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 This Is The Police is a story-heavy management game by Weappy Studios. The best way to describe it that I've been able to come up with is if Screwfly's library (Zafehouse: Diaries, Fear Equation, Deadnauts) had an illegitimate child obsessed with 1980s noir. You are the 60 year old police chief of the insanely rough city of Freeburg. The mayor is a racist, sexist, nepotist rear end in a top hat who is forcing you into retirement in 6 months. The local mafia family, headed by Christopher Sand, has an iron grip on the city and is not shy about offing uncooperative officials. The city itself is rife with misery, and fights, robberies, and smuggling are an everyday occurrence as the town circles the drain. Your basic task is to build up a retirement nest egg of $500,000 in those 6 months so you can at least leave to a comfortable life. In the meantime, if you could leave the city a better place, that would also be fantastic. But how, exactly, will you go about that? Will you sell out to the colossally powerful crime families of Freeburg? Disregard your cops' safety in order to chase bonuses for bigger and bigger criminals? Delay reporting an officer's death so you can pocket his pay? Sell cocaine confiscated from crime scenes? Brutally suppress protests in order to get raises from City Hall? Whatever you do, you will have to be flexible about it. Refuse to work with the rear end in a top hat mayor, and you will find yourself unable to respond to crises from repeated budget cuts, and turned out by angry citizens. Refuse to work with the mafia, and you will find yourself on the wrong end of a high powered rifle. gently caress over your employees too much, and they will sic the labor union on you. It's a minefield out there - tread carefully. But do remember that everyone else must be flexible, too. They mayor can't just up and replace you at the slightest provocation - or else he would have done it already. You don't have to fire all black cops just because he says so, or brutally crush a feminist protest because he wants you to. You don't have to let a mafia job go on when it turns out it will allow a serial killer to escape custody - it's complicated for them to just kill you, too. You can push back and act your conscience - but choose your battles.  Basic gameplay revolves around receiving calls and assigning officers to respond. Multiple calls will come in at a time, and one of the things you need to do is make sure you have enough staff to respond to all of these calls - or at least most of them. Each cop also has a 'professionalism' rating (see the number next to the star) which is how good they are at their job. Responding to a call with cops that are too unprofessional, too tired, or too drunk will endanger their lives and the lives of civilians.  At times, calls are more complicated. The perp has already fled the scene and your detectives must take over. As your detectives work a case, you will get pictures of how things might have gone down. Reading the testimony carefully and arranging the pictures correctly will crack the case and enable an arrest. This game is not very heavily randomized and as such, you should consider this thread full of spoilers. However, I will be keeping this OP generally pretty sparse in order to encourage discussion among those of us playing. If any critical questions come up, I'll add them. If you're here wondering if this game is good, the answer is generally yes. There's a few weird things about it, and a couple of bugs, but by and large, the game is well put together, fun to play, and tells a good story. Just don't expect that your 2016 ethics will be fully respected in the game - it's a noir film set in yesteryear. We're talking about the worst of humanity in the 1980s or so. There will be racism, sexism, and gay bashing in the game. You don't have to feed into it. You can eventually fight against it, but you must be patient and wait for your moment. You will not be able to yell and scream about how it's anathema to the world the second it shows up. Steam store page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/443810/
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Aug 5, 2016 21:55
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| # ? May 7, 2024 16:55 |
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Thanks for the thread. I'm expecting this game to have me walk down the middle of the road. It feels like it's asking you to go full corruption, but if that's the case why would it give you the option to go full Jim Gordon? A lot of games want you to go to either extreme, good or bad, but I feel like the safest bet would be playing everybody but yourself. Also, am I expected to fire the start out cops with 5 Professionalism? I've only ever gotten them up to 25 but they always end up disappointing me. Burch Jr and Roy are the Glass Joes of Freeburg. MrSlam fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Aug 10, 2016 |
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Aug 5, 2016 22:13
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It's entirely possible to get cops at 5 up; partner them with a very good cop (like Stovall) and send them to Police Academy/give them Stripe promotions to boost them up. 3 stripes is 150 professionalism, so if you get them there then they're as good as any cop - the game explicitly tells you that 150 is considered average. That said, my personal ethos is that it's better to just fire those dorks and hire someone else who starts at 150 or whatever. Of your starting shifts, the only truly awful cop who you can't fire for being too old is Burch Jr, and there's a side job call early on that will induce the responding officer to quit. So I fire them and just have Burch Jr respond to that call, which gets him out of my hair without a fuss.
