For Persona 5 to be ACAB it must stand for something, which it doesn't

i don't follow. i never finished persona 5, but at the beginning of the game joker is beaten, drugged, and threatened by cops, right? that's why i put it on here, but i'm absolutely all for making this list stronger if the game otherwise undermines that stuff.

(i wouldn't be surprised if it does.)

The game does have a really strong opening but a lot of the game is just vaguely gesturing at "the old guard" in general being the problem as opposed to systems of abuse

i'll accept it as a step forward. i mean, any game which directly portrays cops as wicked pieces of shit without undermining that via good cop has a place on this list. though ultimately, yeah, i'm with you and i want games which actually depict cops realistically as a systemic apparatus of abuse and oppression.

I recently played Umurangi Generation and that’s definitely very anti-cop

Agree with Archagent about Persona 5. Ideology and the Virtual City: Videogames, Power Fantasies and Neoliberalism by John Bailes skewers the game’s ideology and shows how it’s essentially advocating for a “better” version of the status quo.

Streets of Rage 4 probably belongs on here too for having a storyline centred around corporations using the police as a personal taskforce and a whole level where you just musou your way through a police station and walk in on cops beating up people held in custody.

ok! i have some reading to do, then. i'll remove persons 5. thanks, archagent + letshugbro

and now i need to play sor4

Final Fight 1, though I'm only saying that for the cop guy that's the boss of stage 3 (Edi E.).

RGG games like Yakuza 4 and Judgment tackle police corruption as a major theme

so here's where i admit i still haven't made my way into the yakuza series, though i wanna do that soon... especially with this new undub of the first game available. i'll add 4 and judgment to the list, then.

I dunno how deep you want the list to be, but Dead Rising has a cop psychopath boss fight. The cop in question is also a rapist.
https://deadrising.fandom.com/wiki/Jo_Slade

Oh, and Sonic Adventure 2 as well

I think persona 5 should by all means be here.
Not to spoil the game but there's a twist present with the flashback situation that represents what those cops stand for, and what they exist for considering Niijima's story arc.
Besides that as well, there's the fact that Goro Akechi is a cop. There's no feasible defense for Goro's character in vanilla p5, maybe in p5r but I'll likely never touch that game.

Oh, also Iwai's confidant, but to a lesser extent.

i'm certainly open to further discussion of whether or not persona 5 should be included here!

for real, though - gonna have to get my hands on that john bailes book. and i would like to keep this list maintained and relevant, so i'll be returning to it to reevaluate what's included and add more as i learn more...

I'm not on a P5 hate train myself, but I do agree that it's on the "A Few Bad Apples" side of the argument than straight up acab. There's a focus on reforming people as opposed to systems, the fact that the gang moves from delinquency to well-adjusted members of society and not vice-versa, and Joker goes to jail near the end to uphold the rules as correct.

I think Persona 5's ideology is roughly "There are no systemic issues, only bad actors". The cops aren't bad because they're cops, they're bad because they're controlled by the evil politican (oh and also the political system isn't bad either, it's just this one evil politician)

stuff like that makes it fairly easy to understand why people have such disdain for p5. kinda makes it sound like it really reeks of Not Getting It, which even in my own experience is a big problem with all of the persona games. it sucks because there's a lot to love about those games, but it's like this huge tease before letting you down. a betrayal, even? and considering nocturne is one of my very favorite games i always wish they'd just... do better. definitely sucks to hear that persona 5 does to its core cast what the breakfast club does to allison reynolds.

I hate pretty much every Persona game, because they're all just "the system works fine!!! Stop complaining!!!" However, I think Persona 4 is even worse about this than 5 - the resolution to every single character arc is just regression to the status quo and broken dreams.

The only cops in FFVII (and remake) are shinra soldiers patrolling midgar and you kill like

All of them. It rules. Remake is also explicit that this is good.

i have absolutely no idea how anyone could interpret persona 2 or 3 as games about maintaining status quo because "the system works fine", and i can't see that point being made to 4 either because it isn't even addressing the justice system in the first place. the most it deals with is japan's inherent sexism and bad people being in positions of power - neither of which say anything about the police as a whole

p5 is absolutely thematically muddy for a variety of reasons but the rest of the series is not guilty of that. that said it is absolutely not fitting of this list and neither is any other game in the franchise

also crackdown 100% fits despite you playing the role of a supercop because of its ending

also yeah in ff7 avalanche are literally anti corp eco terrorists

well, having really only played like half of persona 3 and 5, plus a little of 4, and the rest being hearsay, it sounds like there's a lot of discomfort with the way persona tends to handle social issues - maybe not so much systemic issues, let alone the justice system (in american, japan, or anywhere) - and falls short of meaningfully challenging the problems it presents. seems reasonable enough to feel it cares about maintaining the status quo while sending its protagonists through an ultimately fruitless personal journey. anyhow, it's also understandable that it even comes up in conversation here, given the way the police and systems of power are intrinsically linked.

dog days?

yeah, i thought of dog days while making the list and hovered on indecision. it's been like a decade since i played it last, and i wanna say it fits, but i hesitated because i didn't wanna get mired in "well, kane & lynch: also bastards." the cops are, the way i remember it, practically in the periphery. they're targets, but they're also aesthetic dressing just the same as all the digital artifacting and fucked up imagery.

thoughts?

do we need to start a fuckin backloggd dog days co-op club?

gta 3

is there a tenpenny in gta3? if not, i think san andreas is all the gta this list needs

nah i joke about gta 3 but gta 5 could apply to this if you count FBI agents as cops, games treats them as the enemies and they're constantly fucking up the 3 main cast throughout the game, completely corrupt