First and foremost,I want to take a moment to give a huge shout out to Astragon Entertainment for tossing me a copy of Police Simulator: Patrol Officers.
So what is Police Simulator? Well the name says it all. Let me walk you through my first day on the job. I walked out the door, read a couple tutorials, and read a manual for the job about all the laws while not realizing I did nothing to stop the time from passing and my shift ended while giving someone a parking ticket. So I walked right back inside.
My second day on the job I remember words from the movie The Other Guys. You aren’t a cop until you do a desk pop. So I pulled my gun and shot a round into the air. Huh, nobody cares. Time to walk outside and shoot the first person I see. Don’t do this,you will instantly be fired.
You also can’t shoot at cars and buildings, actually just do what the game tells you and don’t shoot your gun. There truly are no situations in the game that let you fire your weapon. This led to seeing how many innocent people I could just blast with my taser. The answer is four, then you will be fired.
Now that I had that out of the way I decided to take the game more seriously and moved on to my real day one without being a psycho or reading the entire shift. You can play in one of two modes, casual or simulation. I recommend you start with casual because the game is more forgiving of mistakes, for example you can’t really hit pedestrians with your car or get hit by them. In simulation both of these will instantly end your day.
The first few days will be foot patrols handing out speeding tickets, catching jaywalkers and stopping people for littering. The game does an excellent job explaining when you can ticket a car and it is quite easy to look up if you forget. Their explanation on when to tow cars isn’t quite as good but is still solid.
Eventually you will get your own patrol car and have the option to choose between foot patrol or a car patrol. You can do everything in a car you can do on foot, you can even park your car and walk around if you want. I do recommend however you be careful pulling people over as they tend to simply slam on their breaks and you will slam into the back of them. Nothing worse than catching that dude showing off his under glow lights and then doing an accident report instead. Speaking from experience.
This may be one of the most realistic simulation games I have ever played, and anyone that follows the page knows I have played my fair share. Giving tickets or arresting someone is as simple as a radial menu after speaking to them or interacting with a car and the options of what you can find or arrest people for range from something as simple as jaywalking to things like DUI for alcohol or amphetamines or simply having an outstanding warrant. This isn’t even getting into the times I’ve sat at a red light and suddenly see an accident in front of me and need to call an ambulance for some now laying on the sidewalk and discover the accident was two drunk drivers.
No game is perfect,and Police Simulator is no exception. I’d say I loved my time with it but my time with it is far from over but I have to hope there is more to come. There are plenty of bugs that need to be patched out. The graphics are beautiful, but the amount of times I’ve seen cars go around corners and drivers not be in the cars for a few seconds are beyond anything I could even try to count. A few times pulling up to an accident there was no way to take pictures of the accident and I never figured out why,or a witness would be impossible to access because they were pushed in-between cars by a third car and were blocked away.
Also me and a friend (he plays on PS5) ran into an issue where we would lose conduct points for trying to find or tow a car in a space directly in front of a sign that says taxi zone no parking. Nothing game breaking or even anything I would consider taking away from my enjoyment,but it would be wrong if I did not tell you they do exist.
So what’s the verdict on this one? Should you sign up for a shift or avoid it? Truthfully this is easily one of the best simulator games I have ever played and there is far more potential of what they can do with it if they choose. I’m giving this a 7/10 because of the before mentioned glitches but once those are fixed the score definitely goes up a point or two. If you like simulator games, you need to pick this one up. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
