Interpret the law as you see fit in This Is the Police 2, sequel to the acclaimed noir drama This Is the Police! Run the sheriff's department, manage your cops, investigate, interrogate, and incarcerate. Make tough decisions - and try to keep out of prison yourself – in this story-driven mixture of adventure, strategy, and turn-based tactical combat. Is it a simulation? A management game? A tactical challenge? A visual novel? A puzzle? It's all of these, and more!
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Mesma coisa do primeiro, cansado demais.
This is the Police 2 tried something cool, mixing management sim with turn-based strategy, but it never quite gels together. I liked the idea of running a police station, digging into cases, and even sending cops into tactical missions. But, the story's kinda weak, the XCOM-like combat is frustrating, and it all just feels a little...dull after a while. Cool idea, but the execution needed some serious work.
I don't even know where to begin with this one. I'm not sure how to rank it either.
Let's just start and maybe I'll figure out the score along the way.
MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Do NOT buy the Nintendo Switch version of this game. It is broken and has been broken for many years. There is an extremely odd bug after certain levels late game, when you are selecting cops for your next shift, your controls will suddenly lock up. Only down on the d pad works and the select button. This means you can't actually select your units in the way you want to. This is a very very big deal because it happens many times.
The port is prone to crashing often. And the final cherry on top, completing this game corrupts your save file. This isn't a bug, this happens consistently. I have beaten the game twice and the save file corrupted each time. So I can't even show you my file to say I beat it. It is a broken version of the game.
So with that in mind, how do I rank this title? Do I rank it as a port? Because if I am going by that logic, it's like 1 star. It's terrible.
But, in the sake of a more interesting post, I am going to omit that for the ranking. We are going to judge the game as is. Just again note that you should avoid it on Switch.
Ok so, this game goes in a really interesting direction from the first one. There were many moving parts and systems and things going on in the first game and that's magnified here.
The cutscenes overall have better presentation. In particular, there are actual animated scenes this time. These work REALLY REALLY well. The movements are somewhat unnerving and offputting, but the scenes in question are intense by design. There are heavy camera shakes, a lack of music to sell you in on the moment, and decent voice direction for the most part. There are also many moments where the game presents something really odd and seemingly random. Without giving much away, these moments really really work at throwing you off, and giving you an idea of how demented Boyd's psyche has become. He was a morally grey character in the first game caught between a bunch of conflicting positions. In this game, he is a monster. Basically of his humanity has been stripped away. It's an interesting story, one that has sporadic moments of really tense moments.
But notice how I said sporadic. Because while the presentation is better, the dialogue is even WORSE. Oh. My. God. This dialouge. I cannot stand the writing in this game. They talk about utter nonsense at all times. Cracks on the wall, toilets, strawberries. Everyone stutters and stammers and draws out the dialouge in the most stiff ways. EVERY character is written this way. And now the cutscenes are LONGER. So you have longer worse scenes than the first game. The dialouge and writing is truly horrible. The game never knows how to just get to the point and you have to sit there for up to 10 minutes wasting your time listening to these idiot cops talk about a crack in the wall.
There is a review on this page going over the character of Lilly. She is on the poster of the game and meant to be one of the main characters. I think that review is quite interesting and explores a way to look at the character I couldn't. Because she's barely in this game. I would say the overall game is about 15-20 hours? She's in roughly 2-3 hours. She has no agency or real role in this story. This somewhat makes sense because her role is trying to be a better leader. But then the story ends and she contributed basically nothing to anything that happened. If you had removed the character from the story, I feel that nothing would have been lost, which is a big problem to have in your story. I like Lilly fine, she's probably the only likeable character in the game. But at the very least, even if you disagree with my take on the character, have her at least be in the game for more than 5% of the experience.
So overall, the story is shown in a better format but the story itself is just awful in every way. So once again, we have to lean on the gameplay to save us.
Thankfully, I once again enjoy the game very much. And there are many new additions that spice things up. Your roster of cops is more streamlined and everyone has individual quirks for the entire game. So for example, one cop smells really really bad and some officers won't work with him. Theres a woman who won't work with men at a lower rank than her own. There's a guy who amusingly will not carry a Baton and lose his loyalty to you if you give it to him too many times. Loyalty can be swayed for your officers. They'll disobey you if they aren't loyal and do things on their own. But it's easy enough to get them back on your side.
