The Precinct (PS5) | REVIEW | The Cop Equivalent of GTA???

The Precinct, or reverse GTA as I like to call it, has the player taking up the badge of rookie officer Nick Cordell Jr. as he learns the ins and outs of police work in the crime ridden streets of Averno City. Training in the footsteps of his late father and former police chief who died on duty, Cordell Jr. is taken under the wing of seasoned veterans as they show him proper procedure, and help him get used to the various methods of criminal pursuit and apprehension. 

It is, at it's core, a tedious tilted yet top-down textbook cop simulator style of experience through and through done in 80's fashion with a bustling city sandbox as your base of operations. As Nick Cordell Jr. you will do business at ACPD headquarters through each shift while taking outings to patrol the city, and deal with every sort of crime and criminal imaginable. Speaking, occasionally, with other officers and key characters of interest while climbing the ranks, and earning the prestige and respect of your fellow men and women in blue.

As a police sandbox game, The Precinct overly complicates even the most basic of tasks through it's methodology. Rendering what should be action packed moments between cops and criminals into quick time events involving various selectable options brought up through the detailed radial menu systems. It is these wheel-like options menus that ultimately take time from the end goal, and make getting from perp to perp all the more problematic.  

In the mix of mechanics you'll find everything under the sun, from squad support options like spike strips and backup to tasks relegated to pursuit like the taking down, searching, fining, and booking of perps for various offenses. Even the execution of violent criminals with lethal force is thrown in for an added sense of realism. With this as the core gameplay setup you'll find that the first several objectives of the game holds your hand, in kind, like a tutorial as you navigate Averno on foot, in a patrol car, and in a police helicopter learning the tricks of the trade in force fed fashion before the Captain lets you loose on your own. 

In controlling Nick Cordell Jr. you have at your disposal, not only procedure based options, and hands-on/off tactics similar to that utilized by real world police, but also weapons, gear, and vehicles that must be put to use in specific situations in a specific order once you determine the threat level of the suspect/s. Checking IDs for warrants, issuing breathalyzer tests, and even cuffing or killing the bad guys is part of the gig. And while the game is strict on objectives, and the completion thereof it is surprisingly lenient on your bad driving, and near civilian casualties that will happen more often than not as you play. Only punishing you when you step out of the line against criminals. Something that ditches realism to compensate for the awkwardness of policing.

The Presentation ...

The isometric cityscape of Averno is a hustling bustling ecosystem of daily pedestrians, and perps set in an 80's inspired timeframe. It features dynamic weather, lighting, and a mostly destructible environment. In the day and night cycles threats change making work more challenging during the nighttime hours. All of this is accented by an 80's style soundtrack fitting of the time period the game imitates. 

The Verdict ...

Through the clunky and awkward controls, as well as the heavy handed mechanics The Precinct destroys any fun it might have offered, otherwise. In making it so technical by design the developers effectively complicated something that shouldn't have been so complicated. The menu systems, in particular, cause an issue as you'll have to bring them up while driving or flying which is nearly impossible to do at the same time you are pursuing the suspects, especially in vehicular pursuit cases. That, and the awkward aiming system in the combat situations creates problems where there should be none. Precision gunplay is not offered in the slightest, and it makes any gun fight a trying task, unnecessarily. 

It's this culmination of control awkwardness that harms the overall experience to a point it makes the fun to be had, non-existent. As promising as The Precinct might have appeared it fails in delivering that level of quality in the actual gameplay, and it's because of this that I cannot recommend this game.