The Precinct Steam Charts & Stats

Love the game. Reminds of the old GTA games. Graphics are nice, runs smooth and the story uses voice overs so I can play without reading the game. Controls on K/M are normal for these types of games. Driving does feel better with a controller but I mostly been playing with K/M. For the price the game is fair for what your getting.

A game with great potential but lacking in variety. Let’s start with the positives: this game is refreshingly unique since you get to play as a police officer instead of the usual villain. It brings back memories of the classic Police Quest series, which was a blast! I had high hopes for this indie title, especially with its impressive visuals, decent humor, and the classic satire woven into the characters. However, the content is where it stumbles. It’s so repetitive that after just an hour, you might find yourself yawning. Some of the shifts feel quite short, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I do enjoy patrolling from the helicopter, playing the "eyes in the sky" without having to deal with a clueless partner. Speaking of partners, yours is a cop close to retirement and generally fine, but his logic is questionable. He’ll dash off to chase a fleeing suspect, leaving you to handle the one in front of you. But if you decide to check on his progress, he’ll abandon the perp as soon as you get in your car. More than once, I’ve seen the bad guy standing there with his hands up, completely unattended. Another amusing quirk is when you’re on foot and spot a high-speed chase; your partner will take off after them! It’s hilarious for about 1.23 seconds. You hop in your car, and suddenly he’s running back towards you, forcing you to wait. The citizens of this city are a wild bunch, always breaking the law! On my first patrol, I didn’t even need to move; enough crimes happened right where I was standing before my shift ended. There are four crimes that pop up way too frequently: 1) Drunk driving 2) Fighting 3) Drugs 4) Burglary It feels like you can’t take five steps without hearing about a crime or seeing your partner witness one. And let’s not forget the police in the game! When you call for backup, you can watch as the cop car arrives, crashes into another vehicle, backs up, moves forward, and crashes again—all while there’s plenty of space to get closer. Clearly, driving lessons were not part of their training at the Police Academy. I’ll keep playing, but in small doses. This game definitely needed a bit more polish and refinement before hitting the shelves. I can’t recommend it because of how quickly it becomes repetitive, the clueless bots, the overwhelming crime rate, and a partner who’s like a dog chasing every squirrel it sees (on foot).

Entertaining, kind of annoying to run plates, you have to sit in your car and tail a vehicle without your lights on to run the plates. Some of the crimes are buggy. I had a shootout I responded to, but 2 suspects were escaping, so I chased them down, went back to the site of the shooting and everything had despawned. It's like the game forgets what you're doing half the time if you get more than 30m away from something, but at the same time the game has persistent traffic accidents throughout your whole shift. Sometimes you'll be responding to a crime and another happens 5 feet away, but you can't do anything about it because the game only lets you focus on one task at a time. I was in a traffic stop and out of nowhere some dude runs up to me, hits me, then runs away. I caught up to him, but I couldn't apprehend him because the game still thought I was doing the traffic stop, despite the game sending a dude over to hit me and runoff?? The bugs are frustrating because the game seems to be at odds with itself on what it wants the player to do. I'd wait for more patches, then it'll be fun.