The game maintains the same format of sending your dudes out to solve issues. But now each cop has stats for each ability. Their strength, stamina, negotiation skills, etc. so now when you are presented with a problem, and one of the options is "chase the suspect" you want a fast cop selected to do that. Or if you want to talk down a criminal you get someone with high negotiation. This makes you consider who to send out in pairs. It gets even more complex when you factor in having items on each officer. Now you need to decide who's going to carry the stun gun or baton. Usually, these make encounters a lot easier and avoid causalities. The system is very simple but I actually like it a lot, it helps to further add identity to each officer as they become whatever role you want them to be.
Let's talk about the biggest change here, the tactical missions. Some crimes are way too big for just a handful of cops to handle normally. So what results is some planning during normal gameplay followed by full on levels where you control a party of cops in a turn based RPG style combat system. They did something pretty clever here, which is incorporating the stats you have during normal patrols, like high shooting or speed, and made it apply to this mode as well by making each stat represent unique abilities and attacks you can equip onto your officers. High speed, for example lets you travel further on the board. Intelligence lets you lockpick doors or windows. I actually really love this system because it is double layered and works in totally different aspects of the game. And once again it helps to promote variety for your officers. One can be an expert shooter while the other can sneak around and try to arrest everyone. These sections can get really, really intense. The odds are almost always stacked against you and a single bad shot can really mess up your officer. I like the presentation on these a lot and they really add a layer to the game I enjoy.
Finally I must mention this criminally overlooked soundtrack by Kevin Penkin. I always liked the first games OST but this soundtrack is a knockout. The variety first of all is spot on. There's fast paced hip hop and techno club music. There are heavy rock songs, with quiet tracks thrown in. The music in the tactical missions is extremely unnerving and tension filled. Not only do the tracks compliment the scenarios well, but on their own they are great pieces of music that I listen to actively.
The game has the same problems of repition as last time. And it has so many more frustrating moments. While I love the tactical battles, they can drag on for way too long. And there's no checkpoint in any of them. So if you die, you have to start all the way back from the beginning. It is also frustrating doing the routines and sending out patrols and that one jerk of a cop will just refuse to go out on a call when you really need them to.
That covers most of how I feel about this game. There are moments that I think are genuinely fantastic. Incredible even. I love
So much about this game. But wow, that story is so god awful. And wow is it frustrating to play.
I think this game and the first one are equal to me, for different reasons. I'm gonna give it a hesitant recommendation.
If you only have a Switch, don't bother.
Let's just start and maybe I'll figure out the score along the way.
MAJOR DISCLAIMER: Do NOT buy the Nintendo Switch version of this game. It is broken and has been broken for many years. There is an extremely odd bug after certain levels late game, when you are selecting cops for your next shift, your controls will suddenly lock up. Only down on the d pad works and the select button. This means you can't actually select your units in the way you want to. This is a very very big deal because it happens many times.
The port is prone to crashing often. And the final cherry on top, completing this game corrupts your save file. This isn't a bug, this happens consistently. I have beaten the game twice and the save file corrupted each time. So I can't even show you my file to say I beat it. It is a broken version of the game.
So with that in mind, how do I rank this title? Do I rank it as a port? Because if I am going by that logic, it's like 1 star. It's terrible.
But, in the sake of a more interesting post, I am going to omit that for the ranking. We are going to judge the game as is. Just again note that you should avoid it on Switch.
Ok so, this game goes in a really interesting direction from the first one. There were many moving parts and systems and things going on in the first game and that's magnified here.
The cutscenes overall have better presentation. In particular, there are actual animated scenes this time. These work REALLY REALLY well. The movements are somewhat unnerving and offputting, but the scenes in question are intense by design. There are heavy camera shakes, a lack of music to sell you in on the moment, and decent voice direction for the most part. There are also many moments where the game presents something really odd and seemingly random. Without giving much away, these moments really really work at throwing you off, and giving you an idea of how demented Boyd's psyche has become. He was a morally grey character in the first game caught between a bunch of conflicting positions. In this game, he is a monster. Basically of his humanity has been stripped away. It's an interesting story, one that has sporadic moments of really tense moments.
