Police Simulator 18 (2019)

I’m always up for a good simulator game. While there’s plenty of games focused on being on the wrong side of the law, I’ve always wanted a game that lets you take up the badge. The practically named Police Simulator: Patrol Officers lets you play the daily life of a beat cop.

This is very much a down to Earth, realistic cop simulator. You don’t play as a fancy detective or SWAT guy, you are just a regular officer. There’s not really a story to this game. The game also isn’t bombastic, you aren’t in high speed car chases or taking down a drug cartel, you’re writing parking tickets and pulling over drunk drivers. The game is set up well to facilitate those activities. You can pull over people and there’s an easy to use rotary wheel that let’s you select different options such as asking for their license, giving them a DUI test, or writing a ticket. Most of my time during a shift is either spent writing tickets for improperly parked cars or dealing with an accident scene. Luckily the accidents are never too macabre, if there are any injured parties, they just lay on the ground. During an accident call, you have tools to document the scene, such a camera, and you gain traffic cones to help make sure traffic is properly routed around the scene.

You also have to learn the laws for this city, especially in regards to parking regulations. Example, all expired meters get a ticket, unless the car has a handicap placard. Keeping an eye peeled for license plates or suspicious people also pays off. You’ll get into a lot of foot chases that require you to use your taser. Realism is important here, so if you go around shooting suspects or accosting people without probable cause, you will get kicked off the force. It stresses the importance of being a proper officer, but doesn't really touch on any real life current events. I don't expect it to, especially with no real story. This game is in early access, so I’d love to see more severe crimes implemented, such as a bank robbery or armed assault.

The game has a good sense of progression. You start walking a beat, then you unlock new neighborhoods, new tools, and finally new cruisers, allowing you to do car patrols. The game is also very mod friendly. I was able to make custom car skins and sirens, there’s lots of modded uniforms. It added to the gameplay value. The car controls are a little floaty, especially around corners, leading me to crash into lots of light poles. In the most recent updates, the devs are working on those controls. There’s also a co-op feature that lets you have a partner on your beat. It doesn’t work too well with randoms, but with a friend, you could get a Starsky & Hutch thing going on.

For an early access game everything runs pretty well. I only encountered one bug where I fell through the map, but overall it’s a stable game. The graphics are pretty decent. The character models look good for a AA game and the cars and city look nice. You can play either day or night shifts and the lighting for both shifts look good with night being dark enough, but not so dark it’s just black. The game is also fully voice acted and they aren’t terrible performances. You can discover places of interest around the city as you patrol, but the game does seem a bit touch and go on when it decides to add the location to your map or not. It’s good to know where those places are, because citizens will ask you directions to places, and if you don’t know where they are, you just have to guess.

All in all, this game is loads of fun if you enjoy these sort of immersive sims games. While there’s no overarching story, getting to be a beat cop is a unique experience and it’s well executed here. The controls are easy to learn, but have enough depth to keep the game interesting. The game is still being worked on and I’m excited to see what the future holds.