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Turn-Based Tactics This is the Police 2 - now with turn-based tactics

Mark Richard

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http://weappy-studio.com/games/this-is-the-police-2/




https://af.gog.com/game/this_is_the_police_2?as=1649904300

Just saw that Nordic are publishing a butt-load of games on GOG, and one of them is This is the Police 2. Loved the presentation of the first one. The protagonist this time is voiced by Sarah Hamilton from The Longest Journey, here's a weird trailer that seems like it was ad-libbed:

 
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Mark Richard

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https://www.pcgamer.com/this-is-the...tactical-mode-that-changes-the-game-entirely/

Announced in January, crooked cop sim This Is the Police 2 is due later this year. When it lands, it'll build on its forerunner's narrative meets strategy roots and will "require the player's direct participation," so says developer Weappy. In doing so, it'll introduce an XCOM-style turn-based tactical mode.

Here, players will command squads of officers, each leveraging a variety of tools—such as tasers, gas cartridges, traps and battering rams. In turn-based bouts, players will orchestrate raids with the aim of neutralising opponents, and, if you are forced to open fire, battles unfold with realistic damage. In other words, don't expect hit points.

"We came with this idea for an XCOM-style, turn-based combat mode, but of course we didn't want to just make 'XCOM with cops'," game director Ilya Yanovich tells me. "The biggest difference here is that the police force's job is, usually, about arresting people, not killing them. So, we decided to have no hit points in this tactical mode at all.

"One bullet can kill your cop. If you're injured, for example, in your arm—you can't use your gun. Or, if you're injured in your leg, you can't run. If you fail to heal your injured officers, they'll die after a few turns. This makes a huge difference on how you plan your actions."

Yanovich tells me he and his team had originally planned to pursue a game away from This Is the Police. When they decided on a sequel, however, they had wanted to grow their ideas bigger than before.

"We had no interest in just making the same game only bigger with more of the same," says Yanovich. "We wanted to make it deeper—all of the mechanics, not just the XCOM-style mode. We set the game in a much smaller town than the first game, which means you're really short on resources, short on people, short on equipment.

"This means that every cop you have counts, every piece of gear counts. This Is the Police was, in some ways, about the scale—the big city, big department, a lot of bureaucracy, the mafia—you were running the force in a big space. Since This Is the Police 2 is about a much smaller police department, we thought that it made sense to let you have direct control over the most important communications and exchanges."

"When we were looking for a way to do that, it was pretty obvious for us that it was tactical—like a game within a game. This is This Is the Police 2—it's still about looking after a department, it's still about managing the whole thing. You still have investigations, a lot of calls, a lot of mechanics. There are a lot of improvements over the first game, but this tactical mode is the biggest new thing for the sequel."

Yanovich explains that This Is the Police 2's tactical mode is closely tied to the rest of the game, and that success is determined by how well you run your department. The game boasts 13 missions in total, however only four are mandatory. You'll get punished for not responding to calls, says Yanovich, and it's in your best interest to complete as many missions as possible, should you wish to topple the biggest crime organisations from the top down.

Yanovich adds: "If it's a tactical mission, you'll choose which guys go there. If your department is in trouble, you don't have the people with the correct equipment, some people are drunk, others are unloyal to you and their job—if you're running it well, you can handle these tactical missions. In short, your setup affects your playing style. If you're in the luxurious position to have good cops and good equipment, you'll find tactical missions less challenging. If all you have are drunken bums the puzzles become more challenging."

Well this is different. One of the biggest gripes with the first game was the lack of mechanical depth being unable to sustain it past the halfway point. In the previous game there wasn't any direct control, you just picked some officers and the result would be calculated based on their experience and the difficulty of the call. With This is the Police 2 they're adding some XCOM meets SWAT 4 combat missions where one hit kills are ever-present and the objective is to arrest perps rather than kill them. The gameplay trailer packs in a lot of information that's easy to miss - officers have stats and skills, equipment is a limited resource, there's stealth, and an aimed shot to target specific body parts.
 
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norolim

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From the official site:

Welcome to Sharpwood, where people know their neighbors by name and faithfully keep to their traditions, no matter how barbaric those traditions might be. Smugglers, gangs, and screaming populists call this town their home.

It’s a hell of a job for the new sheriff, Lilly Reed [...] She’s struggling to maintain order and peace, while her subordinates are uncouth men who aren’t used to taking commands from a young woman.

:avatard:
 

Zombra

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Yep, luckily this was spotted right away by the vigilant alt-right as part of the Great Social Justice Conspiracy. Just like in the first game, the existence of female police officers is positive proof of the developers' radical liberal agenda!
 