But notice how I said sporadic. Because while the presentation is better, the dialogue is even WORSE. Oh. My. God. This dialouge. I cannot stand the writing in this game. They talk about utter nonsense at all times. Cracks on the wall, toilets, strawberries. Everyone stutters and stammers and draws out the dialouge in the most stiff ways. EVERY character is written this way. And now the cutscenes are LONGER. So you have longer worse scenes than the first game. The dialouge and writing is truly horrible. The game never knows how to just get to the point and you have to sit there for up to 10 minutes wasting your time listening to these idiot cops talk about a crack in the wall.
There is a review on this page going over the character of Lilly. She is on the poster of the game and meant to be one of the main characters. I think that review is quite interesting and explores a way to look at the character I couldn't. Because she's barely in this game. I would say the overall game is about 15-20 hours? She's in roughly 2-3 hours. She has no agency or real role in this story. This somewhat makes sense because her role is trying to be a better leader. But then the story ends and she contributed basically nothing to anything that happened. If you had removed the character from the story, I feel that nothing would have been lost, which is a big problem to have in your story. I like Lilly fine, she's probably the only likeable character in the game. But at the very least, even if you disagree with my take on the character, have her at least be in the game for more than 5% of the experience.
So overall, the story is shown in a better format but the story itself is just awful in every way. So once again, we have to lean on the gameplay to save us.
Thankfully, I once again enjoy the game very much. And there are many new additions that spice things up. Your roster of cops is more streamlined and everyone has individual quirks for the entire game. So for example, one cop smells really really bad and some officers won't work with him. Theres a woman who won't work with men at a lower rank than her own. There's a guy who amusingly will not carry a Baton and lose his loyalty to you if you give it to him too many times. Loyalty can be swayed for your officers. They'll disobey you if they aren't loyal and do things on their own. But it's easy enough to get them back on your side.
The game maintains the same format of sending your dudes out to solve issues. But now each cop has stats for each ability. Their strength, stamina, negotiation skills, etc. so now when you are presented with a problem, and one of the options is "chase the suspect" you want a fast cop selected to do that. Or if you want to talk down a criminal you get someone with high negotiation. This makes you consider who to send out in pairs. It gets even more complex when you factor in having items on each officer. Now you need to decide who's going to carry the stun gun or baton. Usually, these make encounters a lot easier and avoid causalities. The system is very simple but I actually like it a lot, it helps to further add identity to each officer as they become whatever role you want them to be.
Let's talk about the biggest change here, the tactical missions. Some crimes are way too big for just a handful of cops to handle normally. So what results is some planning during normal gameplay followed by full on levels where you control a party of cops in a turn based RPG style combat system. They did something pretty clever here, which is incorporating the stats you have during normal patrols, like high shooting or speed, and made it apply to this mode as well by making each stat represent unique abilities and attacks you can equip onto your officers. High speed, for example lets you travel further on the board. Intelligence lets you lockpick doors or windows. I actually really love this system because it is double layered and works in totally different aspects of the game. And once again it helps to promote variety for your officers. One can be an expert shooter while the other can sneak around and try to arrest everyone. These sections can get really, really intense. The odds are almost always stacked against you and a single bad shot can really mess up your officer. I like the presentation on these a lot and they really add a layer to the game I enjoy.
Finally I must mention this criminally overlooked soundtrack by Kevin Penkin. I always liked the first games OST but this soundtrack is a knockout. The variety first of all is spot on. There's fast paced hip hop and techno club music. There are heavy rock songs, with quiet tracks thrown in. The music in the tactical missions is extremely unnerving and tension filled. Not only do the tracks compliment the scenarios well, but on their own they are great pieces of music that I listen to actively.
The game has the same problems of repition as last time. And it has so many more frustrating moments. While I love the tactical battles, they can drag on for way too long. And there's no checkpoint in any of them. So if you die, you have to start all the way back from the beginning. It is also frustrating doing the routines and sending out patrols and that one jerk of a cop will just refuse to go out on a call when you really need them to.
That covers most of how I feel about this game. There are moments that I think are genuinely fantastic. Incredible even. I love
So much about this game. But wow, that story is so god awful. And wow is it frustrating to play.
I think this game and the first one are equal to me, for different reasons. I'm gonna give it a hesitant recommendation.
If you only have a Switch, don't bother.
