Police Simulator 2 Law and Order Review

It’s time to grab your baton and catch some bad guys. Police simulator is yet another simulator bought to us by Excalibur Video Games, the guys that have bought us titles like Surgery Simulator and stone quarry simulator.

This time round though, it’s not a first-person point of view simulator, but an isometric top-down simulation. Police Simulator 2, is a police simulation and strategy game that puts you in charge of maintaining the public safety of a city. You will need to protect citizens from all forms of crime from shoplifting to armed robberies. You will need to manage your staff and assign your available units to various tasks as you play.

Police Simulator 2 includes a campaign mode and quick missions, as well as several achievements that can be unlocked. As you settle down to begin playing, you are faced with an isometric, top-down view of a large city. The graphics are pretty substandard and are certainly nothing to write home about. However, after playing a number of games published and developed by Excalibur I did not expect much.

The first thing you notice is there is no tutorial at all. Absolutely nothing to help guide you through your first mission. This makes for a pretty hard first half hour of gameplay. You are given missions, like sending some policemen out to ID some random citizens. After a load of frustration and trial and error you eventually start to get the hang of things. I must say, however, that not having a tutorial is absolutely crazy. Not having one will surely send people packing, as it takes away the enjoyment of any game when a tutorial doesn’t exist.

As you progress you have to do things like manage your staff. This involves hiring various police officers etc. to send out on patrol. You also need to do other tasks like instaling survelance cameras to increase the effectiveness of police work and crime prevention, and deploying speed cameras to catch speeding vehicles so you can issue fines. You also get to send out undercover officers to infiltrate and catch drug smugglers and lock them up. While you manage all these tasks, you also need to continue managing to modernise and expand your vehicle fleet, train and hire new officers, setup patrol routes and checkpoints. The tasks you need to complete are given as missions and as you complete each mission you gain more cash and unlock further options like larger vehicles and better equipment.

Police Simulator 2 is a slightly substandard game. It is not all bad, and it can be a pretty enjoyable game once you get past the steep learning curve. Once you have everything sorted and you have a good understanding of how to play you will have some really enjoyable moments. It does, however, feel like you have to battle against this game to enjoy it. Is a tutorial realy too hard to include? As it is, it’s an ommission from which the game never fully recovers.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.