14 DAY TRIAL // 
Originally released in 2021 on PC, Police Simulator: Patrol Officers (PS:PO) is based on a concept that’s very likely to appeal to quite a lot of people out there.
The game puts you in the shoes of a police officer whose role is to make the city safer, starting with little things like issuing verbal warnings or fines for jaywalking and ending with more involving duties such as helping people following a major accident.
Now available on consoles as well, PS:PO still promises a unique gaming experience that you can’t find elsewhere. And at the end of the day, I learned this is entirely true. But it doesn’t necessarily mean PS:PO is a perfect game.
First and foremost, let’s start with the part that needs a lot more refinements. Everything you see in the game looks like 2015 graphics, and the lack of polishing is shocking for a game supposed to run on the PlayStation 5. I know the console version is based on the original release, but the attention to graphics could make quite a lot of people to walk away.
Then, PS:PO feels very, very, very repetitive. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because, after all, that’s probably what the work of a police officer comes down to when all they have to do is catching offenders. On the other hand, the more you play and do the same things over and over again, you eventually get better at them – for instance, while there’s indeed a learning curve to figure out certain things, such as when you need to issue a parking ticket, it's all just a matter of time until you learn the basics.
The handbook does come in handy, but if you don’t want to spend too much time reading (whose does, anyway), doing the same missions over and over again is a challenging way of learning how you can make the city safer.
The physics aren’t necessarily the best, but this goes hand in hand with the graphics, so I’m not going to insist too much on this.
Now let’s focus on the entertaining side of the game.
First and foremost, issuing fines seems to be oddly satisfying, though, as I said, you must learn when you’re allowed to do it anyway. You can’t just fine people just for the sake of doing it – as a matter of fact, the conversations with people on the street are rather dull and eventually get super-boring after progressing through missions.
Then, the game is getting more challenging as you complete more missions. For example, it may feel boring at first when all you’re required to do is issue parking tickets, but once you have to help people involved in a car accident, you actually feel like a real police officer.
The game comes with some pretty odd settings, so for instance, while I was in a rush to help the victims of an accident, pedestrians walking by stopped and told me hi. This isn’t necessarily how you’d expect people witnessing a tragedy to react, so maybe a little bit more empathy would help.
Unfortunately, the number of bugs that somehow still exist in the game is disappointing, to say the least. People occasionally crash into vehicles, emergency vehicles sometimes get stuck in vehicles and never come, and so on.
The Good
- Great concept
- Missions are getting more complex as you make progress
The Bad
- Poor graphics
- Repetitive gameplay
- Guns are useless
CONCLUSION
What I liked the most is the actual feeling that you’re getting when you do a good job. This is because the concept the game is based on is brilliant, and the dev team has really managed to recreate the whole experience in a digital world.
But for PS:PO to be a major hit, it first needs more attention to detail and better graphics. For some reason, despite being one year old (albeit new on console), it still feels unpolished, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see some players walking away because of the glitches. As I said, it’s a unique mix of challenging, fun, repetitive, and broken gameplay that somehow grows on you.
A review code was provided by the publisher.
