This Is the Police

Gameplay

This Is the Police is a real-time management video game where the player controls protagonist Jack Boyd, a police chief in the game's location of Freeburg set to retire in one hundred and eighty days. The gameplay is presented via imagery and text on an isometric map. The player is tasked to make $500,000 in his final six months on the force, through various ways which the player chooses; one of the options include utilizing the local mafia. The mafia may ask the player to turn a blind eye towards some of the crimes and be rewarded with money, or if they wish to stay alive. The player receives calls and they are tasked to prioritize certain ones while dealing with staffing. Depending of the severity of the calls, the amount of police sent varies. If it's a case of assault, only two police need to go, but if it's an armed robbery, ten may need to go. As the game progresses, the player is able to send SWAT Teams and reinforcements. The player must strategize about how many officers they sent to each crime, because if there are no spare officers, some crimes cannot be stopped. Failure to stop crimes results in the player's squad and pay being reduced. Later on during the game, the department's officers will start taking sides between the two main political figures, Mayor Rogers and Robespierre. The political views of the player's officers are unknown unless they make one of them a rat, which increases the likelihood of mistrust and the death of the officer while docking some of your pay in order to recompense that officer for his information. Sending out squads of officers with differing political opinions degrades unit cohesion, causing more failures unless groups of officers with similar morals and values are sent to the scene of the crime. The game also features crime investigation gameplay, where you must piece together what happened leading up to a crime and capture the criminal. The endgame features an assault on your political ally's rival and involves strategical placement of units.

Development and release

A Kickstarter page for This Is the Police was created in January 2015. The initial goal of $25,000 was surpassed, with a total of $35,508 being raised.

Jon St. John, the voice actor behind Duke Nukem, portrays Jack Boyd, the protagonist of the game.

This Is the Police was shown at the 2016 PAX East gaming convention. The game was planned for release on July 28, 2016, but was delayed five days due to a publisher error.

Reception

This Is the Police received "mixed or average reviews" according to the review aggregator website Metacritic, based on 25 critic reviews.

Reviewers praised the game's plot and design. Alex Gilyadov (GameSpot) said the plot was gripping, as well as praising the game's design. Juan Garcia (IGN) praised Jon St. John's voice acting, the visual styles and said it had a good plot. Caitlin Cooke commended the gameplay mechanics and the game's design. Kate Gray (PC Gamer) said the game looks and sounds "gorgeous".

Reviewers disliked the repetition of the game and the narrative. Jeff Cork (Game Informer) found himself bored of it halfway through. Caitlin Cooke said that after the first 20 in-game days, she "felt dragged along with little direction or thought". Brent Ables (Kill Screen) mentioned that by day 100, he started to lose sight of the game's goal. Kate Gray said the game became dull and boring after the first couple of hours of playing. Juan Garcia disliked how the game was too focused on the narrative and how that impacted the rest of the experience.

Edward Smith of the International Business Times said that "This Is The Police is simultaneously a rich video game and a poor depiction of its subject matter". He noted how due to the various controversies surrounding police that happened around the release date, he believed the game was bound to be criticized.