This review contains spoilers
cw: Personal trauma talk, cop talk, and misogny talk
I'm a complete hypocritical wuss. I think we all are, and I don't mean to shine a spotlight on myself and pretend I'm the only one who experiences this. Far from it. But there's really no other way to open this review, y'know? That's the straight dope, that's what this is gonna be about: the weird hypocrisy I have the most Concentrated Emotions about.
I love cop dramas, and I always have. Maybe I always will. I hate cops, and have since at least when I was 14. Nothing in particular 'happened' at the time. I grew up the daughter of an accountant and a P.I.. I grew up around tons of cops, my father (the detective type I just mentioned) hated them, but they were the people he had to work with so y'know. I grew up in some shitty apartment in a town of mostly immigrants in the American South. They were shitty American South cops the whole time I knew them, but I didn't know how to feel. Until, as I said, I was about 14 and I just kinda realized I fucking hated them. I wouldn't have a cop encounter with a cop until years later, when someone would try to kill me and the police at my university laughed me off when I asked for help. I was under no impression they would help me, honestly, but they were the first person I saw, so I thought I'd ask. But still, hypocritically, I love cop dramas.
Every cop drama is about one of three things, in my experience: being too old, too young, or too much of a woman. I've always been able to relate. Funnily enough, ever since I was a child, people would comment that I acted like an old person, and thought like one too. So, when you pull up a cop drama about some old guy feeling like he's part of the past on my TV, it doesn't matter how young I am: I'll always related. This is the Police 2 tries it's hand at all three of these conflicts. And, most importantly, it's relationship with policework is unplaceable.
Something I fail to see brought up in reviews of TitP2 is that it's a Belarussian game. One of the first countries accepted into the Soviet Union, and one of the ones hit hardest by the collapse enforced upon it. It's easy to read into the uncomfortable mundanity of the player's crimefighting efforts, and how they might reflect American policing. Or, by extension, Belarussian policing. But, to truly see the depth of the interactions, I reccomend viewing each of your attempts at policing under the guise of the 'new police force' which took the former Soviet states overnight. In mainland Russia, specifically, the Russian mafia families would do the policing (with American assistance) while the newer police forces and government heirarchy were formed. The aesthetics of the 90s cop drama, particularly Silence of the Lambs and it's character dynamics in Police 2's case, are transplanted onto this relationship. With the former sheriff being killed, Lily Reed is expected to take their place overnight. Regardless of her abilities, she doesn't feel at all prepared. And that's where you, the player, come in, taking on the role of her mob-connected mentor.
We finally get to talk about the gameplay of the video game now! Sorry for making you wait! If you played the first game, it's that but with some more to it. Once more, but with feeling, etc etc. You send cops out on jobs, sometimes they're false alarms. Other times, something's up, and you enter a choose your own adventure mode to solve the case. The phrasing is terribly mundane and vile. In one case, you happen upon a homeless man attacking people for money out of desperation. The in game options in such a scene will likely read something like this: Threaten to kill the homeless creep, attack the homeless man with your baton, or use a taser on the hobo. It varies in how much hatred it will treat the subject with at seemingly random, and even the ones lacking hatred are grossly impersonal. Just reading the text "hit them with your baton" lacks any sort of visceral detail, but when the following results slide says "the offender is dead" or "the offender has been caught", there's universally some discomfort. In reality, the police report should read as grossly detailed if handled correctly. Here, each time it's just the one sentence.
New additions to your police brutality management sim involve personality traits for your officers. None of these are good. Some of your officers are gonna be straight-up misognists, and refuse to work with women unless you threaten to fire them. Some are heavy drinks, and they'll crash on the way back from the job and end up in the hospital for four or five days. It's a stresser. But, the most notable new addition is tactical missions. Turn-based tactical RPG-style encounters where you can either stealth through and arrest every suspect, or create a bloodbath on your way to the win screen. There's no real tangible benefit to sparing lives here. In fact, it just makes it harder for you to do. But, it helps you as the player feel a bit better about what you're doing. So, y'know, of course I did it every time. I'm an empathy machine sometimes, it's hard to stop me from feeling bad about an in-game murder.
