Being a police officer would be a hard job. There’s a certain level of fitness to maintain, endless training, and then also dealing with the worst kind of offenders… people wearing Crocs. Yes, it’s certainly not a job for the faint-hearted, and I know many police officers who serve and protect day in and day out who tell me about the unique challenges the job has to offer. Police Simulator: Patrol Officers aims to give gamers on the switch a rare peek into the lives of Police Officers by bringing police sim action into the palm of your hands. What’s It Like? Put on your police hat, get your ticket book ready, and you have the right to remain silent as we review Police Simulator: Patrol Officers for Nintendo Switch
Police Simulator: Patrol Officers puts you in the boots of a police officer and lets you take to the streets in various situations that start from smaller tasks like issuing parking tickets and speeding fines to assisting with traffic collisions and filing accident reports. You will also tackle drug deals, littering, jaywalking and other crimes all while you fill in an actual shift set for an allotted time. These shift times can be adjusted to your liking, with the minimum time for a shift being 15 minutes. During your shift, each action will allot certain points for doing a good job, and deduct them should you make a bad call. The game will also immediately end should you break the law like using excessive force by shooting a jaywalker (yes, I tried for scientific purposes). Hence, the game holds you accountable to a certain standard as an officer. There’s a very slow career progression that sees you start off on the beat, before slowly working your way up to tackle more complicated crimes and offences.
While the premise of the game sounds good on paper, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Controls are sluggish and unresponsive, meaning trying to follow someone with a radar gun usually means you are unable to report them before they pull up at the lights. Bugs also hinder your career progression at every turn, especially when tasked with reporting car accidents. The process is to interview witnesses, photograph damage, perform searches, make arrests, and then clear the scene by calling ambulances and tow trucks. Each incident I responded to forced me to reset the world because a handcuffed suspect would just wander off because the arrest support team never showed, tow trucks or ambulances just sat on the spot with wheels spinning, or more vehicles would spawn and pile into the accident, making it impossible to clear the scene. These incidents unfortunately sum up the experience of Police Simulator: Patrol Officers as in its current state is a very buggy mess. I found the shift times to be a slog, and even at 15 minutes per shift, I grew weary from fighting the game engine at every turn, and while I love my simulator games, I found Police Simulator: Patrol Officers more like a chore at times, watching the clock tick down so I could move on to the next level.
Graphically, Police Simulator: Patrol Officers is rather bland with flat textures, poor details, and asset-loading issues that make the world look like a mess. While there is a lot going on in the world, the blurry textures and random pop-in make it very hard to get immersed into the game. Performance sees massive framerate drops when leaving the precinct, and has a fair amount of jank as you go about your daily patrols. The upside is the immersive sound design works rather well and citizens interact with you by greeting you which you can respond to, as well as getting emotional when you give them a citation. For my officers looking into accessibility options, there are colourblind settings that you can change to suit your needs. As always, I recommend further research into seeing if Police Simulator: Patrol Officers suits your needs.
Police Simulator: Patrol Officers could be a really great simulation game. The core mechanics are all there… they just don’t work at the moment. I feel with a few decent-sized patches, this game could actually be an enjoyable experience, but at $45 AUD, the quality just isn’t there and makes it hard to recommend. Die-hard sim fans may still find some enjoyment here, but casual gamers may want to avoid aiding and abetting this one.
So What’s It Like? Police Simulator: Patrol Officers is like Grand Theft Auto from the other side.
In the interest of Full disclosure, a review copy was provided by the publisher, but this doesn’t influence my score.
