Got free on Epic store. Beat all the modes on Expert. I began with the tutorial to learn the basics. My biggest gripe was lack of key bindings for pause and speed mode, but the time spent for units to move around and solve problems was far longer than player reaction time. I also wish it had more standard RTS controls, like drawing a box to select multiple units and a window that showed selected units and allowed individual selection because it was very difficult to select specific units when they were on top of each other. The unit list could be used for this but you would have to click on nearly every unit to find which ones were in the pile. I would have also liked waypoints to queue multiple jobs for a unit instead of having to babysit them. After playing a couple rounds on easy tutorial I went into career mode, unique stories, Hard. There were 3 main challenges. The 1st was police going down in battle, since criminals were very aggressive on Hard. This was very bad because downed cops needed ambulances and could not be used for up to several rounds. Once I sent a car to a bank robbery and both officers went down, losing me an entire unit for that day and I got a penalty for most of the suspects getting away. So to combat this I began each new map by removing all police from units and manually assigning them with the goal of making a swat team core most important unit. I put the officers with the highest marksmanship into the van, even hiring new ones if mine sucked, then decked them out with rifles and armor. I did pay attention to the driving stat too to make sure every unit had a good driver. Most maps did not start out with enough money to do this so I had to do it after round 1. Washington was the hardest map and started with a decent amount of money and 3 vans. 3 was overkill so I sold 1 and was easily able to fully equip 2 swat teams. Once the swat was good I gave every cop armor and sometimes hired extra for later. I kept the swat in reserve for serious incidents involving 3+ suspects, like vandal groups, fights, armed robbery, home invasion, drug bases etc. The vans were slower than cars and I preferred having 2 cars over 1 van because they were faster and more versatile for only a moderate extra cost. So once I had all 3 services adequate my go to expansion was to buy another police car. I never bought pistols though; once the free ones ran out every new cop got a rifle so the new cars were mini swat teams. I sent cars to handle most incidents, doubling up if it was van worthy but no van was available. I liked having 2 bike units and 1 helicopter. Both were fast but unable to transport prisoners so I focused them on minor incidents that would likely not result in arrests; speeding, red light, accidents, loud parties, public drinking, and the minor 911 calls. There was something hilarious about sending a helicopter to crash loud parties and yell at drinking. If I had free scanners I gave those to the fast units but I think body armor was overall superior. Once I even cheaped out by giving a bike unit no guns until I could afford them next round. They got into a fight of course and needed help.

The 2nd major challenge I had was police getting stuck at sites taking care of injured instead of moving on to deal with more crime, because they were not allowed to abandon casualties until another unit was on site. And let me tell you those swat teams created a lot of casualties. Solving this was less about recruiting more medic units and more spreading them around the map in the beginning and sending them in behind the swat in anticipation of casualties rather than waiting. These were also the units I most wished to waypoint because by default they would pick up 1 causality. But the standard ambulance could carry 2 so I expected them to stay out long enough to collect 2 as usually it was faster to double up rather than send another ambulance from across the map. The medical vehicles were not balanced at all. The medical transport was exactly the same as the regular ambulance, even cost and speed, with +1 casualty capacity. So why ever buy the ambulance? I usually found the starting medical vehicles to be adequate, except in the single city mode where it was about starting small and building up. Capacity was the most important stat for medic units so it boggled my mind how the 1 capacity car cost almost twice as much. Why the hell would I ever buy that over the transport? Sure it was a little faster but nowhere near as fast as the medevac chopper, which was great for dealing with far away emergencies and heart attacks that tended to time out quickly. I never bothered to put more than 2 staff per ambulance The 3rd major challenge was firefighters taking forever to put out fires and getting injured. The solution was to hire more, so once the cops all had armor I spent money putting the full 4 crew for each fire truck. Fire incidents were less common so I often sent them to help with medical incidents, equipping each truck with a 1st aid kit and a tool kit. The standard fire truck was best at fires. The more expensive technical truck was better at removing hazards but seemed to do fires well enough. The pickup seemed pointless but was at least balanced by actually costing less than the better trucks. I guess you could use its speed and 1 crew for a cheap unit just to get on site and deal with minor things like fallen trees and water breaks, but I never bought it. The helicopter was fast but with only 2 staff it took forever to actually fight fires so I only used it if free. I failed San Francisco when the earthquake happened because of the sheer amount of incidents that happened all at once, and I had maxed out the difficulty to Expert before this. I tried to focus on the more important fires and people trapped in collapsed buildings while ignoring a lot of the road hazards, but every incident had a time limit to get a unit there (not to resolve it), and failing that caused a huge reputation penalty. Next try I hired more firefighters to max out crew and spread the units out more to deal with more incidents at once. In particular using police to deal with road hazard stuff and some collapses so the firefighters could focus on fires. Using the wrong unit types for incidents was often a good idea to prevent timeout; police and fire to tend to injured until medical arrived, medics or fire to guard prisoners while police make a trip to the jail to unload, etc. Sometimes I even left prisoners alone to make a trip to jail and it seemed like there was no problem unless the police took too long to get back. Washington was the last map and the rate of incidents was so high I had to mostly play on the slowest speed, but instead of the earthquake it was a series of bombings that was not too difficult.

