In 2009, legendary developer Brenda Romero created a game called ‘Train’. It was made as part of her ‘The Mechanic is the Message’ series. The basic premise is that people are trying to get a train to a station and that station turns out to be Auschwitz. When this is revealed, it is down to the players to decide what to do. Romero explained that the intent was to make a fun game where the pursuit of the objective teaches us about complicity.
This seems like a roundabout way of talking about Police Simulator: Patrol Officers but trust me, I am trying to go somewhere with it. First, I need to do the traditional introduction to what this game is.
Police Simulator has the player take on the role of a police officer in the American municipality of Brighton. The game itself occurs in 3rd person with the police officer required to go patrol on foot and by car, either in single player or online co-op.
The patrols vary in priority from issuing parking tickets, interacting with the public, to collecting information on traffic accidents; the player is rated on how they behave and whether their means of investigation/apprehension is justified. If the player goes through the correct procedure, they will gain points that will allow them to upgrade and take on bigger challenges, incorrectly following protocol will cause them to be docked ‘Conduct Points’. Losing more than 100 Conduct Points during a patrol will cause a restart. Each patrol can be done in one of several boroughs that Police Simulator describes as a ‘melting pot’ area of Brighton. That means there are white and non-white people there.
The mechanics of the game are sophisticated even though the visual presentation is less so (many of the character models are rudimentary and bit awkward) – every encounter that is triggered by the player opens a large wheel full of different means of interrogation or investigation. The player is required to sift through the limited evidence available, although the game does try and drop hints, to make the best judgement call. Arriving at the scene of a car crash and having to discern whether a person is drunk, carrying weapons, or is just an innocent bystander ends up being compelling. All of this must be juggled while taking photos of the scene, calling in an ambulance for any casualties, and sending a tow truck to impound perpetrators’ cars.
Police Simulator has an easy mode that will highlight jaywalkers, litterers, and people with smashed windshields. Even then there are still moments where an eagle-eyed player will spot other crimes like drinking in public or cars parked too far off the curb and be able to net points. There is a thrill to catching these moments and seeing the little number go up in the top right corner.
There are certainly bugs in Police Simulator – during drop-in/drop-out multiplayer I loaded in one time and the entire city was just black silhouettes, another time I ended my shift while still holding a traffic sign and the game became unresponsive to button inputs. That didn’t stop me from coming back because there was an interesting set of mechanics underneath the jank, and the autosave was generous enough to never lose me much progress.
I think this is what makes the game so pernicious. There is a good game lurking in the systems. However, it is hard to tell what the developers are trying to say with those mechanics – hard see what that message in the mechanics might be.
To clarify, I will talk about two events in the game. Early on, I was handing out parking tickets as part of a tutorial and the game informed me that some one had just littered. I ran over and told them that I was detaining them for the offence, they complied and then I asked to see their ID. As I looked at their ID, the game informed me that the person had ‘red eyes’ and let me know that this was justifiable cause to search them. As I attempted to search them, they screamed and ran away. The game then informed me that I could arrest them for fleeing. I broke into a sprint and comically chased them down the street with no idea how I was supposed to stop them until I found a button to pull out a taser and tagged them in the back. I promptly incarcerated them for fleeing and the game awarded me with some levelling up points.
Later, I pulled out a gun on a person walking down the street, just to see what would happen. Everyone panicked, I lost 20 Conduct Points, and the person that I pointed the gun at cowered on the ground. I searched the person and found an illegal amount of cannabis along with a switchblade. I arrested them and got some more levelling up points.
The former reminds me of something out of a Judge Dredd comic, and the latter reminds me of the scene in the police spoof Naked Gun when the protagonist is commended for his 1000th drug dealer kill and he stands up and goes ‘in all honesty the last two I backed over with my car, luckily, they turned out to be drug dealers’.
The game is a deluge of these moments, where I found myself laughing in horror. Every person I accosted seemed to have a litany of offences – from driving at night without their lights on, to child abuse. Every encounter was more about how I was going to issue a reprimand, not if. Stopping someone for a faulty taillight could end in a police chase and arrest for drug dealing. All of it exciting from a player perspective but the message seems to be that everyone in Brighton is a criminal.
At the same time the game doesn’t seem to care, issuing a person with a verbal warning for driving on the wrong side of the road is worth just as many points as issuing a ticket. Stopping someone for a DUI (Driving Under the Influence) and then letting them get back into their car does not dock any Conduct Points.
When Brenda Romero released Train – she discussed her clear intent with what the game was supposed to be about. The game was was to hold a mirror up to the player and make them think about the consequences of their actions. She documented people’s responses and talked them through it.
Either Police Simulator is a brilliant indictment of authoritarian police states, or a stone-cold celebration of police brutality. The open-ended nature of some of the gameplay and how the systems hardly punish bad police work might be making me reflect on my habits as a player. That said, I’ve read some glowing reviews on Steam for this game from people claiming to be cops. How do you review a game that had me looking at every civilian as if they were a prime opportunity to get my police badge level increased?
I do know that once per patrol I was allowed to draw my gun on a civilian, as a treat.
Conclusion
Mechanically engaging, and morally bankrupt. Police Simulator is a very accurate portrayal of cops.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