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Aug 5, 2016 22:17
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Coolguye posted:there's a side job call early on that will induce the responding officer to quit. So I fire them and just have Burch Jr respond to that call, which gets him out of my hair without a fuss. I guess that's one of those 100% things then. I was assuming you needed an officer with high prof to succeed the mission but if hump Burch Jr can do it then anyone can. So naturally I lost one of my best men to being a bouncer at a club. It's a clever trap.
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Aug 5, 2016 22:22
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That's legitimately something unclear about the game, I think intentionally so: Professionalism isn't an object for side job calls, including City Hall, Mafia, and business calls. Send the idiots you can't trust with anything else out there.
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Aug 5, 2016 22:25
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If you think about it, it plays into the Bullock stereotype of a corrupt cop also being incredibly almost willfully lovely at his actual job.
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Aug 5, 2016 22:27
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Honestly, I'd disagree that this game tells a good story. I can get that it's a noir story set in yesteryear, but my problem with the writing wasn't really that my '2016 ethics weren't being respected,' uh, whatever that means, but that the poo poo you're being asked to do is cartoonishly evil. There's portraying a corrupt system and then there's making the entire game feel like you're a low-rent goon for a captain planet villain. Some of it doesn't even make sense. There's several events where your boss tries to strongarm you into doing stuff that not only would cause more civil unrest - which you think even a corrupt cop wouldn't want, since that means more work for them, more danger to them, and more possibility of higher levels of the government getting involved and poking around - but is outright stupid. I can totally jam with what the game is going for, but it just uses a sledgehammer at every possible opportunity. There's pretty much no real moment of nuance or subtlety in the entire game.
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Aug 5, 2016 22:48
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Endorph posted:Honestly, I'd disagree that this game tells a good story. I can get that it's a noir story set in yesteryear, but my problem with the writing wasn't really that my '2016 ethics weren't being respected,' uh, whatever that means, but that the poo poo you're being asked to do is cartoonishly evil. There's portraying a corrupt system and then there's making the entire game feel like you're a low-rent goon for a captain planet villain. Some of it doesn't even make sense. There's several events where your boss tries to strongarm you into doing stuff that not only would cause more civil unrest - which you think even a corrupt cop wouldn't want, since that means more work for them, more danger to them, and more possibility of higher levels of the government getting involved and poking around - but is outright stupid. I haven't gotten very far but I think I'll go at it from the perspective that this is all taking place in a Sim City 2000 scenario and the Mayor's just a really bad player.
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Aug 5, 2016 22:55
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I dunno, I didn't really have a problem with the whole "everything sucks, everyone is a cartoon villain" thing. I don't feel like the game is trying to be nuanced or anything, that's just not the vibe it's going for. And that's fine I think. That said, I also have problems with the writing. I don't think they hit the noir feel as well as they needed to make it work. Some of the stuff kinda works in written form but with the voiceovers, it just drones on and on and on... I like the presentation of the cutscenes and all that but my god, there is a lot of fat that could've been trimmed without anything being lost. I kinda like the game, it's addictive. But yeah, it's a missed opportunity I think. The gameplay gets repetitive, the presentation is nice but like I said, the writing just goes on and on... I dunno. Could've been much better but it's still fairly entertaining.
