Those of you who grew up watching police dramas on TV like Hill Street Blues, Cagney and Lacey, In The Heat of The Night and many others will easily fall into the cadence and gameplay called up by The Precinct. Especially for procedural, police dramas like Hill Street Blues, The Precinct almost seems ripped from the pages of one of their scripts. Set in a fictional, crime-ridden city called Averno, your character is no superhero. He’s just a beat cop trying to do his part in a city plagued by rampant petty crime, vandalism, traffic nightmares and all kinds of vices plus a big dose of much more serious offences.
Set in 1983, the cars are big and boxy, the fashion trends feature a bit too many neon colors, the streets are dirty and the city is grossly underfunded. And yet, it seems very much like a real place, not an overexaggerated parody crafted for television or movies like we experienced in RoboCop: Rogue City. Averno almost seems like New York City in the 1980s when it was going through a big transition into a more modern, safer place than it was the decade before.
You play Officer Nick Cordell Junior, fresh out of the police academy and thrown into the fire. There is a plot point there too, as your father was also a cop, and a very high ranking one at that. He got murdered on the job and the culprits were never found, something that will creep up from time to time as the story slowly advances and you learn more about what really happened. But your day-to-day work as a beat cop is much more mundane, although no less fun for players.
The Precinct is played in a top-down view that lets players rotate the map around however they want. This is especially helpful in buildings like police headquarters where there are a lot of walls and doors that block your slightly off-center view, although much less necessary when outside on the mean streets.
After the tutorial section where you will learn how to drive, shoot, fight, write parking tickets and above all else – how to follow police procedure, every day begins with a briefing where the duty sergeant will assign you a patrol route for the day. This can consist of driving patrols, walking the beat, looking for vehicular crimes like speeding and even spending the day working on parking enforcement. As you gain levels and experience, you get to better pick and choose your assignments in the open world.
But no matter what assignment you are taking on that day, you need to behave and follow all of the rules. Yes, this is an open world, but it’s not Grand Theft Auto. It’s much more like the old Police Quest series from Sierra, or the Beat Cop game from 11 Bit Studios that we reviewed a few years ago. Like in those titles, you will be held accountable for most of your actions. And if you blatantly break the rules, like shooting a civilian, it will be counted as an automatic failure and at least part of your day will reset as if it never happened. On the flip side, following good police procedures will earn you experience points that can be used to level up, both in terms of your rank in the department and the number of special abilities and perks you can earn to make your job a little more survivable.
For example, if you are in your cruiser and you pull up behind someone and see that they are speeding, you can activate your lights and siren and pull them over. Assuming they comply (if they don’t then you will start a wild chase), you need to treat them with respect and do things in the proper order like asking for their license and running them for any outstanding warrants or priors. If that check comes back positive, then you can ask them to step out of the vehicle and search them. Or, if you smell alcohol, you can give them a breathalyzer. You get experience points for everything you do right, but lose XP if you, for example, charge them with a crime that they did not commit. The Precinct does a good job of letting you know what you did wrong too, like my partner reminding me after the fact that I forgot to ask a suspect if I could check their trunk, which could have hidden contraband or weapons.
All of the various daily activities are pretty fun (don’t knock parking enforcement duty) especially if you are really role-playing as a new cop in the city. But there are also special missions which basically unlock as the main plot advances. It does this naturally as you play. For example, you will sometimes find evidence of gang activity as you patrol and arrest people. When you turn enough of that special evidence into the property master at the station, it will trigger a gang task force mission where you get to work with detectives to take down some of the major players and maybe learn a bit more about what happened to your father.
As serious as The Precinct is when it comes to police procedure, it can get kind of goofy when the action heats up. Car chases are particularly crazy affairs with both suspects and your cop car (if you are not a great driver) sliding through fences, concrete barriers, unlucky hot dog vendor carts and everything else. One time I missed a turn and went right through a glass-walled grocery store before blazing out the other side like it was from The Blues Brothers movie. Strangely, you don’t get in any trouble for that kind of mayhem, and your dilapidated car can be fixed up as good as new with a quick spray of paint at any number of always-open, drive through police garages. It’s kind of silly, but also one of the best parts of the game and a perfect way to balance all the serious police work.
The shooting sequences can also get kind of crazy with multiple suspects blazing away at you. Especially in the early game when you have limited weapons, getting shot at by a gang armed with assault rifles can be pretty scary. Thankfully, there is a good cover mechanic. If you take your time and keep your head down until at least some of them have to reload, you can make it out alive.
Along the way you will also be doing other things that no beat cop ever would, like flying a police helicopter or engaging in illegal street races as a young undercover officer. As you keep playing, more and more of those kinds of activities will unlock to spice things up.
It’s been a long time since I had this much fun with a new title, which will hopefully be made into a full series one day.
If you enjoy highly detailed open worlds and titles that balance their dry seriousness with moments of over-the-top, silly chaos, then The Precinct is just about perfect. There is a mean city out there to tame, so suit up with your brothers in blue and slowly set about bringing order to Averno. Or you could just walk around eating hot dogs while handing out parking tickets. It really depends on what kind of hero you want to be because the choice is yours in The Precinct.
Developers: Fallen Tree Games
Platforms: Epic Games Store, PC, PlayStation 5, Steam, Xbox Series X