The Precinct Review: A sandbox cop game that shines in patrols but stalls in story

These days, the biggest game companies have turned themselves into hit factories that keep busy by churning out game after game, all to please their respective shareholders.

This hit-chasing mentality means that smaller games, not necessarily indie titles, are often overlooked and underappreciated. The Precinct is one of those titles that’ll go overlooked by many, but deserves some attention, even if it is flawed.

Story and Gameplay

The game follows Nick Cordell Jr., a rookie police officer in Averno City. His father, Nick Sr., had previously been killed in the line of duty. Nick joins the city’s police force, hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps and bring his killer to justice.

As Nick, your goal is to take down two gangs: The Crimson Serpents and the Jawheads. You’ll do this by collecting evidence on the captain, underboss, and boss of both gangs in that order, whilst gathering evidence from suspects on patrols.

There are a variety of patrols to choose from. Some are on foot, some are still on foot but with a focus on parking violations, while some are in vehicles, focusing on traffic violations. The patrols themselves are where this game truly shines. They are open-world-esque missions featuring a camera and gameplay style of the first two Grand Theft Auto games. 

Each patrol has a factor of unpredictability to it. One minute, you’re ticketing someone for parking in front of a fire hydrant, and the next, you’ll find yourself busting a drug deal. Should you ever need assistance, the game has an officer handbook that tells players how to handle each type of crime and how to pursue suspects. 

Once a patrol ends, you’ll receive experience points based on your performance, which can be used to upgrade Nick’s abilities or his police arsenal. Important upgrades include the ability to request more backup, shutting down roads, and commandeering any vehicle.

Whenever enough evidence is collected, the story will advance, leading to a scripted, linear mission where Nick and his fellow officers take down the suspect.

These missions have more variety to them than the patrols, but ultimately boil down to a suspect running away from you at their hideout and then cowering behind their henchmen until you kill them all in a shootout. The mission will then end with you arresting the suspect. 

Issues and Irritations

Nick himself is one of the first noticeable problems with the game. He doesn’t have a character. He’s bland, and nothing is interesting about him. It wouldn’t be ridiculous to think he was secretly a robot, given how little emotion he shows with his generic responses to other characters, who all seem to have more personality and charm than the protagonist.

Outside of that, The Precinct does its best to keep the patrols fresh and exciting, but this doesn’t last forever. They can start to become a bit repetitive. Also, there’s only so many times you can be randomly shot at by gang members before it gets old. It also doesn’t help that you’ll be doing patrols over and over to collect enough evidence to go after all six suspects.

So far, I’ve taken down just one gang suspect in my 7+ hours of gameplay. The way evidence you collect is randomly counted as gang suspect evidence is an artificial way of extending your time with the game, something I’m not a huge fan of.

And while I do enjoy parts of this game, it does feel like it's missing some things. I compared it to Grand Theft Auto earlier in terms of gameplay, but when it comes to the story, it leaves much to be desired, at least from what I’ve experienced thus far.

Video games are no strangers to stories with the police, but The Precinct isn’t very interested in exploring anything about cops beyond the surface level. At one point, an officer gets exposed as being corrupt, but it gets treated as if they are just one bad apple. There’s no interest in exploring police corruption or any kind of moral grey area, it’s just onto the next story beat.

You’ll experience this in-game too. It’s possible to screw up an arrest. Once, I was supposed to just fine someone for vandalism, but instead I arrested them. What was the consequence of this? I lost 100 XP. I then took them down to the station to be booked, and guess what happened? I lost another 75 XP. That was it, and this was never mentioned again.

Maybe I went into the game with too much of an expectation from a small-scale production such as this, but I would’ve liked and enjoyed it a bit more if the police had been presented and explored in a better way.

Verdict

Overall, I think the game is decent but a bit flawed. It excels at its core gameplay loop with the patrols, but they can become repetitive. What I’ve played of the story so far could be a lot better. I believe the game is worth giving a shot if you’re in the mood for something similar to the original Grand Theft Auto games, but pick it up when it goes on sale. 

A PlayStation 5 copy of The Precinct was provided for review by Kwalee.