This Is the Police

The game is more of a visual novel interspersed with minigames than a game in its own right. I am disappointed at this fact, because it was sold to me as a management game similar to the strategic layer of xcom. That being said, it is very good at what it does, just don't go in with the expectations I did, as you will be very disappointed. + Excellent voice acting, writing, and art style. - Gameplay itself becomes very boring less than halfway through. Zero challenge or replayability.

I liked it, but I don't think it'll be for everyone. In this game, you're playing the part of a police chief trying to make his retirement fund before he's booted out by the mayor. He's mostly honest, but he knows the reality of being police - and how hard it is to get by as an honest man. He's made his choice. This has several value added's as a game. The first hour is honestly a little slow - the game plays at first like a visual novel as characters are introduced, plus the tutorial. After that the game goes into several related minigames. The first is "deployment", which has you responding to crimes and requests. These appear to be randomly resolved, modified by skill of the officers, i.e. hit a threshold and succeed, otherwise chance of death or failure. Deployment also has "civil deployment" (crowd control at movie theaters), "favors", both illegal and legal for friends, and "city hall requests", i.e. "hire more minorities", or "go sing to the mayor's wife" (not a joke). Occasionally there will be decision tree responses to crimes, where you must direct your officers. The second minigame is the "investigation" aspect, where you assign investigators and they uncover aspects of a crime, after which you deduce what happens and make an arrest. It's a little simplistic but enjoyable nonetheless. The third minigame is more of a meta-minigame, as it affects the others - "management". You have to schedule, hire, fire and deal with random crap as a police chief. On its own, each one of these games has little appeal, but taken as a whole, tied together by a well-voiced and gritty plot, it's been a good ride."Surprisingly compelling". Lastly, I know some dipshit is going to go "misogyny! Raaaar!" due to several seemingly anti-feminist plot events. If you are one of these, go soak your head. I think the game is evenhanded, as it contains events that are both "suppress the feminist protests" and "hire more women". Plus, the prosecutor investigates you, and she's female.

You get to role play a non-cliched character in a well crafted setting, but said character will make sudden, catastrophic decisions without any way for you to prevent them. I soldiered on after the first time this happened, but after the second, even if I could have brought myself to abandon my expectations of control in the interactive medium that is video games, I had started to despise the character and had no desire to see what happens to him in the end. The investigation and interrogation mechanics are nice and engaging until you come across one of the admittedly few cases where the correct tile arrangement/question makes zero sense. The UI immerses you in the atmosphere, but does so at the expense of a lot of your time and for me the game had visual glitches while in fullscreen mode and in windowed mode crashed my DE whenever I tried to move its window around.

When I bought this game, I didn't know anything about it and didn't expect much. I thought that it would be just another small indie game with rather shallow gameplay and forced story. Boy, was I wrong. This game is a masterpiece on so many levels. The gameplay is tight and well though-out, anyone who likes strategy/manegement games will like it; also it changes throughout the game, with new details added along the way up until the very end, which keeps it fresh and exciting. In addition to great gameplay, this game also (a rare situation!) has a great story with extremely well-written characters (and the voice-acting is competent). I can recommend this game even to the people who can't stand stratagy/management games, solely based on the story and the characters being so great. Music is awesome. Visual design is distinctive and very nice. The game ran very well on my not-so-powerful laptop with integrated graphics. The game is quite long for a cheap indie title, I completed it in about 30 hours. As I said, due to the continuous introduction of new gameplay elements and due to the great story, I felt engaged all the way. To conclude, I can only say that this was one of the best value-for-money gaming purchases in my life, and completely unexpectedly at that. If you love a good story and/or like strategy/management games, don't hesitate and buy This is the Police, you won't be disappointed.