When This is the Police came out in 2016, I was impressed by the game, and it set the bar for me when it came to games of its kind. Namely, games that force you to make tough choices and manage your limited number of resources, including the most finite recourse of all, time. The game not only aced that mounting tension of having to do more with less, but it framed it in such a beautifully evolving narrative of a man trapped in an impossible situation and his self-destructive path at trying to maintain some level of control and dignity in the face of insurmountable odds.
Well, when I saw that there was going to be a This is the Police 2 I was immediately excited, but at the same time a bit apprehensive, thinking that there was no possible way that the developers could in any way outdo, or even match the level of quality they had attained with their first venture. I was wrong. Not only does This is the Police 2 bring the same, heavy, gritty, dark, relentless, gritty (did I say that?) atmosphere of working as a down-and-out chief working with less than they’d ideally need to get a job done that is bigger than them, but it also manages to strip the game of any of the needlessly frustrating and tedious elements that I learned to dread about the original, as well as add an entirely new level of tactical gameplay that could have been the primary focus of many other games.
The game picks up not long after the end of the story from the original, and we get to find out the fate of our dear Jack Boyd. We see that the choices he made in the original game have done well to set him on a path of loneliness, crippling alcoholism, and a severe distrust of others. So, all in all, not too bad considering the circumstances. We then see his situation go from bad to worse very quickly, but then just as quickly, we see him given a second chance as a stand-in chief, helping an out-of-her-depths Sheriff of a neighboring town to where the first game took place. It’s all quite surreal and unlikely, but the writing is good and it makes for good dramatic moments as the asshole cops who treated you like trash when they first met you end up being your subordinates in the next breath.
As I mentioned before, the game takes some of the tedium from the first game and streamlines it so that it’s less of a chore to set up your shift schedules of officers from day to day. One thing that I’ve seen people complain about is that it seems like too many of the officers have negative personality aspects, which makes managing them very difficult. I, however, felt like this was a welcome addition. It makes each officer feel more real, more fallible, and because of that, all the more surprising when they succeed. It creates these beautiful moments of pride when the fat, aging alcoholic officer who has been nothing but a thorn in your side for weeks ends up nabbing a perpetrator on a tough call and comes away a hero.
And then, the game will take you in even further to the action than the first game ever did during certain scenes, which adds a whole new layer to the game that in many respects is a whole game unto itself. Anyone familiar with the X-Com series of games or other similarly tactical games that give you control of a squad or so of combatants on a map, who each have several actions that they can choose from during a turn. Each character can usually take two actions like a movement and an attack, or two movements if they need to cover a lot of ground or two attacks if they’re in a good position behind cover and need to just unload.
However, in This is the Police 2, they’ve added many additional options that are very appropriate for a police themed game. See, when the police go on a call, even if the bad guys have guns, the police will try to figure out ways to de-escalate a situation and bring about a conclusion that doesn’t require lethal force. This isn’t always possible, but a smart tactician can sometimes figure out a way to take the bad guys into custody, rather than toting them away in body bags. And in the game, you are given non-lethal options to go about making these options a reality. Pepper spray, batons, Tasers, and even the option to attempt to disarm an opponent by shooting them in the hand to make them drop their gun, or to shoot them in another non-lethal place in order to make them stop their actions, rather than going for shots that would most-likely kill the subject.
When I saw that they’d added the tactical gameplay to this game, I was worried that it was going to be a tacked-on mini-game that would pale in comparison to other games that focus their entire game around this type of interaction. I was worried that it would spread the game out too much and make it feel like it was trying to do too many things and then lose itself in the confusion. But, what actually happened was quite the opposite. I was very impressed with how seamlessly the new gameplay fit in with everything else and I was also impressed at how detailed and polished that portion of the game was. The AI worked well, the interface was smooth and intuitive, and the art style of the game worked really well with these scenes in particular.
The game is so much more than just the tactical game, too. Not all calls take you down to the tactical level. In fact, it only happens occasionally, just enough to be interesting. In the meantime, you’ll have your fair share of “routine” calls that don’t really require much input more than just picking the best way you think the officers on the scene should handle the particular situation. And they really cover the gamut here. There is everything from purse snatchings, to cats stuck in trees, to bank robberies. On top of that there are investigations that need to be conducted of crimes that have already been committed. You’ll have to commit officers to conduct interviews and collect evidence at the crime scenes and then take what they provide and assemble the correct chain of events and the right offender to arrest. Jump to the wrong conclusions, or follow the wrong evidence and you may end up sending an innocent person to prison.
Additionally, there are parts in the game where you will lead an interview or an interrogation of a suspect. You will be given a list of things to talk to them about and you have to gauge their answers and decide how best to proceed in order to get them to confess to you. This part of the game reminded me a little of LA Noire’s interrogation gameplay, except with less emphasis on trying to read people’s expressions.
Overall, I thought the entire game was put together really well and that there is so much variance in the things that the game asks you to do on any given day that it really does simulate the feeling of working as a police officer and never really being sure what the day will bring. Each shift you run through is a surprise. Sometimes it is surprisingly slow and mundane with you having to decide whether to let a person stay home because they say they drank too much the night before. Sometimes, the day is crazy and hectic and you’re not sure if you’re going to be able to handle the overwhelming amount of calls coming in with the staff being short and the rest being half-exhausted from working several days in a row.
If you played the first game and enjoyed it, the second one is better in just about every way. I actually never finished the first one and after starting the second considered that I should go back and finish the first before going too far in the second. However, the gameplay is so much more refined in the second that I think going back to the first would almost be harder because it would be noticeable how much you were missing. Additionally, if you didn’t like the first one for one reason or another, I wouldn’t write the second one off. It is so vastly improved over the first that if you have any interest in the game, I highly recommend it. It’s one of those games that offers so much you can easily find something to get lost in, whether it be the story, the management portion, or the tactical side.
