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IbizaPocholo

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,912
Ibiza


Police Stories is a fresh take on top-down shooters with an emphasis on tactics that forces you to make split second decisions. Neutralize criminals, rescue civilians and defuse bombs in Single Player mode or Online Co-op. And remember - shooting first is not an option!

Unforgiving and tense, each mission tells a story of two police operatives - John Rimes and Rick Jones, filled with infiltrating gang hideouts, rescuing hostages, making arrests and other life-threatening situations.

  • The Surrender System allows you to apprehend the suspects without resorting to violence. Fire a warning shot near them or engage them in melee combat - those are just some of the ways you can make them submit.
  • Issue commands to your fellow cop Rick Jones. Make sure to use him wisely - and who knows, he might save your life in return.
  • Randomly placed criminals, hostages and evidence make every level run unique. The placement changes every time you restart, leading to new interesting situations and opportunities.
  • As a law enforcement officer, you will have access to end-of-the-line police equipment, such as under-the-door cameras, door blast charges and many others.
  • Various types of lawbreakers, from small petty criminals to well organised gangs and terrorists. Each type has not only unique weapons, but different behaviour and shooting skill.
  • Complex Tactical Gameplay: Try not to get spotted, don't waste bullets, regularly check your surroundings and make sure to take criminals down quietly.
  • All your actions are scored in real time. Playing aggressively won't get you a high enough result to start the next mission - so keep that in mind!
  • Online Co-op. Complete missions in multiplayer for better scores and more fun!



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Coming on September 19th for $14.99

Day one for me.
 

spam musubi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,380
Not sure how I feel about a game where you play as police being forced to make a split second decision to shoot someone in the current climate. Especially against petty criminals.
 

Orwell

Banned
Jun 6, 2019
345
This is pretty tone deaf. If they had switched the roles, placing you in the shoes of criminals up against police, I would be interested.
 

Lukar

Unshakable Resolve - Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 27, 2017
23,346
Not sure how I feel about a game where you play as police being forced to make a split second decision to shoot someone in the current climate. Especially against petty criminals.
Yeahh, this trailer felt really off-putting.
 

Jave

Member
Oct 30, 2017
2,818
Chile
That trailer felt very disturbing. They emphasize the "Shooting first is not an option" thing but the majority of the gameplay had the cop shooting the criminal as soon as he kicks the door open.
 

Deleted member 43872

Account closed at user request
Banned
May 24, 2018
817
Not gonna lie, seeing this trailer threw me a bit off balance. Police tactics-action games aren't new of course, SWAT 4 is incredibly well-regarded. I think more people are aware now that the concept has a lot of pitfalls and needs to be approached more carefully than it historically has been. Police Stories seems to want to split the difference: not as awful as a lot of old cop action games where due process isn't a thing, it encourages you to arrest instead of kill, "shooting first is not an option" (but it looks like it actually is an option). The copy says you can arrest suspects "without resorting to violence" by "engaging them in melee combat," which is obviously just clumsy copy-writing but feels uncomfortably comfortable with use of force. And of course the entire thing -- just all of it -- is glorifying police militarization and SWAT tactics.

But none of that is new, that's just what cop games are to some degree. The specific thing that makes me more uncomfortable with this specific game is rendering it all in a more grounded version of Hotline Miami's graphical style. That series is both a hyper-violent power fantasy and queasy criticism of hyper-violent power fantasies. I played a fair amount of both Hotline Miami games, enough to have those feelings powerfully associated with that unique visual style, and seeing it juxtaposed with what's billed as serious, gritty police drama is... Well, it was certainly a damn choice, wasn't it. Hotline Miami 5-0, what the hell.
 

Garou

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,620
Not sure how I feel about a game where you play as police being forced to make a split second decision to shoot someone in the current climate. Especially against petty criminals.

In the current ->American<- climate. Not every country has a police-brutality problem.
 

SolidChamp

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,867
So this brought to mind another game that hit the Switch that looked way more appealing than this.

American Fugitive

Has anyone played that?
 

HK-47

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,581
This feels different than SWAT 4 in terms of violence and police procedure but I can't really pinpoint why that is. Maybe the scenarios or perspective?
 

Don Fluffles

Member
Oct 28, 2017
7,054
Can we "neutralize" crooked cops who shoot random black kids?
Can we apprehend police gangs who take tallies of the innocent black people they arrest and kill?
Can we infiltrate the higher-ups of law enforcement to out klansmen and neo nazis and then shoot them up?
 

Joco

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,446
Alright I'll bite. I don't see a major issue with playing as a cop. Certainly this is not the first game about being one, and if the gameplay is saying you need to act within the law, that is good is it not?

Yes people are being shot in the trailer but it's a trailer and hard to get any context about these situations which will be present in the game. Despite visual similarities it doesn't seem that this will be Hotline Miami where you kill everyone - looks like there will be more to it than that.
 

sabrina

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,174
newport beach, CA
Alright I'll bite. I don't see a major issue with playing as a cop. Certainly this is not the first game about being one, and if the gameplay is saying you need to act within the law, that is good is it not?

Yes people are being shot in the trailer but it's a trailer and hard to get any context about these situations which will be present in the game. Despite visual similarities it doesn't seem that this will be Hotline Miami where you kill everyone - looks like there will be more to it than that.
Because this game posits and reinforces the idea that cops who run in with petty criminals, or people they've just prejudged to be criminal (e.g. most police violence against black and latino men), that these cops are in stressful life-or-death situations where they have to make split-second evaluations. But that is almost never actually the case.

Thanks to body cams we've been able to see that most police who shoot people are doing so because they're power tripping and/or extremely prejudiced.

So if you're going to make a game about cops, either don't pretend the choice to shoot petty criminals is ever ethical, or don't give the player the chance to kill innocent people. And if you aren't savvy enough to thread that needle, then you're better off avoiding the subject altogether.


Put a different way: there's a reason why one of the most popular games at E3 so far is a response to people's fear of institutionalized violence.
 

AxkilAvenger

Banned
Apr 8, 2018
1,641
i get why some are reacting hard to this but..it's a video game. Did people cry over NARC in the arcade back in the day? or the recently released RICO?
 

sabrina

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,174
newport beach, CA
i get why some are reacting hard to this but..it's a video game. Did people cry over NARC in the arcade back in the day? or the recently released RICO?
RICO was not received well. But also it doesn't present the faux dilemma of do you arrest people or not, because you can anticipate gun-toting hardened criminals behind almost every door. It's not remotely similar.

NARC would not be received well today.
 

Mifec

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,725
A video game that lets you play as a member of a system infiltrated by the KKK, one that serves the rich and kills minorities on the regular, a system where 40% of the people involved beat their families and shoot 25-30 dogs a day.(DOJ statistic)

I see how people would mind even if it is a video game.
 

AxkilAvenger

Banned
Apr 8, 2018
1,641
RICO was not received well. But also it doesn't present the faux dilemma of do you arrest people or not, because you can anticipate gun-toting hardened criminals behind almost every door. It's not remotely similar.

NARC would not be received well today.
There are other games from back in the day and present besides NARC that allowed you to play as a cop. I did not realize there is a stigma against these games. The climate is not new imo so why target this game
 

HK-47

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,581
RICO was not received well. But also it doesn't present the faux dilemma of do you arrest people or not, because you can anticipate gun-toting hardened criminals behind almost every door. It's not remotely similar.

NARC would not be received well today.
What about SWAT 4?