Considering how popular cop shows and movies are, it's always been a bit of a puzzler why actual cop games have always been relatively rare. Sure, there are detective games where you get to investigate crimes, but games where you get to be a cop on a daily grind are few and far between. One of the few examples that come to mind is, if thinking of the newer ones, L.A. Noir. And then there's the grandaddy of the genre, Police Quest.
I have always liked the genre, so when I saw The Precinct on sale on Steam, I bought it almost instantly. It being actually a good game was more than a pleasant surprise.
In the early 1980s, a young police officer, Nick Cordell, steps into service in the fictitious city of Averno. He's the son of the former police chief of the city, who was killed in duty. The city itself is plagued by gang wars, and resolving this is one of the main objectives. A major side case is stopping a serial killer, and in the end, you even find the truth about Nick's father's murder. So, as far as stories go, a decent layout of cop show cliches, which serves as a good enough reason to do policing.
The meat of The Precinct is the day-to-day police work. On each shift, you get to choose the day's focus. You can patrol with a police car, on foot or by police helicopter. Vehicle patrol means either driving around the specific area of the city, looking for traffic violations or responding to any crime reported or crimes you stumble upon. There's also tow truck duty, during which the main goal is to tow away reported cars. On foot, you get to ticket people for parking violations or just chase muggers and whatnot. The copter duty has you providing aerial support to your fellow blues, so they have an easier time tracking criminals, either on foot or in cars.
Besides booking criminals, you can look for evidence against the gang leaders. After you've gathered enough, you'll get a special mission, where they are taken down until all three heads of the gang are behind bars. There are two gangs, each with three leaders.
Each shift ends with an experience tally. If you get enough, you'll get perks points, which can be used to make Nick a better cop by improving his abilities from policing to driving.
The game itself is played on an open-world map, where you are free to go wherever you want in the city spread over two islands. Basically, The Precinct plays like a budget version of GTA. Budget because you are limited to moving around only by foot or by different cars, or at times with the police copter. And that you are limited to only your police work activities. There are no after-work or free-time activities, and besides the gang stuff, there's not that much in terms of story to go around. This is more of a limited experience rather than an extensive forever game, unless you feel like sinking more time after the story into just catching criminals.
The crimes themselves are easy enough to solve. Usually, there's either an on-foot chase or a vehicle chase, after which you cuff the perp, read them their rights, and select all the fitting charges, like drunk driving, resisting arrest, stolen items and so on. After that, you can either escort them to jail or call a pickup.
There are also shootouts, as some criminals choose to open fire when they see cops. This leads you and your partner to seek cover from behind whatever is in the scene, like cars or walls. Then you just pop out when you think it's safe and fire on the crooks. At times, you need to kill them; at times, they are more than happy to surrender after a couple of shots.
The helicopter missions are all about giving your colleagues aerial support. You can track down speeding cars or on-foot criminals from the air and give their locations to the on-the-ground troops. And that's really all there's to it. Another special vehicle mission group is the tow car, which you can use to collect reported vehicles. A fun little activity and completely optional.
All said, The Precinct is a fun experience. Despite it's not an adventure game, I could not help but think this is something the old Sierra classic Police Quest could have evolved into, if given a chance. You could say that The Precinct is an expanded version of Police Quest, with even bigger emphasis on procedural police work with more variety in cases.
If The Precinct sounds like something you might enjoy, you can get it from Steam. There's a demo for it, too, so if you are uncertain, you can give that a spin as well. It's also available for consoles.
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