I played the city where I live in free mode but it was not as difficult as the career maps. My city only has 2 police stations located near the same area so prisoner transport was an issue. It also had multiple hospitals clustered together and missed at least 2 closer to the middle of the map so medical transport was a bit of an issue. Washington was just as bad with hospitals though. I do think there was an issue with map data not correctly implementing hospitals. Some fire stations were missing too but they don't matter at all. I failed 1 medical incident because it was way outside the city in a tiny town along a very winding road and the ambulance literally could not get there in time. The map was also too small because it did not include 3 adjacent towns that use the same emergency services. I got bored with this because there was not enough challenge even on Expert. Next I did daily routine mode in Washington, which just made each round longer with far more incidents. Then I did single city mode in Washington. It started off slow with much less resources but quickly ramped up. It even had both the bombing and earthquake! I liked single city mode the most because it went on the longest and had the most room for growth. I bought a few police cars, police helicopter, 1 or 2 medical transports, medevac, and 1 fire truck. I had enough money and time before winning that I gave every medic and firefighter a 1st aid kit.

Then I realized I was not getting access to the free dlc because I skipped account log in. I was able to access the new features in my free city save but not in career mode without restarting, so I reset single city Washington to go through it again. The police horse unit was completely useless because it was much slower than the van and still had to follow roads. The tool tip implied it could go off road, which could make it useful to cut through parks, but that was not a thing. The new firefighter quad was cheaper than the pickup and only took 2 crew. The speed was listed as same as fire truck but in practice it had the same speed as a fully crewed pickup. I gave each crew a tool kit and extinguisher and they were useful to deal with minor incidents so the big fire trucks could focus on big fires. That was important because for some reason on this run, after the earthquake I was still getting quake events every day. Lots of collapsed buildings, fires, and road hazards. The regular firefighters got extinguishers and respirators, and it was nice to see them get similar functional equipment as police. Medics got a new chest compressor for CPR but I have no idea how effective it was. I did not notice any new calls but there was a bit more variety in in random emergencies. Best part of the DLC was the firefighter gear, which resulted in faster fire resolutions and fewer injured firefighters. I followed the same upgrade path as before: swat team in the van, armor for all cops, 2 bikes, 1 med transport, save up for medevac and police choppers, add another med transport and 2 or 3 police cars, then ending off with a quad and pickup followed by maxing out firefighter and medic equipment. I even gave some medics an extinguisher.

Fun game that really shined when it was so difficult that I had to make tough triage calls about where to send my limited resources. Events were random so every round was unique, but I wish the challenge could go higher. It did not take long for me to master the game, and the difficulty did not increase after each mode was won, leaving little point to keep playing and improving the units. Not buying dlc but I'm sure they would be fun. I would like to see more serious events that could spiral into more indicents if you take too long to deal with them. Such as fires spreading, hazards causing traffic accidents, riots, and criminals going on crime sprees. The actual calls got old pretty fast and I did not like how long they took and how they prevented checking on incidents. It was cool how some had variables with the same voice actor, so I always had to listen and make the correct choices. I did figure out that clicking on the dialogue fast forwarded it. As I experienced them more and more I began to optimize them, hitting ignore asap. This didn't work once with the kitchen fire when I told her to use the extinguisher, read the text of her saying it was out but clicked ignore before the voice actor got that far. I got penalized for nor helping, so from then on I waited until the call was complete. I played around with various options to find the best resolution for each call. Ignoring fake calls boosted rep, but getting the location and sending police got fine income while lowering reputation. Every little bit helps pay for more armor and assault rifles. I even fined the gamer whose item was stolen in online game and the police report said it was totally unnecessary. So many of the calls were not 911 worthy and should have went to the various non emergency lines; police, fire, 811 health line, or 311 city services. The game was very educational with respect to first aid, basic firefighting, and the type of info police need. Might be fun to play a round every now and then but likely will not start over from scratch.

7.0/10