Rebel Cops is a spin-off game from This Is the Police, which exclusively features the series' turned-based tactical operations. Lead a rag-tag squad of cops in rebellion against their town's new criminal power, and see how long you can hold out when you're constantly short on supplies, and a single shot can cost a cop his life.
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Rebel Cops is a neat spin-off of the This is the Police games, focusing on turn-based tactical battles against criminals. It's got a cool vibe, and sneaking around to ambush bad guys is satisfying. But man, it's brutal – your cops get taken down fast, and the lack of a proper save system during missions is frustrating as heck. It's got potential, but way too unforgiving for my liking.
The final (for now) entry in this series.
Some positives: they decided to focus on the tactical missions from the second game and make it a full title. Which I rather like. The combat in the second game was pretty good.
You feel very unequipped and short staffed for this game, which is by design: the odds are stacked against you and you need to scavenge for anything and everything to use in future missions. The game rewards exploration and patience. And every officer feels useful. The roles feel more assigned.
So the core experience, what you're doing is good. But here's the negative: the way the game is structured and organized is atrocious.
The pacing first of all is horrible. The first 2 levels play out normally. They last a decent amount of time and end at the right moment.
Then you get to the third mission in the game. This third mission is FOUR HOURS LONG. Compared to the 30ish minutes the other ones took.
Oh my god. What is going on here? The map is utterly massive. It's like they took the previous map and multiples the space by 200. It takes forever just navigating from point A to Point B. But even then, it dosent even full like a standalone level. It's like they took 2-3 levels and just mushed them together and called it one. Because you start on like a farm? And by the head you're at an expensive looking vista and mansion. I don't understand what happened here. How did they develop this game and think this was ok to do?
The long missions are made even worse by this games frequent and constant crashing. Perhaps this is again a Switch issue since the second game is broken on the system. But it forces you to save actively. Only guess what, your saves are limited to! So I had to repeat so many sections from this goddamn mission so many times.
And the game never really gets better. Sure the levels are shorter: they decided one of the first levels in the game should be 3 times the length as the rest of the game? The levels are alright, but you start to get exhausted with this game. This one takes so much out of you. And the ending is so terrible too...
I'm totally mixed on this game. Because it is fun when things are, normal. But you will be so frustrated and that 4 hour mission will drive you crazy. It is a total mess.
Some positives: they decided to focus on the tactical missions from the second game and make it a full title. Which I rather like. The combat in the second game was pretty good.
You feel very unequipped and short staffed for this game, which is by design: the odds are stacked against you and you need to scavenge for anything and everything to use in future missions. The game rewards exploration and patience. And every officer feels useful. The roles feel more assigned.
So the core experience, what you're doing is good. But here's the negative: the way the game is structured and organized is atrocious.
The pacing first of all is horrible. The first 2 levels play out normally. They last a decent amount of time and end at the right moment.
Then you get to the third mission in the game. This third mission is FOUR HOURS LONG. Compared to the 30ish minutes the other ones took.
Oh my god. What is going on here? The map is utterly massive. It's like they took the previous map and multiples the space by 200. It takes forever just navigating from point A to Point B. But even then, it dosent even full like a standalone level. It's like they took 2-3 levels and just mushed them together and called it one. Because you start on like a farm? And by the head you're at an expensive looking vista and mansion. I don't understand what happened here. How did they develop this game and think this was ok to do?
The long missions are made even worse by this games frequent and constant crashing. Perhaps this is again a Switch issue since the second game is broken on the system. But it forces you to save actively. Only guess what, your saves are limited to! So I had to repeat so many sections from this goddamn mission so many times.
And the game never really gets better. Sure the levels are shorter: they decided one of the first levels in the game should be 3 times the length as the rest of the game? The levels are alright, but you start to get exhausted with this game. This one takes so much out of you. And the ending is so terrible too...
I'm totally mixed on this game. Because it is fun when things are, normal. But you will be so frustrated and that 4 hour mission will drive you crazy. It is a total mess.
Bom!
I love the theme of this game. It's also a definitive improvement over TITP2's xcom stages. It suffers from bad pacing (The second mission the game throws you at is HUGE and you're not getting anything similar to that later.)
Also a short game which is a negative for me.
Also a short game which is a negative for me.
kinda wanna come back to this game
As far as XCOM clones go this is about as good as you can hope for. Extremely short but still presents enough interesting ideas to get behind.