Mark Richard

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Been thinking the changes make a lot of sense considering the small town setting, where local law enforcement would have limited access to equipment and manpower. I imagine the police chief is going to be conscious of the town's relative isolation and end up working closely with criminals out of necessity, with her overall goal being the welfare of the town above all else (think Chief Unser from Sons of Anarchy), rather than the purely selfish motives of the previous protagonist Jack Boyd. Finite equipment and expansion of officer stats implies they'll be a long-term investment, and that you won't be told to replace half your staff on the mayor's whim to net them some political points. I'm also looking forward to the locale-specific crimes, perhaps a quest to find Melvin the pig who ends up becoming the station mascot, only to later by murdered by a ritualistic cult or something. Alien sightings, scarecrows running around taking people's hearts, who knows? Some of the city crimes/false reports from the last game were pretty amusing.
 

orcinator

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First one sounded good on paper but was mobile-tier in execution.

This one has other things to do besides wait for police cars to reach their destination but I'm not expecting it to rise above all the other mediocre games that copied the nucom style of combat.
 

laclongquan

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From the official site:

Welcome to Sharpwood, where people know their neighbors by name and faithfully keep to their traditions, no matter how barbaric those traditions might be. Smugglers, gangs, and screaming populists call this town their home.

It’s a hell of a job for the new sheriff, Lilly Reed [...] She’s struggling to maintain order and peace, while her subordinates are uncouth men who aren’t used to taking commands from a young woman.

:avatard:
What the fuck?
I thought sheriff is an elected official?
How does she get elected in a traditional, highly-possible-Republican, neck-in-the-wood county like that?
 

Norfleet

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Given the typical level of violence in a video game, is this small town going to have a murder rate that rivals Cabot Cove?
 

Saduj

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How does she get elected in a traditional, highly-possible-Republican, neck-in-the-wood county like that?

I have a friend who is mayor of his town and never had to run against another person. Small town that votes straight Republican. Local Republicans asked him to run for town committee, which he did unopposed because nobody bothers challenging the Republicans. Town committee then elected him mayor (this part was not pre-planned but it easily could have been). So one explanation would be that for whatever reason the local party that everyone votes for selected her - she's some local bigshot's daughter or something. Another would be that the previous sheriff was very popular and she was the only one to even consider running against him. Her candidacy is looked at as completely not threatening and actually appreciated in that running against someone adds some legitimacy to the incumbent's expected easy win. At some very late point in the process some scandal breaks and whatever the current sheriff did was so bad that most people don't even bother to vote and she is able to squeak out a win. Long shot scenarios are most likely to come through when you're dealing with small numbers.
 
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Mark Richard

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A review from PC Gamer. It's a short 800 word piece that ends with 'I haven’t seen the end of the game, simply because I’m not good enough to get there' and 'I haven’t played the first This Is The Police, but I can’t help but feel like the sequel simply adds too much.' Needless to say I found it extremely unhelpful and lazy.

Minor spoilers within.

In This Is The Police, Jack Boyd spent his last days as Freeburg police chief in a frenzy of corruption, trying to keep the city clean while also working with the Mafia and collecting as many kickbacks as he could. In an all too realistic move, the sequel sees him evade justice and slip into a new job advising the Sheriff of a small town police force. Which, it turns out, is not an easy retirement at all.

In theory, this is a strong setup for a story. The snowy town of Sharpwood has a Fargo-esque vibe (and a Fargo-esque crime rate) that serves as a nice change of pace from the big city of Freeburg. In practice however the game has a penchant for rambling Tarantino-esque dialogue that goes on far, far too long. Every conversation feels full of fat that can be cut, like an early scene in which Boyd and a door to door salesman have an extremely long winded chat about toilets that may or may not be a veiled threat. It’s a crying shame because the voice actors are doing a terrific job, but I found myself tuning out long before they got to the point.

At first the story feels like it’s going to be about Sheriff Reed’s struggles with institutional sexism, as she’s constantly receiving misogynistic comments from both co-workers and criminals. But when Boyd arrives he takes over both as leader and as protagonist, and the focus shifts towards him and his web of corruption. Eventually the sexist comments feel less like commentary and more like window dressing.

missing-image.svg


If it seems like I’m frontloading on the story here, that’s because the game does too. Almost every day starts with one of these long cutscenes, before finally letting you get to the game map. This is where you’ll spend most of your time, dispatching officers to calls as they come in. There’s a pleasing rhythm to it, trying to send just enough officers to deal with each incident while keeping some in reserve for an emergency. When a cop gets to their destination there’s a little choose your own adventure moment, where you can use their skills and equipment to arrest a suspect or calm down a situation.

The big showpiece addition for the sequel is tactical missions, full scale SWAT assaults where multiple officers participate in an XCOM style isometric turn based combat. There’s novelty in just how many non-lethal options the game presents you with, giving you ample chance to capture enemies rather than killing them. Except I saw little feedback on that choice—a bloodbath was treated the same as a perfect run. The main case for avoiding a gunfight is that the combat is incredibly lethal, and often results in multiple dead officers. Ultimately the new system sits awkwardly alongside the main game, with numerable small town crimes punctuated by a mass bomb threat or hostage situation every few days. Like if every third episode of The Wire was suddenly 24.

