where one tap on your car sends you spiraling. You would think that could be used to your advantage using cop techniques like the P.I.T.T. Menuver, but no, as enemies’ AI can slide right out of that flawlessly.
Additionally, these car chases can last a long time because of how hard it is to keep up, especially early on. In one case, I routinely stopped who I eventually found out was an old lady who sped off. We chased he down and tried to stop her, which devolved into chaos and took around 20 minutes to finally stop her car. She got out and somehow managed to outrun my character and hijack another car, which turned into another 20-minute pursuit. Almost the entirety of the shift was spent on this one chase. The saving grace was checking her licence and having a laugh that she had a warrant for arrest for an assault, which prompted her to flee in the first place. That old lady was into some stuff.
Ally AI proves to be less than perfect in some shocking situations. For instance, in one car chase, I called for a backup cruiser. They tend to come into the fray head-on on which already means if they don’t slam the car you’re chasing, they don’t help much. Cars can handle it and drive off anyway, so already not much help. They CAN then become a threat to the enemy, so it’s not like they are useless, but they also can drive up alongside you and just grind up against you, making your already slow patrol car nearly stand still. This happened more than a few times. Some crimes also have multiple perpetrators who flee in opposite directions. If you chase your partner, it would stand to reason that, should chase the other, but not so. He often gets confused and doubles back. On the off chance he does chase the right one, should that person hide in a dumpster in front of him, he seems to struggle to deduce that, which might be why he is still a beat cop 25 years on.
Gun mechanics also had me waffling between love and hate for them. On the one hand, they are clearly built for cover-based shootings. There is a line of aim that often doesn’t match up with the actual metric, an X retical that you aim at enemies. It can be hard to aim, and while aiming, your character is exposed from cover, making fighting the finicky nature of it annoying. At least in this situation, it’s easy to take aim, but this CAN become an element while chasing a person. That old lady? I couldn’t keep up, so I attempted to tase her, but tracking the radical while chasing, plus the range on that weapon, made it nearly impossible to hit. At least from the cover, the frustration was offset by it showing the results.
Verdict
In truth, there were points in the game that felt like the game could have gone any way. Major mechanics like driving and shooting, which take up much of the experience, both had moments where I enjoyed them and moments where I hated the hell out of them. This was in between the repetitions that often hit the point of tedium, with some standout moments that made me laugh or smile as the absurdity of the procedural generation hit its apex. What finally tipped me was, I think this might be the most fun I have had in a cop game up to this point. Having played Police Simulator, which was arguably the closest comparison, there was so much more to enjoy in The Precinct than in that. If you’re looking to live out your police story, this is the game you should do it in.
Remember to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date on everything we have going on!
