This has been a busy year for the guys over at Weappy Studio. This Is the Police 2 was released earlier this year on Steam, but has now been released on home consoles. On the surface it just looks like a turn based strategy game with cell shaded graphics and a noir feel, but after getting through the first mission you realize there is so much more. This is one in-depth, massive game!
A New Chief in Town
In This Is the Police 2 you play as Lilly the new Police Chief of Sharpwood. You not only have to deal with criminals, but with all the cops in the department; which sometimes almost seems harder to deal with at times, especially since you are a woman. You don’t get much respect as a woman and a lot of the cops try to make their own rules and do their own thing. Being a woman this isn’t surprising, but it would be interesting to see what someone else playing this thinks of this dynamic. Certain cops don’t want to work with each other, one guy refuses to work with women because at home he is surrounded by girls with his wife and daughters, so there is a lot of drama going on here! Being a police chief is a lot of work.
Check out the gameplay footage from Weappy Studio to get an idea of what is all involved in This Is the Police 2. Early on Jack is introduced as a new commanding supervisor. When he deals with the officers he seems to gets a lot more respect and less flack. If officers don’t listen to Jack, he can send them over to Lilly to get punished. Or you could just leave it and move on. He has a big overarching story with Lilly that plays through out the game so you always have that to progress through.
Solve the Cases
With so much going on in This Is the Police 2, it may be a turn off for some people. The human resource type stuff, dealing with lazy people and their dumb excuses gets irritating after a while. The part that was the highlight of the game was the cool murder investigations you got to do by figuring out the order of events and accusing the suspect.
The turn based strategy section really worked well. The criminal and the cops each got two turns to move three spaces towards each other. If you wanted you could just the moves to take cover, break down windows or door, or if a cop was close enough use a baton or taser to take them down. If you really want you could also take the extreme route and shoot the suspect. This might be a little drastic, but it will all depend on the situation. Make the wrong choice and you can find yourself behind bars.
How Would You Deal With an Armed Robbery?
During the day you will get calls on the police radio, which in this case is from the speaker on your controller. This will require you to send teams of police officers out to deal with these calls that have come in. Some are simple like a guy is trying to sell his own stuff at a bar. Or something more serious like an Armed Robbery. Each officer has stats in Strength, Intelligence, Speed, Stealth, Shooting and Negotiation. These help you assign the officers that may work best in that situation.
When the officers get to the location of the call, you pick what to do from 3 choices. If you are successful, the officers on the call will earn points. The points are distributed how you want in their stats. At the end of the day, you as police chief earn beer can tabs that you can spend. You can hire new officers or buy new supplies like taser cartridges and stun grenades. If there is something that you want that is more expensive, just save your tabs until the next day.
Overall This Is the Police 2 is a good game. It just feels like there is way too much stuff going on at once, that gets repetitive day after day. It would be nice to see more of the turn based strategy missions and the case solving. Those parts were a lot of fun. Dealing with all of the calls, people not showing up for work and the drama between the officers wasn’t nearly as fun. Maybe we aren’t all cut out to be the Chief of Police.
