PLATFORM: PC, PS5, XBOX SERIES (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Taking inspiration from early Grand Theft Auto games, The Precinct is a top-down action-adventure game that casts players in the role of rookie cop, Nick Cordell Jr. Following in the footsteps of Nick’s recently-murdered police chief father, your job is to work your way up the ranks by patrolling the fictional city of Averno, taking down criminals, busting gangs, and hopefully finding clues that might lead to solving the mystery of who killed your dad.
After the tutorial mission introduces the basics, you start a new day walking the beat, tasked with keeping an eye out for minor (but important, nonetheless) indiscretions – parking violations, littering, vandalism, the usual “first day on the job” grunt work. After slapping a few tickets on lawbreakers’ windscreens and ending your shift, you’ll gain experience based on your performance, levelling up to unlock different types of shifts, new weapons and vehicles, and upgrade tokens that can be used to gain more health, stamina, and increased proficiency with weapons or driving.
Each morning, you’ll choose which type of shift you want to take part in, then patrol the designated zone of the city to keep an eye out for trouble. While doing so, you’ll get callouts from dispatch alerting you to other crimes that you can either follow up on or leave for other officers to deal with if you’re already busy (or just don’t fancy it). One minute you might be castigating a careless litterbug, the next you’re embroiled in a violent shootout. Anything can happen in this most unruly of cities! When you’ve collared your perp, all that remains is to read them their rights, ID them, shake them down, then decide what you’re going to charge them with before slapping the cuffs on and dropping them off at the cop shop (or, if you’re feeling lazy, calling for a car to come and pick them up). Any arrests you make have the potential to reveal evidence that, when handed in at the police station, eventually reveal the whereabouts of gang bosses who must be taken out of commission at all costs (usually involving a car chase, a shootout, or both).
The dead dad storyline bubbles away underneath all of this, with the game choosing to keep the plot very much in the background so that you can concentrate on the task at hand. Unfortunately, once you’ve completed a few rounds of the half a dozen or so different patrols, nothing really changes throughout the rest of the game. Apart from a few dispatch callouts that ask you to investigate a handful of homicides, there aren’t any story missions or set pieces to guide the action and, without these, it can soon feel like you’re just going through the motions each day.
With the city’s two gangs taken down and final objective accomplished in just over 7 hours, The Precinct isn’t the sort of game that will keep you going for weeks on end. After the credits have rolled, you can always jump back in to mop up any of the side activities like locating lost artefacts or completing stunt jumps, time trials and road races, and you can continue heading out on the beat for as long as you want, but the game’s longevity would benefit from a little more depth and variety. The Precinct is best enjoyed as a palate cleanser between bigger titles – fun and engaging, but perhaps lacking that certain something that would make it truly special.
