The Precinct

I'm going to sound incredibly old when I say this, but I remember the legendary police series Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue that aired on TV in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. They portrayed everyday life in American police stations, with all that entailed in terms of personal relationships, the dangerous reality of the city streets and much more. Excellent series.

That's exactly the NYPD Blue vibe I get when I play The Precinct. Set in Averno City (a fictional city inspired by New York) in 1983, you take on the role of Nick Cordell, son of the former, and now deceased, police chief Nick Cordell Sr. As a rookie, you must try to navigate life in the precinct and on the streets of the city while holding the expectations of your father's time on the force.

The Precinct has been compared to previous Grand Theft Auto titles in the past (mainly because of the game's semi-top-down camera angle, I guess), but after playing The Precinct, that comparison disappears more and more. This is a police simulator, obviously with a significant arcade angle, but it's the depiction of life as a police officer in early 80's America, with all that entails in terms of boring day-to-day work, eating hot dogs on the street corner at Farid's and the dream of moving up the ranks.

You start out by, very typically, getting a partner who, after 25 years on the force, is on the verge of retirement. Life as a police officer starts quietly, but after the leader of the city's dominant crime syndicate is ousted and the city's other criminal organisations move in to fill the void, things start to happen.

Soon you start working with two lead investigators who are hot on the heels of two of the city's biggest gangs, but as you're not in charge of the investigation yourself, you're sent out on various patrols, either by car or on foot, where you have to keep your eyes and ears open, especially for gang members on the streets.

Life as a police officer can be both trivial and monotonous. You have to deal with illegal parking, speeding, general disorderly behaviour, robberies in kiosks and the like. Every time you apprehend a person in violation of the law, you have to remember to read them their rights, check their ID, search them and the like - and based on what you have observed, you have to build a case against them and decide whether it can be handled with a fine or if the offender should be arrested - or maybe even let go.

After a while, however, it becomes a bit trivial to arrest the same people for the same offences, find the same things in their pockets and charge them with the same things. It starts to become more grunt work than entertainment - probably just like it is for the police in real life. However, you can switch this part (ID checks, body searches, etc.) off in the game's menus, so the developers knew that this could be a problem in the long run, but then the unique police feeling disappears a bit.

However, there are also days that are far more interesting. A normal patrol around the neighbourhood can end in a frantic car chase through the city, gunfights in the streets or helping to solve a murder that leads to the city's gangs fighting for the new vacancy at the top of Averno City. So one moment the game is rather monotonous, only to suddenly become more action-packed and interesting, only to return to the monotony of daily police work shortly after.

If you want a break from the daily routine, there are a few different activities around the city that you can enjoy. For example, there's street racing, which seems a bit out of place for a police officer to participate in, but hey, here you go. You can also find hidden electronic chests with stolen items from a museum, but these chests are all locked and require a code, and here the game suddenly becomes a simple puzzle game to find the code.

Everything you do earns XP, except if you use excessive force or accuse someone you've detained of something they didn't do - both of which are minus XP. Your XP continuously unlocks new weapons, new vehicles, new areas of the city and your rank in the police force also increases, giving you new and more meaningful tasks. You gain new abilities via a simple ability tree where you can place the tokens you get each time you enter a new level.

The Precinct is actually a difficult game to review because it fluctuates so much. As I said, it can range from the monotony of being a cop on the streets to intense car chases, solving gang-related murders and more. These are probably the terms of a 'police simulator' - where there is just a lot of trivial work, but it just doesn't work that well as a game, but still, The Precinct stays afloat because of the great atmosphere and beautiful city.

Technically, The Precinct works fine, even though it's a simple game mechanically. There are some problems with your partner not always knowing how to get into your patrol car, you have to stand quite precisely to pick things up from the ground and the usability of the different police cars varies a lot - some are very lively and hard to control, while others are so clumsy and slow that they are almost useless in a car chase, for example. The Precinct comes across as a little unbalanced in places.

The visuals, on the other hand, are very well done. As I said, you see everything from above and that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of detail in the game world, because there really is. The city's narrow alleys and dark backyards are very atmospheric, especially at night when the whole city is bathed in beautiful light. Parts of the environment can even be realistically destroyed, for example when a car chase gets out of control - and they do. The audio side is again a bit more of a mixed bag. The sounds of the city, police radio chatter and the like work well, but you wish your partner would fill their head with hot dogs a little more often, because it's quiet for so long.

The Precinct is, as you might have guessed by now, a pretty fluctuating experience. It has a cool 1980s cop vibe and it looks good - and there's something satisfying about patrolling the streets and dealing with the everyday problems of a big city. At least at first. However, it's exactly this part that is the game's challenge, as it becomes rather trivial after the first few hours, but then it suddenly flares up when you're called out to a gang-related murder.

If you think the above sounds interesting, then The Precinct could very well be for you and I'd recommend you try the free demo on Steam - because this game is teetering on the edge of something you think is pretty cool, with the daily loop of police work, otherwise you'll drop it pretty quickly as it simply gets too boring.

I'm still teetering on the edge - so I'm going to take another shift with my chatty partner in the atmospheric streets of Averno City.