Later on as corruption becomes a stronger theme the necessity to earn cash by sending officers to moonlight becomes more important. There’s even a system for buying and selling various goods to try and turn a profit. If all this seems overstuffed, it is. At times it feels like the game is asking you to spin too many plates at once, which only increases the chances of them crashing down.

missing-image.svg


You see, This Is The Police 2 is hard. Very, very hard. The various systems make it incredibly easy to enter a fail spiral. If you don’t have enough cops you can’t respond to crimes, and if you can’t respond to crimes you can’t earn ringpulls (inexplicably the department’s main currency) for new cops, which means you can’t respond to crimes, and if you don’t earn ringpulls for three days running it’s game over. It’s also game over if you can’t pay off the guy who is blackmailing you, which means you need to be racking up the corruption money even as you’re desperately trying to keep Sharpwood free of crime. In fact I have to confess that this review comes with the caveat that I haven’t seen the end of the game, simply because I’m not good enough to get there. And this is coming from a guy who thought XCOM 2 wasn’t that hard.

I haven’t played the first This Is The Police, but I can’t help but feel like the sequel simply adds too much. The game feels like it needs to refocus on the day to day policing and the small storylets that accompany it, which are great. Unless the message is that running a police department is an impossible task, in which case: mission accomplished.
 

Hellion

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Played a review copy of the game, and words cannot express how great it is. It tries to fix every flaw one could point out in the first game, while adding new elements that improve upon it in every possible way. Jack Boyd's story should be taught at seminars.

PS. Laugh Reacts Only to every reviewer that lists negatives such as "the game is too hard" or "it simply adds too much" etc.
 

Zombra

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Played a review copy of the game, and words cannot express how great it is. It tries to fix every flaw one could point out in the first game, while adding new elements that improve upon it in every possible way.
Would be interested to read your brief analysis of first game's flaws, and how they're addressed in the sequel. (No spoilers please, I stopped reading the PCG review after the first 1/2 sentence.)
 

Mark Richard

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(No spoilers please, I stopped reading the PCG review after the first 1/2 sentence.)
Yeah, sorry about that. All the reviews I've seen immediately spill the goods. I assume the developer was trying to be secretive since they never openly advertised it, but no one else is playing along.
 

Hellion

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My main gripes with the first one was how RNG was handled during missions (eg there were instances where sending your top officers on a mission would still somehow result in a failure) and some aspects of Investigations (like how the first Detective you sent to investigate would be attached to the case and couldn't be removed unless you closed it).

The first one is remedied by the introduction of character stats for every officer, plus the addition of gear items (like pepper spray, tazers etc) which are equipped by officers at the start of every shift. Thus, when event X happens and you dispatch a team, you have options such as "use a tazer" or "try to convince the perp" that are tied to the above additions, and if the officer you select to perform an action has, for example, a specific gear item on him or a stat that is greater than the necessary value, you will always succeed at your actions and have a positive mission outcome.

In other words, every possible available path during missions has fixed outcomes that can be triggered by fulfilling certain fixed conditions (like having a specific item on your team, or having a certain good stat) and no longer depend on RNG. Of course, there are still "bad" options that will result in the suspect escaping or a civilian dying, so the path to success is not always super-obvious.

My second gripe is also partially remedied by the introduction of officer stats, plus the fact that Detectives are no longer a separate entity in the game, and every case can be investigated by your normal shift officers. So at the start of every work day you can send up to three officers (preferably ones with high Intelligence stat) to search for clues or uncover more of the slides which you use to reenact the series of events in each investigation, allowing you to work on investigations every day instead of every other day like in the first game.

Not to mention how the new tactical missions add some welcome variety to the gameplay.
 

Zombra

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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Yeah, sorry about that.
No apology necessary - you warned us and spoiler tagged it. The warning prepared me to stop reading quickly if a big spoiler began to cohere, and it did, so I did, no damage done. Thanks buddy
love.png
and thanks for letting us know other reviews do the same thing. Gonna go blackout until Thursday.

`Hellion Thanks! Excellent to hear that stats and equipment play a stronger role. And nice to hear that the 'slides' detective format made a comeback, I really enjoyed that mechanic in the original.
 

Mark Richard

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Wait... the game just came out ahead of schedule, alongside a trailer and a product description that reveals that thing I was referring to earlier. Guess I'm going senile and it was never a secret in the first place.



Available on GOG and Steam, half the price of the console versions.
 
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Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
A lot of reviews complain about the imbalanced difficulty and spiral of doom. Is it a real balance problem or is it just a L2P issue?
 

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