This Is the Police Reviews
While every moral conundrum gave me real pause to think, too often I thought my emotions were being exploited and toyed with by a game that was going to play out the same way regardless.
The controversial content (racism, sexism etc.) may be a bit hard to swallow but it certainly adds to the story of police corruption and gives the game a different edge. I would say it is good value for money for the crime buffs among us, but not a must play title. [OpenCritic note: Lyla Saudi reviewed both the PC (3.9) and Switch (4) versions. Their scores have been averaged.]
This game reached its peak (for me) about half way through when it started to become a little too repetitive and tedious. The decisions you make do shape the story (initially) but only to an extent as you are basically forced into becoming a corrupted cop anyway. Instead of it being ‘choice driven’, I found this game to be more about skills management and balancing resources (no matter how corrupted you are) to make sure all parties you interact with are happy. The controversial content (racism, sexism etc.) may be a bit hard to swallow but it certainly adds to the story of police corruption and gives the game a different edge. I would say it is good value for money for the crime buffs among us, but not a must play title.
I almost feel bad talking about this game. Call it a guilty conscience, but This is the Police drew me in with its narrative speaking throughout the story. I will say that those parts were well written and at least mildly intriguing. But the actual game part failed to keep me engaged.
This is the Police is far too long for the amount of content it provides. Only true believers will make it within shouting distance of the ending
A promising premise but falls short of its full potential by overreaching itself.
This is the Police is basically a visual novel disguised as a strategy videogame. Apart from a lack of any depth in its mechanics, choices don't really matter, as almost everything happens no matter what you do. The story section is a lot better, and the audio-visuals even more so, but these won't be enough to satisfy strategy enthusiasts.
A beautifully dark tale woven around an adequate management game.
This is the Police presents situations that aren’t deep enough to invoke social commentary, yet it still takes the opportunity to arbitrarily throw them out in the open. It’s missing key storytelling elements that allow for that kind of messaging, and in the mundane yet slur-sprinkled missions those ideas fall apart. However with its interesting gameplay mechanics, pretty packaging, and plans for a sandbox mode it has a lot of future promise which I hope they deliver on.
This Is the Police is mechanically sound on the surface, but digging deeper leads to disappointment in the randomized events and a lack of meaningful decisions to make.
Accessible and routine, This Is The Police is simultaneously a rich video game and a poor depiction of its subject matter. Whether the game's creators welcome it or not, at times like these, when police officers in the US are under intense scrutiny, This Is the Police's representation of their work bears similarly close examination. By that measure it falls short of relevance and borders on removed.
For the ultimate failure of This Is the Police is that it makes everyone culpable but the police.
A dangerous topic, handled poorly and resulting in a truly awful game. The gameplay has nothing to do with the story, but worse the gameplay doesn’t care if you play it. Just wait out a timer.
This is the Police is a dark gritty cop noire game, with real-world moral choices. By having this game on the Nintendo Switch makes it an ideal game to grab and lose some hours into it away from a TV screen. Highly recommend it!
So here I am, trying to protect the city by allocating my force to adequately address issues that arise, when a green icon appears on the screen. I click on it, like I would any other case, and it is a night club looking for help in controlling a line outside, due to a missing bouncer. Without giving it much thought, I send a capable officer over to support the community’s need. At the end of his shift, he quits - citing that the club pays more than the police, and the club owner slides me $4700 for the “favor”. Just like that, I’m a corrupt cop with a hole in my roster. Apparently, I need to pay more attention, or I’ll be in the pokey myself.
It’s a bit of a mixed bag. If you’re happy to sit idly waiting for balloons of jobs to pop up, and take each day as slowly as it comes, then you’ll probably get a lot more out of this tale of corruption and downfalls than I did. But if you’re interested in deeper systems and micromanaging your officers, forget it, it’s Chinatown.