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Aug 5, 2016 23:00
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Endorph posted:it just uses a sledgehammer at every possible opportunity. There's pretty much no real moment of nuance or subtlety in the entire game. also, fwiw, going along with the mayor's idiotic ideas absolutely will cause more trouble for you than just ignoring him and doing your job in a lot of cases. a good example is firing black people because he's racist. okay, you can i guess, but particularly your detectives absolutely must be fired illegally to do this by the deadline. the mayor might be happy with you for a day, but firing people illegally will definitely cause a labor union complaint. at that point, you will need to determine who filed the complaint, and either buy their silence or get them killed, all of which is really messy/expensive and overall just a colossal headache. or you could just ignore the racist piece of poo poo and continue locking up criminals. it's actually much simpler and easier on you to do that. Leinadi posted:I like the presentation of the cutscenes and all that but my god, there is a lot of fat that could've been trimmed without anything being lost. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Aug 5, 2016 |
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Aug 5, 2016 23:32
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I would just like to say Duke Nukem makes for some salty salty police chief about to be kicked out of his job. I am enjoying this game. however I hosed up on the dentist investigation, so I am expecting a game over any time. which is sad, since I have not had a single officer killed for weeks until than
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Aug 6, 2016 00:14
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I want to like games like this and Papers, Please but the fact that you absolutely are required to do some illicit/bad things in order to not fail outright kind of ruins it.
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Aug 6, 2016 06:02
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But is there a scene in which a triumphant Chief Duke tells the evil mayor to BLOW IT OUT YOUR rear end?
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Aug 6, 2016 06:37
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Quicksilver6 posted:But is there a scene in which a triumphant Chief Duke tells the evil mayor to BLOW IT OUT YOUR rear end? yes, eventually it seems insanely easy to get your poo poo kicked in during the last few days though, have not gotten a fully good and satisfying ending yet
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Aug 6, 2016 06:45
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This is a really cool game hampered by being relentlessly slow and padded.
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Aug 6, 2016 06:52
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Coolguye posted:yes, eventually Yesssssssssss
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Aug 6, 2016 06:59
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I hate how I can't reroute calls or redirect officers on the way home. If someone is headed to a shoplifting, and I get a call for a shooting, he should be able to re-prioritize, and a cop shouldn't have to pass an incident on his way home. Having cops patrol would also add interest since you gotta balance sensing the closest and the best help available. I think you should be assigning people to cars during shift change, and not have quite enough cars for everone. Vahakyla fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 07:58
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Slim Killington posted:I want to like games like this and Papers, Please but the fact that you absolutely are required to do some illicit/bad things in order to not fail outright kind of ruins it. The alternative seems like it would take away any of the tension though? Having to turn a blind eye a few times for the greater good would give the game some realism and moral ambiguity. Unless the game railroads you into certain choices, despite having the appearance of CYOA. I haven't played though so this is all guessing.
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Aug 6, 2016 08:12
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Everything in this game is a matter of patterns. There's no one thing that you absolutely need to do, but if you make a habit out of being a problem, someone is going to fix the problem. So yeah, if you absolutely refuse to do anything you strictly speaking shouldn't, you're likely going to end up with a bullet in you pretty soon, because you're a problem for a lot of people.
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Aug 6, 2016 08:19
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Does anyone know what date the first War ends? The game said 2 weeks but I don't know what date that was.
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Aug 6, 2016 09:02
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Day 29 if my memory serves me correctly.
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Aug 6, 2016 09:16
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Coolguye posted:Day 29 if my memory serves me correctly. uh oh. I'm way off.
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Aug 6, 2016 09:43
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Five officers died during a bomb threat Why didn't the mayor approve of SWAT funding 
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Aug 6, 2016 23:46
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Because he hates you. I now have two goals. 1. Escape with the 500K, 2. Transform the thoroughly middling (100 professionalism) but insanely bad-assedly named Creed Ironrose  into the second coming of Harry Callahan.I also hired the useless, bumbling Frank Drebin and turned him into a great detective.
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Aug 7, 2016 12:40
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How replayable is this? I thought it was supposed to be pretty randomized but it sounds like it's on rails narratively so the same exact choices and scenarios are always playing out.
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Aug 8, 2016 00:09
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There are multiple big choices that all affect the game in some big ways, but randomization is not something it does a lot of. I would say it is moderately replayable I'm that you can get 2 or 3 runs out of it doing multiple different things, but it ain't no king of dragon pass.
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Aug 8, 2016 01:20
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Usually before I go shaking my tits to the press, I like to go see how the professionals do it...
