Police Simulator: Patrol Officers

The game is set in the bright and pretty fictional town of Brighton, in the equally fictional state of Franklin, in the United States of America (not to be confused with Brighton in the UK which is a seaside town with something of a wild reputation for stage dos and hen parties complete with heavy drinking, drama, and fish and chips!)

In this game, you become a rookie cop in every realistic way – but you are spared the paperwork, which is something! Don’t expect to be enjoying high speed chases, taking down drug barons or doing anything more exciting than writing tickets and telling people to cool it! Doing these day-to-day actions earns you points, and points get you levelled up. And once you have levelled up a bit, then you can start moving into the flashier side of policework.

As with most non-Sims simulation games, gameplay is soothing, being all about the mundane daily doings of a street officer, with plenty of traffic tickets to be issued, and cars to be towed away. Your focus is on catching speeders, the occasional petty crime to solve and a lot of walking and running – at least until you level up enough to unlock your very own patrol car, which is when you get more exciting calls than mere beat cops are permitted to answer.

Stop-and-search is a feature, but, unlike in real life, you need a good reason to have become suspicious of the alleged perpetrator. You can also penalise people for littering and jaywalking. There is an intuition system in the game that can help you – or hinder you – in your work, depending on if you are blindly suspicious of everyone or have good observational skills.

You can pull your weapon – you have a taser and a gun – and you can even shoot an unarmed civilian, but do beware of trying this out, or anything else that is not appropriate behaviour for a police officer: you lose any points and upgrades that you had earned that ‘day’ and get booted back to the beginning to start all over again.

The Nitty Gritty

The AI controls the traffic and ensures regular violations that need tickets and citations so you will always have something to be doing. Mistakes you make in the game, no matter how honestly intentioned (or not!) – like writing invalid tickets, or crossing the street on red (jaywalking) – will lose you points and slow your progression through the ranks. Ticking all the boxes will see you advancing smartly through the ranks.

The game is under constant development and new districts and new unique neighbourhoods are being introduced all the time, such as Downtown which was the first DLC (downloadable content) following the original release.

Another later addition to the game is the Night Shift, which offers a darker view of the city while honest citizens sleep. The Night Shift has fabulous lighting effects, from your handheld torch to your vehicle’s blue and reds, and it also has a co-operative play ‘buddy beat’ system (called Nightshift with Friends) so you and your besties can explore the city together after dark.

Districts to Explore

Keep your eyes open for the following areas and see how people behave differently in the diverse parts of the city.

Brickton: Built up, urban and ever so slightly uptight

Downtown: Full of joie de vivre and criminals, you will spend a lot of time here

Melting Pot: Diverse, vibrant and proof that bad ’uns can come from anywhere!