You can play this game. It is okay. I am forced to give a negative review out of pure sadness for what it could be as what is here now is a shell for its potential. It feels early access to me, or that the developers ran out of financing and time. I think it is priced, _okay_ with the discount, you will probably get what you put in if you like games like this. But if you're on the edge, I would wait for updates. This game has spent ~6 years in development. With that they've nailed the aesthetics and 80s vibe of the city, and it's clear a good amount of work has gone into the sandbox itself. On performance i had no issues or crashes, but I am on a very top of the line rig. Others express different sentiments and the game is capped to 30fps on console. To that end, almost everything else feels bolted on. The story is as cliche and as "cop drama" as you'd expect. You've almost certainly heard it before. Rookie cop convinces senior cop to care, chase down some cop family drama with a twist at the end, etc. It was so mundane I skipped the ending cut scenes. The story isn't a reason to play and you finish it about six hours in. Some items are so bolted on you could miss them, there is an entire subway network with no crimes or patrols (to my knowledge so far) associated with it. The progression system is barebones, outside of a few new unlocks for "support actions" most of it is "increase x by %" type perks. Unlocks for health are kind of needed because the combat system isn't skill based. There is strong auto aim, but only a small percentage of shots will hit on the target due to random MOA spread applied to each weapon. You unlock vehicles as you play, but none of them are better than the starting vehicle because they literally cannot keep up with criminal vehicles on chases so "can ram more" doesn't really come into play. There are additional weapons to unlock, but no additional non lethal weapons. Each weapon suffers from the artifical random spread so really none of them are better than the others, except for the "sniper" rifle and only because of its ammo to kill ability. The sandbox feels good in the beginning, but quickly gets tedious due to the limited number of interactions available. It will be no time at all until you start "Delegating" paperwork to your partner for almost all arrests not because you don't enjoy noting down the crimes, but because the interface and selection wheel for doing so is so crude. In the story you were called to interview residents for example, once, but that's it. In the free roam game-play there is no support type missions like setting up roadblocks, speed traps, or serving warrants. There is no EMS services like Fire or Ambulance despite them being modelled in the game. There is no "after the fact" type crimes where you're expected to interview potentially unreliable informants for a Be-on-the-lookout type system. There is no emergent story. There are no tow trucks, no calls for trespass etc. Criminals respond as not-in-their-self-interest as possible, with almost every criminal running. I get that's there for game feel but with how shallow everything is it feels pretty rough. Each event is separate from every other event, there is no sandbox permanence, it's "reset" every time you enter the precinct. Everything feels so well established as a _foundation_ for what this game could support but does not. I understand that this is a small developer studio, but wish more attention was put into systems than aesthetics, because the aesthetics show what this small and mighty team can do. The whole time through all I was saying to myself was "if only" and unfortunately that's a rough feeling to have for a game like this. My hope is that this world realises its full potential, and doesn't fall into a similar trap like shadows of doubt, or other games that have shown such a strong foundation, but have been unable to leverage it for anything that truly feels special. EDIT: Today, May 15th, the publisher announced there will be post release content on the discord. They did not elaborate as to what that content will be. This is different than their previous stance at launch when they said they had no post release roadmap, and haven't yet decided if they will do post release content. So some of you on the edge may wish to follow the game to see what that entails, or does not entail.

