Valve just updated theirs List of the top new releases on Steam for November. There are the usual suspects such as crisis 2 and 3, Spider-Man: Miles Moralesand Sonic Frontiers. There’s also my favorite single player game of the year, Busesand a pretty little pixelated extraction shooter that we noticed a few months ago Zero Sievert. But one of the top 20 best-selling Steam games of the last month was a fucking police sim of all things.
published last month Police Simulator: Patrol Officers takes place in the fictional US city of Brighton. The game challenges you to “take the badge” as a cop, which actually means harass citizens with tips about traffic violations, arrest them for drug possession, “hunt down graffiti sprayers,” and other cop stuff. It currently has a “very positive” review status, with several current and former law enforcement officials echoing the comments, and others who didn’t have enough fun childhood bullying also weigh in.
A reviewer summarizes a typical experience in police simulator. It’s written ( and you should read it) like a poem:
I started my first shift.
I saw a Lady Jay walking so I stopped her.
She seemed nervous, so I asked for her ID.
I then decided to search them.
She ran.
I shot her with my stun gun.
I found a springblade and human teeth, so I arrested them.
I called backup and they threw her in the patty wagon.
Clean up the streets, one person at a time.
I mean, where do you even start with that? Honestly it does the call of Duty level from the last game look tame. And what about human teeth? Do the devs assume people carry stuff like this, and do the regular old street cops spend most of their time foiling murders with a penchant for taking teeth? “The first person I looked for was human teeth. 10/10,” says another review.
Other reviews suggest this is a fairly straightforward, somewhat buggy, and featureless community service sim. Such a boring job, it seems, is not for everyone. Another Steam review reads:
professionals[sic]: Be a cop.
Disadvantages[sic]: Can’t be a bad cop.
The first thing I did was pull my pistol and shoot a lady who was jaywalking and I got chased off work. I couldn’t even make the remaining 16 bullets in my magazine before reloading and yelling at her not to move.
Fun game but a bit unrealistic.
7/10 – worth ramming your police car [sic] in randoms and escape from the scene.
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“Shoot first talk later” says another review. “This game was pretty fun at first,” laments one negative review, “but unlike LSPDFR mod in Grand Theft Auto V, you MUST perform the duties of a real cop. You have no real freedom to fool around.”
I’ve played a lot GTAa game where you can do horrible things to people on a regular basis, but this one strikes me as a bit odd. I probably shouldn’t throw stonesand there are other examples of questionable unmusical use of police pictures at games. But it’s hard not to read the comments of people bemoaning this a game intended to simulate everyday police work That said, boring civil crimes like traffic violations aren’t exciting enough most of the time because you don’t get enough opportunities to shoot people.