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Aug 8, 2016 01:35
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Vahakyla posted:I hate how I can't reroute calls or redirect officers on the way home. Quoting myself because just now literally failed two simultaneous calls that led to civilian deaths and a mad mayor, because cops were driving past them, coming back from two simultaenous dentist-related panic false alarms. AGHGHHGHGHGHG.
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Aug 8, 2016 01:46
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Anyone know how Snitches and BBQs are supposed to work? I feel like BBQs are supposed to affect an invisible loyalty stat. Are Snitches situational? Will you know if there's poo poo going down behind your back if you don't hire them beforehand? Are they how you get the politics of each officer or does the politics thing come into play later in the game?
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Aug 8, 2016 06:30
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In the second act of the game, you will start getting reports on how various factions like you, and one of those factions is the police station itself. The snitch will enable that report - it will be a question mark otherwise. That said, I definitely haven't seen how snitches are helpful. You pay them quite a bit, you should generally be aware of where you stand with your cops (don't go loving getting them killed and you are probably fine), and the snitches themselves have a really nasty habit of turning up dead. So if you do hire a snitch, at least make it one of your lovely cops.
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Aug 8, 2016 07:55
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I keep getting labor complaints, but no reason why.
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Aug 8, 2016 08:21
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Coolguye posted:In the second act of the game, you will start getting reports on how various factions like you, and one of those factions is the police station itself. The snitch will enable that report - it will be a question mark otherwise. I guess I needlessly sent one of my average officers to the grave then. He didn't even tell me anything but they found him beaten to death in an alley. Maybe he deserved it. So how does City Hall work? I do all of their jobs (barring firing black officers and stopping the feminist protest) but they still end up disappointed in me and my efficiency. Is it scripted? If it has anything to do with crime stats then they have their heads up their collective asses. If it isn't scripted I think it may have something to do with how many officers you have per day. I only recently discovered how much of a help making officers do double shifts can be, especially the detectives.
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Aug 8, 2016 15:32
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Played a bit of this and it made me wish someone would make a really detailed police department manager/simulator type game
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Aug 8, 2016 16:06
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Megadyptes posted:Played a bit of this and it made me wish someone would make a really detailed police department manager/simulator type game they are, at least, saying that they intend to make a sandbox mode before they pack it in and call this game done it's not what you're asking for but it's something MrSlam posted:So how does City Hall work? I do all of their jobs (barring firing black officers and stopping the feminist protest) but they still end up disappointed in me and my efficiency. Is it scripted? If it has anything to do with crime stats then they have their heads up their collective asses. now to be fair i've failed a grand total of 2 calls this entire game (one of which was a mafia call that i let go) so that potentially has something to do with it, but i'm not clear.
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Aug 8, 2016 16:53
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Pretty sure the mayor's office become less pissy if you otherwise do your job well, i.e. fight crime. It get's pretty easy if you have around 11-12 officers.
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Aug 8, 2016 17:30
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Coolguye posted:Day 29 if my memory serves me correctly. Day 27, it kicks in on Day 13. I know this loving kid murdered his loving mom for shouting at him for playing videogames, it's obvious as goddamn daylight, but I can't get the loving pictures in the exact order they want them and there's a bazillion combinations it could be.
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Aug 9, 2016 07:45
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Visitor showing up, mom arguing with visitor, visitor leaving, mom yelling at kid, kid getting hammer That's the gist of it, I don't remember exactly what that sequence looked like.
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Aug 9, 2016 07:56
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so on day 12 i got shot, and ostensibly the game is over. A: is a requirement that i fail some missions for the mafia? i did everything they asked except refused dispatch B: are there any useful tutorials past "paddy wagon" or can i turn that off
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Aug 9, 2016 13:40
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I had to restart to get the Paddy Wagon except not really. I restarted because too many officers died and I felt bad. Plus I was just a lovely all around cop. Movies this game makes me want to watch again: -Serpico -The French Connection -LA Confidential -The Usual Suspects -Hot Fuzz -Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment -Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol -Police Academy: Mission to Moscow
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Aug 9, 2016 15:23
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hmm a cop for hire with 800 professionalism and two stripes. what horrible things is he into
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Aug 10, 2016 03:04
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