Gameplay Mechanics – How the game plays moment-to-moment (movement, controls, unique systems). This game is a Police simulator with a third person view. As officer Cordell you can Walk, Jog, Run, go up and down Ladders, Drive Cars, Drive Helicopters, Shoot guns, Tackle suspects, Give voice commands to pedestrians and swim. A good portion of gameplay involves Asking people for ID's, patting them down, detaining suspects, giving breathalyzer tests, checking their car trunks, arresting and shooting offenders. You can also check people's license plates and speed. For parked cars you might be able to give tickets if they are committing infractions like parking in front of a fire hydrant. The game happens in shifts, each with a specific location, duration, objective and vehicle. However the shift that you choose doesn't really matter that much, as crime will still happen randomly and entice you to go fight it, instead of following the directive. Though by following the orders you might unlock new shift areas. When the shift duration ends you can end the day or free roam. If you end the shift you will receive some XP for the things you have done and will level up in the precinct, unlocking new vehicles, weapons and skill points. During mission days you wont be able to carry out regular shifts. By arresting people and collecting evidence you can find out stuff about the two main gangs in the game, and as you investigate you will get special events to arrest important gang member and go up their chain. There are special events like Races and Time Trials spread across the map. Difficulty & Challenge – How hard the game is, balance of challenge, fairness. You can choose the difficulty in the settings. In the easiest difficulty it is very easy to win races and you take way less damage from enemies. In the regular difficulty you can get 2 or 3 shot and spend a lot of time on some races. It is up to how you feel like enjoying this game. Combat System – How fights feel, variety of moves, enemy behavior. I will divide the combat system based on the vehicles: On Foot you might notice someone committing a crime. Your response will vary depending on the severity of the crime, allowing you to use no force if the perp surrenders, Restraining force if they try to run away from you, Detaining force if they grab a melee weapon or become somehow dangerous and Lethal force if they are shooting or using knives or swords. Each of this states ask for a different response from you, being interacting with the perp, chasing and catching or killing them. You have a weapon wheel and a regular roster of weapons, including shotguns, AR's, pistols, smg's, a baton and a Taser Gun. aiming the gun is weirdly unique, but it is quick to get used to. In a car the same states apply. Some people are speeding, and littering or with invalid license plates, so you will beep twice your siren to pull them over and investigate. Some cars will go into fleeing mode, starting a chase. During the chase, if you keep close to the other car you will accumulate Support tokens, that allow you to call reinforcements, spike traps (basically useless as the perp can almost drive normally with all four flats) and road blocks (you can do this in any vehicle type and and foot too). If the vehicle is shooting at you, your officer partner can shoot back at them. When you manage to trap them you can remove them from the car and do the regular arresting routine. you can also commandeer civilian vehicles and conduct the arrests using them. In the Heli you are basically air support, as you can't directly interfere with the crimes happening on ground level. You can only find crime and assist the chases by shining the spotlight on the ground and calling the back up units, spikes, roadblocks etc.. The police on the ground will do the arresting and you will get XP for it (it is the worst way of getting xp by far) I found this mechanics to be fun overall, I do think the AI renders some of this stuff kinda useless. Some polish would be appreciated. Weapons, Gear & Abilities – Variety, upgrade systems, usefulness, uniqueness. As I said you got a whole roster of Weapons that you unlock with level. The police vehicles also get unlocked by leveling up. if you run out of ammo you can grab more on the trunk of the patrol car, as well as change weapons. When you rank you you get a skill point to use in a few skill trees that improve your stamina, health, combat and driving. Overall I think there are some crucial upgrades and a bunch of stuff that you don't really see much difference. (though this could be different and make more difference in higher difficulties) Level/Area/Mob Design – How environments are structured, exploration, layout creativity. The map is a good size for the amount of content. There are two islands connected by a few bridges. The fences, curbs, bushes, trash are all basically weightless if you are driving. You can ram through them and they will barely give resistance. This makes it very fun to drive around every road and alley. There are quite a lot of pedestrians and drivers and they can all potentially be criminals. If you crash on other vehicles or run over pedestrians there are no consequences, so go ham. The only time you will get punished is if you run over pedestrians WHILE chasing a suspect, or by using the incorrect amount of force. The AI for the other cops is quite horrible at times. They set the spikes at the most stupid places and sometimes just get stuck and don't know how to get to a spot. They will almost never ram correctly into the criminal vehicles. All of this makes the Helicopter gameplay infuriating. Sometimes you will call tens of reinforcements and traps and they will miss everything, and all you can do is watch and pray that their AI brains work at least once. You can fast travel through subway stations. They could TP you as soon as you go down the station, but you actually need to enter a station and wait for a train and enter a train car to start the tp process. This is quite nice for world building but this effort could maybe be used elsewhere. to be fair, though, you might never even use the fast travel, as it is very quick to travel all across the map. Story & Narrative – Plot, characters, pacing, emotional impact. Can't speak on it. The dialogue is mostly presented through those character PNGs with subtitles. I absolutely hate this style of presentation, so my brain tuned out and I skipped everything. Doesn't help that the characters look mega generic and that the voice acting is quite bad. Thank god there was a "Skip All" prompt on the dialogue. Visuals & Art Style – Graphics quality, artistic direction, animations. The graphics are ok, nothing spectacular but the game looks nice and very detailed. The artistic direction of the town in general is quite good, I quickly was able to become familiar with most neighborhoods and easily get by. There are a few very recognizable landmarks after playing for a few hours that make it easy to know where you are at al times. The game really falls short on the dialogue scenes, as I mentioned. I think they would be better of by just using speech balloons on top of the heads of the characters in the 3D world, or even just assigning regular text boxes on the bottom of the screen with the name of the person speaking. The character 2D cutouts are abysmal and take you out of the atmosphere. The menu's and HUD are quite lacking too. Performance & Polish – Bugs, frame rate, loading times, overall smoothness. The game mostly plays fine. But there are quite a few weird bugs like: Cars spawning at the same time in the same place making them conjoined and glitchy. AI just completely giving up in a way that can make you lose an arrest in the Helicopter. Once I got a lot officers to corner a perp on a car with a road block on a bridge. They piled onto themselves and the new ones were coming from the wrong side of the bridge. After 10 minutes of

[b]The game's 80s-themed atmosphere is really impressive. Both the music and the visual design bring that period to life. I have been excitedly awaiting its release since the day it was first announced, and it has more than lived up to my expectations. It's been a long time since I've seen a police simulation of this quality. You won't even notice how time flies when you're on patrol. The gameplay remains fresh thanks to the variety of missions and reactions to events. The fact that the decisions you make while fighting crime affect the world makes you feel like you are part of the game. This game has few rivals in the genre, and is definitely worth its price when you consider the local pricing advantage. If you want to experience a nostalgic police story, you should definitely give this game a chance.[/b]

The gameplay is good, and the graphics are beautiful. However, the AI is not very good, and there are a decent number of bugs (though none game-breaking so far). Overall, it's a good game that just needs some bug fixes and AI improvements. Hopefully they will also add more content to make for a even better sandbox experience!