These mostly make the experience more interesting, and tougher overall compared to the first game. I like them, and they help play into this whole 'episodic' tv-like structure the game drills into your head. Shows like Homicide: Life on the Street, where a series of random weekly escapades happens before being wrapped around into a broader point.
Despite what I said earlier, I don't think the points about police corruption and abuse have nothing to do with the story. In fact, I think it plays it what makes my favorite part of this narrative, Lily Reed, so compelling. Every cop in this series is is treated with utter revulsion and disdain. I'd go as far as to say there's something unlikeable in every single man we see in this game. Except for Lily, who is this unfortunate paragon we see broken time and time again. From the start of the narrative, she's not even perfect, but she's at least trying. Unlike every person around her. Whenever she appears on screen, I dreaded whatever was about to happen. Most reviews of this game I've seen lament the game entirely because of these cutscenes.
It's easy to label the responses to Reed's characterization as sexism. It probably is in some cases, but I think it's fair to say most gamers only really 'get' comedy narratives and ironic humor when it's told to them about as explicitly as Starship Troopers would have it. There's a very Coen Brothers-esque tone to the comedy present in most cutscenes, but it's never 'funny' like those films would be. All the archetypes of a Coen Classic appear here, delivering their usual lines, but because most of it is in reaction to Lily or corrupt temp-sheriff Jack Boyd, it's hard to laugh like I have at Fargo so many times before now. To most, this seems to read as a failure to create a truly comedic product. That, or they believe it creates a tonal dissonance between how Lily is treated and how they're supposed to feel in the moment.
The purpose of this tonal choice, at least in it's effect, is to problematize the dark comedy often used in film of the last two or three decades. Even when attempting to magnify the horrible aspects of misogny for comedic effect, there is rarely ever a strong stance against misogny being made, or anything deeper going on. It simply remains a unique depiction of the concept.
I wanted to write some more stuff here, but I'm really runnin' outta juice right now and I know if I don't post this review now I'll never remember to do it, y'know? Probably just some sentence or two where I complain about Tarantino and the casual sexism his movies have inspired within the film world, or some other selfish point on my part of that nature. I don't know, check this game out? I like it a lot.
I'm a complete hypocritical wuss. I think we all are, and I don't mean to shine a spotlight on myself and pretend I'm the only one who experiences this. Far from it. But there's really no other way to open this review, y'know? That's the straight dope, that's what this is gonna be about: the weird hypocrisy I have the most Concentrated Emotions about.
I love cop dramas, and I always have. Maybe I always will. I hate cops, and have since at least when I was 14. Nothing in particular 'happened' at the time. I grew up the daughter of an accountant and a P.I.. I grew up around tons of cops, my father (the detective type I just mentioned) hated them, but they were the people he had to work with so y'know. I grew up in some shitty apartment in a town of mostly immigrants in the American South. They were shitty American South cops the whole time I knew them, but I didn't know how to feel. Until, as I said, I was about 14 and I just kinda realized I fucking hated them. I wouldn't have a cop encounter with a cop until years later, when someone would try to kill me and the police at my university laughed me off when I asked for help. I was under no impression they would help me, honestly, but they were the first person I saw, so I thought I'd ask. But still, hypocritically, I love cop dramas.
Every cop drama is about one of three things, in my experience: being too old, too young, or too much of a woman. I've always been able to relate. Funnily enough, ever since I was a child, people would comment that I acted like an old person, and thought like one too. So, when you pull up a cop drama about some old guy feeling like he's part of the past on my TV, it doesn't matter how young I am: I'll always related. This is the Police 2 tries it's hand at all three of these conflicts. And, most importantly, it's relationship with policework is unplaceable.
Something I fail to see brought up in reviews of TitP2 is that it's a Belarussian game. One of the first countries accepted into the Soviet Union, and one of the ones hit hardest by the collapse enforced upon it. It's easy to read into the uncomfortable mundanity of the player's crimefighting efforts, and how they might reflect American policing. Or, by extension, Belarussian policing. But, to truly see the depth of the interactions, I reccomend viewing each of your attempts at policing under the guise of the 'new police force' which took the former Soviet states overnight. In mainland Russia, specifically, the Russian mafia families would do the policing (with American assistance) while the newer police forces and government heirarchy were formed. The aesthetics of the 90s cop drama, particularly Silence of the Lambs and it's character dynamics in Police 2's case, are transplanted onto this relationship. With the former sheriff being killed, Lily Reed is expected to take their place overnight. Regardless of her abilities, she doesn't feel at all prepared. And that's where you, the player, come in, taking on the role of her mob-connected mentor.
