Rebel Cops

Rebel Cops is billed as a spin-off game to This is the Police, but in practice its more like a standalone expansion with an old school early 90s mentality, presuming a high skill level from the get-go. Those who have no experience with This is the Police 2's tactical combat missions need not apply. The strength of This is the Police 2 was variety. You took the role of police dispatcher, staff manager, and combat strategist, which was all tied together with stellar voiceacting and artwork. Rebel Cops is simply the combat missions, minus everything else. Even the interesting music that gave the series so much personality has been replaced by forgettable looping tracks designed for long playtimes. But what about combat? If they focused on combat to the exclusion of everything else, surely its amazing? Eh. Nowhere near enough to justify an entire game. This is the Police 2 had 21 perks, Rebel Cops has just 9. The only choices in your team's development are to select the order you want those perks, meaning every cop is identical once they reach maximum level. Perhaps the biggest point of contention is the save system. Saves are a limited resource to be used sparingly. Even if you're not staunchly opposed to limited saving (I'm not), Rebel Cops has a tendency to front-load the hardest missions to make the idea look unattractive. The first mission has a strict time limit. The second is a massive sprawling 4 hour map which could be mistaken for the finale. I did like a few things. I like that you're underfunded force is barely able to scrape together a couple of pistols at the start. I like how the level design covers casinos, hedge mazes, and shopping malls. I like channelling my inner Garrett and looting the treasure dotted about these levels. Its just unfortunate there's not a whole lot to spend it on. Its hard to recommend Rebel Cops even to the most hardcore fans of the series who're in love with this noir-tinged universe.

RC now has an unlimited save option. I haven’t played This is the Police 2 and therefore review Rebel Cops as a game by itself. At the time of writing, I haven't finished it yet. From that perspective: modern X-Com and old Commandos / Desperados games had a premature baby. Missions are turn-time, with usually two actions per character per turn (modern X-Com style). However, unlike in X-Com, killed cops cannot be replaced freely by recruiting; you’ll always have only a few cops and you’ll need to rotate them between missions, due to fatigue. Thus, losing even one cop is bad long-term, though it doesn’t force a game over screen. And since the cops are fragile, causing large firefights is generally a bad idea. However, unalerted enemies are quite easy to outmaneuver - missions that start in concealment provide weaknesses in enemy positioning to let you slowly isolate and arrest them, Commandos- or Desperados-style. This means that overall you’re encouraged to carefully plan arrests, track enemy patrol routes over several turns, have two cops support each other during risky activities, etc. Originally, the game had limited saving. But since a single cop death is a serious setback, you’re likely to replay parts of the mission if anything goes really wrong rather than play on with the loss. This potentially leads to multiple replays of the same mission segments to conserve save slots. If you want an “original-like” experience but with less frustration, I suggest turning unlimited saving on and self-imposing a save and RNG use limit. Overall, you might find RC interesting if you’d be into a Commandos or Desperados type game done in turn-time. Otherwise, it’s probably not for you. While I personally like it, it’s unpolished even within its intended puzzle-like playstyle. For example, after the initial levelling and gearing up, cops end up alike, making the skill and equipment systems increasingly less about squad management and more just busywork. Not five stars.

It is not precisely true that this game is a variant of »This Is the Police«. While TItP was designed around some police chief and his assignment tasks, having to value crime reports more or less seriously, the focus has shifted towards a more round-based, Jagged-Alliance-series-style fighting system with »Jagged Alliance 2«. In that game, you had both traditional (depressing, but good) storytelling about corrupt cops and crime and, on the other hand, the round-based strategy fighting system integrated. With Rebel Cops, the focus has shifted more towards the fighting system, which is actually quite okay, but you need to get used to it. While there still are story elements and you still have administrative elements such as item purchase for your cops, the disposal of troops is not at the centre anymore. Therefore, »Rebel Cops« can rather be reckoned a round-based strategy game than a spin-off of TItP. It makes use of pretty much -- though not totally, some extra abilities and Items are new -- the same fighting mechanisms as TItP 2, but has, apart from the graphics, next to nothing in common with the original TItP. That said, it takes a bit of experience to be able to judge the enemies' capabilities at first, but stick with it, and it will be okay. What is a real game breaker for me, though, is that the game does not work properly with my Linux system. It tends to crash in the latest shots I gave it, at some unexpected point of time during game play, and not only are save game slots per mission limited as per game design, but loading those save games does not work at all as well. This is extremely annoying in the beginning: You know your game tends to crash, but you cannot even take the nuisance of frequent saving and loading as a work-around for a solution. TItP's (1 & 2) outstanding sound is not met this time as well. Might be a nice game, but not without any option to save and load and all that crashing. A clear »Do not buy!« from me.

For me this game was one of the most enjoyable turn based games of this year. - The story and graphics were very atmoshperic. - it offered cool game mechanisms that motivated you. - the 'limitation' of the save game system added a cool twist. together, these points motivated you to play more tactical instead of just 'dumb: save & run in and shoot & load if you die' mechanism other games kinda promote. I had the best time and which there'd be a dlc