After 100%ing this game I would say that it's worth the price. I'm glad that it doesn't overstay its welcome with the story as it would eventually get repetitive if they did drag it out another 5 - 10hrs. My only issue that I had was one of two things. First is that Kelly is slow af but that can be solved by just driving off as he will teleport back into your car anyway. The other thing is that if you pull cars over for a traffic stop, they won't pull over slowly to the side but instead stop on a dime and you'll ram straight into the back of them lol I would definitely look forward to some DLC or to a sequel.

It's a solid game, but it made me realize how badly I want a third-person (or even first-person) open-world action-adventure police game with a gritty, dark tone. It's kind of wild that it has never really been made with an AAA budget. Imagine you have an open world where you can go around stopping crimes, from petty to major crimes, and then also have a full-on campaign story about taking down major crime syndicates. Why hasn't anyone made this? Anyway, in this game, there are some good and some bad. The open world is pretty cool, and they have a wide variety of crimes you get to stop. The tone is that you are a complete Boy Scout, though, where I would have preferred a morally gray tone. The game immediately stops and forces you back to a checkpoint if you do anything unbecoming of a straight-edge police officer. Even if you are dealing with a POS criminal. The story itself is also very bland and unimaginative. The story is also a little too happy/upbeat, considering you are a cop in a crime-ridden city that is run by gangs. It just feels a little too Disney, I guess, and doesn't match the subject matter at all. Regarding the gameplay itself, it's pretty fun overall. Combat ranges from some light melee situations to full-on shootouts. You get a revolver, taser, and baton to start. From there, you can upgrade to better weapons and equipment. The shooting is kinda rough to be honest, but it's manageable. That can often be the case in isometric games, but I would say it's even a bit worse here. I would also have liked to see a crouch button and a reload button. Unless I somehow missed those, they oddly do not exist. Lastly, getting into cover is implemented poorly. It works sometimes and doesn't at others. This is a huge issue when you are in a major shootout and your character is just standing there like an idiot right next to the covered position while you are slamming the cover button. That is something that can be improved with a patch, however. All in all, I do recommend it if you have always wanted a game that puts you in the shoes of a police officer. This is probably the best one out there. That said, it often had me wanting a game that doesn't exist or thinking of ways I wish they had handled things differently. It's a solid 7/10.

[h1]The Precinct – Neo-Noir Nostalgia with Some Growing Pains[/h1] [b]Hours Played:[/b] ~12 [b]Progress:[/b] A little over halfway through the main storyline [hr][/hr] [h2][u]The Good[/u][/h2] [b]Aesthetic & Atmosphere:[/b] The game nails the old-school neo-noir vibe. Feels like a spiritual cousin to [i]L.A. Noire[/i] with a modern indie twist. [b]Storyline:[/b] So far, the narrative is immersive and keeps me engaged. [b]General Vibe:[/b] It's refreshing to play a cop game that leans into style and mood over pure action. [hr][/hr] [h2][u]What Needs Work[/u][/h2] [b]Driving:[/b] The vehicle handling is way too loose. Hitting a curb spins you out and you often lose suspects in chases. I’ve done more damage to the city than the criminals at this point 😅 [b]Tackling AI:[/b] Sometimes when I tackle a suspect, it just doesn’t register and they keep running. Not sure if it’s RNG or just a bug. [b]Active Call Interference:[/b] I’ve had other criminals rob my suspect while I was in the middle of arresting them. Once I’m on a call, random crimes should chill out. [b]Partner Usefulness:[/b] In crimes with multiple suspects, if they split up, I can only get one. My partner won’t even search a dumpster — he just gives up and says they got away. That lost XP hurts. [hr][/hr] [h2][u]Wishlist[/u][/h2] Improved driving physics Smarter partner AI with actual functionality More crime variety and mission depth Expanded city areas Uniforms, maybe car customization? [hr][/hr] [h2][u]Final Thoughts[/u][/h2] Even with these flaws, I’m really enjoying [b]The Precinct[/b]. The potential is huge, and I’m excited to see how it develops. The devs clearly have a vision — they just need to tighten the mechanics. This game scratches an itch I didn’t know I still had. [b]Recommended?[/b] [u]Yes – if you’re okay with some jank and want a unique cop experience with major promise.[/u]