We finally get to talk about the gameplay of the video game now! Sorry for making you wait! If you played the first game, it's that but with some more to it. Once more, but with feeling, etc etc. You send cops out on jobs, sometimes they're false alarms. Other times, something's up, and you enter a choose your own adventure mode to solve the case. The phrasing is terribly mundane and vile. In one case, you happen upon a homeless man attacking people for money out of desperation. The in game options in such a scene will likely read something like this: Threaten to kill the homeless creep, attack the homeless man with your baton, or use a taser on the hobo. It varies in how much hatred it will treat the subject with at seemingly random, and even the ones lacking hatred are grossly impersonal. Just reading the text "hit them with your baton" lacks any sort of visceral detail, but when the following results slide says "the offender is dead" or "the offender has been caught", there's universally some discomfort. In reality, the police report should read as grossly detailed if handled correctly. Here, each time it's just the one sentence.
New additions to your police brutality management sim involve personality traits for your officers. None of these are good. Some of your officers are gonna be straight-up misognists, and refuse to work with women unless you threaten to fire them. Some are heavy drinks, and they'll crash on the way back from the job and end up in the hospital for four or five days. It's a stresser. But, the most notable new addition is tactical missions. Turn-based tactical RPG-style encounters where you can either stealth through and arrest every suspect, or create a bloodbath on your way to the win screen. There's no real tangible benefit to sparing lives here. In fact, it just makes it harder for you to do. But, it helps you as the player feel a bit better about what you're doing. So, y'know, of course I did it every time. I'm an empathy machine sometimes, it's hard to stop me from feeling bad about an in-game murder.
These mostly make the experience more interesting, and tougher overall compared to the first game. I like them, and they help play into this whole 'episodic' tv-like structure the game drills into your head. Shows like Homicide: Life on the Street, where a series of random weekly escapades happens before being wrapped around into a broader point.
Despite what I said earlier, I don't think the points about police corruption and abuse have nothing to do with the story. In fact, I think it plays it what makes my favorite part of this narrative, Lily Reed, so compelling. Every cop in this series is is treated with utter revulsion and disdain. I'd go as far as to say there's something unlikeable in every single man we see in this game. Except for Lily, who is this unfortunate paragon we see broken time and time again. From the start of the narrative, she's not even perfect, but she's at least trying. Unlike every person around her. Whenever she appears on screen, I dreaded whatever was about to happen. Most reviews of this game I've seen lament the game entirely because of these cutscenes.
It's easy to label the responses to Reed's characterization as sexism. It probably is in some cases, but I think it's fair to say most gamers only really 'get' comedy narratives and ironic humor when it's told to them about as explicitly as Starship Troopers would have it. There's a very Coen Brothers-esque tone to the comedy present in most cutscenes, but it's never 'funny' like those films would be. All the archetypes of a Coen Classic appear here, delivering their usual lines, but because most of it is in reaction to Lily or corrupt temp-sheriff Jack Boyd, it's hard to laugh like I have at Fargo so many times before now. To most, this seems to read as a failure to create a truly comedic product. That, or they believe it creates a tonal dissonance between how Lily is treated and how they're supposed to feel in the moment.
The purpose of this tonal choice, at least in it's effect, is to problematize the dark comedy often used in film of the last two or three decades. Even when attempting to magnify the horrible aspects of misogny for comedic effect, there is rarely ever a strong stance against misogny being made, or anything deeper going on. It simply remains a unique depiction of the concept.
I wanted to write some more stuff here, but I'm really runnin' outta juice right now and I know if I don't post this review now I'll never remember to do it, y'know? Probably just some sentence or two where I complain about Tarantino and the casual sexism his movies have inspired within the film world, or some other selfish point on my part of that nature. I don't know, check this game out? I like it a lot.
I really enjoyed this game.
This is the police 2 learnt from its predecessor's mistakes and truly made a hidden gem. The story is like watching a Quentin Tarantino movie.
If you liked TITP's gameplay, you'll love this one too.
If you liked TITP's gameplay, you'll love this one too.