The Precinct Review

I looked into this game because on paper a concept like this hasn't really been explored in gaming. There are games where you play as cops like Max Payne and Dead to Rights but the protagonists in them are loose canon cops who stopped following protocal. Sleeping Dogs has you play as undercover cop. The idea of any game let alone an open world game where you play as a police officer who follows the procedure sounded like a fascinating premise.

As a whole, it is easy to bash The Precinct for being undercooked but at the same time due to this concept being so underexplored in gaming I'm willing to be lienient in some respects.

The one major aspect that is certainly half baked is the story. It is rather impressive that the game has a lot of voice acting that is well acted and the moment to moment dialogue is "fine" but that's the thing it's superficial. I'm glad your player character Nick Cordell isn't a silent protagonist but he still can come off as an empty slate with not much character or agency. The plot is where everything really suffers. The start of the game brings up Cordell's father and how the police chief deeply regrets it and there's overarching conspiracy and well, it is what I brought up. Most of the game is you going after gang members and criminals that are completely unrelated to the conspiracy and then the final chapter of the game remembers there was one. There's is no sense of progression hardship or Nick putting clues together, it's all just suddenly revealed at the end and the game is pretty much almost done by then.

Fletcher Lomax is the most interesting character but he's just kind of there. He does some crimes, you follow his trail then arrest him. That's it. He never messes with anyone in The Precinct.

There is an interesting subversion where Kelly who is a cop on the verge of retirement who doesn't die at the end continues his work as a cop but this never goes anywhere to be interesting.

Gameplay fares a little better but the structure can be weird and at times detrimental. You can do different kinds of shifts like on foot, vehicle, and helicoter. Thing is, you are better off doing on foot since that progresses the story faster. You'll find more evidence for constantly arresting people on foot than by vehicle or helicopter. You can loot corpses during random shootouts to find more evidence. You'll be rolling in XP doing this anyway.

With all of this criticism I made, I found the game to have a rather relaxing and chill atmosphere with the synth wave music and how there can be long stretches of time before shootouts with criminals or car chases even happen. A lot of the time robberies, muggings, drug trafficking, and assaults are going on so while the gameplay can be one note, the world is dynamic enough that it never gets dull. It sort of in it's own way resembles police work or jobs that involve using physical force but with long stretches of nothing happen.

During car chases you have to send other vehicles and wait a decent while until you can actually fire from your car. It's also more about keeping rogue npcs alive rather than killing them. Apart of me is also glad that during car chases, you can see what's in front of you and it doesn't use the top camera for these parts.

The idea of being able to search npc and check for their criminal record or if they have contraband or illegal goods is rather amusing. You can give tickets to any car in the world. You can even check for npcs affliated with gangs depending on the clothes they wear.

Shooting is also pretty clunky and unintutive. Shotguns feel awful to use at close range and the AK-47 feels better to use at close range than a video game shotgun. It does kind of add to atmosphere since shootouts aren't supposed to have unwearly often. These sequences along with car chases happen a lot during story missions while both can be clunky you aren't redoing too much content upon death due to it checkpoints being frequent.

Overall, The Precinct was a decent attempt at a game where it's premise hasn't been done very often. I'm willing to be softer at it's semi realized execution.