I picked this game up just because it looked fun and the physical copy looked nice. It came with a steel case and has a fold out map inside. The price was really attractive too. The Precinct is sort of somewhere between the first GTA games and GTA 3 but you play as a cop fighting crime and obviously it is more modern too. I enjoyed it but there is a lot of room for improvement in this game.

The Precinct starts off a little slow and restrictive but it doesn’t take long for it to open up and let you start enjoying its loop. The game is broken into shifts and at the start of every shift you get to pick what type of shift to take from a selection. It could be on foot, in a patrol car or in a helicopter and you’re meant to be targeting certain things as well. It could be parking fines, cracking down on gangs, looking for speeding drivers, etc. but the game is a little open world with freedom and things just happen. So you could be putting a ticket on a car window one minute and then be in a high speed chase or shoot out the next. You are meant to return to the precinct at the end of the shift but the game just let’s you go into overtime and do what you want. At the end of a shift you get a score and the evidence you gathered stacks up against one of the game’s gangs which will eventually unlock a story progressing mission. You also will get called away from your shift to assist with solving a series murders and the open world provides some side content. There are races, jumps, time trials and collectables tied to a case to solve.

So the loop is to grind out shifts, then story mission and then back to the grind until you get the next story mission, while working some side content in there too. You also level up, improve your stats, and unlock new abilities, weapons and vehicles. It is enjoyable but it also gets repetitive kind of quickly and overstays its welcome just a bit. I finished the game and got the Platinum trophy in about 15 hours and working towards the final mission did feel like a slog. This comes from the games repetitive nature but also from a lack of depth and its way of doing things. The Precinct is a bit sim-ish in its approach to being a police officer. You need to do things like check id, search people, read rights, only use force when you’re meant to, etc. which results in doing the same simple things over and over.

The story doesn’t help and it certainly won’t have you forging ahead to see what happens next. It plays out like a very basic, old, police TV show. It is exactly what you expect, right down to not just the character types but even the character names. The best character is the world itself. It is a pretty grimy place, that seems to do a good, but simplistic, job of being like a 80s American city and the game has some nice touches too. I like that you can slide across the hood of your car and the tire screeching noise when you slide the big old American cars around corners sounds like it was ripped straight out of old movies. The partner you play alongside grew on me too.

Gameplay is solid it’s just a bit too simple. The cars feel great to drive with weight and body roll. I like how it feels to push them too far and start sliding and acceleration is spot on for each vehicle type. The big, strange issue though is that every vehicle appears to be front wheel drive. I crashed multiple cars in this game and then accelerated while the wheels had no contact with the road and I could see the front wheels go first every time. It is the same thing when attempting burnouts; the front wheels light up. This means no drifting, proper donuts or burnouts and you can’t spin the wheels right up the street. Why even make an open world driving game if I can’t live out my bogan hoon fantasy? Seriously though, it does make driving less enjoyable. Other aspects of the game whether it is shooting or melee are similar; fine but needs to be better, particularly the helicopter piloting.

The chases are fun though, both on foot and in cars. You build up a meter during them which can be used to call in a variety of back up options, such as, patrol cars, a helicopter and road blocks. When you are flying around sirens blaring, with a chopper overhead, alongside other cop cars it does feel like chase scenes from old movies and it is a good time. There is some jank though. Tackling people during chases can look pretty funny and one time when I was in a helicopter a cop car somehow got flicked up and smacked into me multiple stories in the air. Most of the time it is funny jank although things might be in the way of what you need to do at times and the AI is poor as well. Overall the game is just a bit too small, simple and repetitive. The map isn’t big, there aren’t enough vehicles, not enough variety and depth to the crimes that occur, not enough weapons or tools, the story is not very interesting, it isn’t ambitious as it could be… I’m being a bit rough here; it is a fun game that I would recommend. I really hope the developer gets to do a follow up that further builds upon what is here and ties it with a more appealing story because that could be something special.

The Precinct is just good simple fun. It is the perfect game to have on the go, while you’re playing something bigger and/or more intensive, so you can enjoy chipping away at it here and there. That’s not only a compliment though it’s also an insult. This isn’t a main course, just a decently enjoyable side dish, but one worth picking up and enjoying, and you will, if you go in with the right expectations.

6.5/10