The Precinct (Xbox Series) Review

The city has a voice. The kind that calls to you from halfway across the country, like a siren, luring men to their doom. There are no bright lights and famous sidewalks here, just dirty apartments and death among dark alleys. They don’t come any more corrupt than this. This city we call home. A city that will crush your dreams and leave you dead on a doorstep.

This is the part where I sigh sadly and take another drag on my last cigarette, staring out a third story window onto a windswept street. Half a bottle of hooch and a sad, empty glass with a stain beneath it keeps my ashtray company. The typewriter stares back. Accusingly. Yeah. I paid my dues, but they just kept pulling me back in. Here’s to you Averno City, you mug you.

Despite being set in 1983, The Precinct, from developers Fallen Tree Games LTD, has all the high-marks of a 1970’s crime thriller steeped in a whole bunch of noir. Think Dirty Harry meets Sam Spade, only not quite. The Precinct is a light cop sim paired with the ambition of a crime thriller that manages to hit both marks precisely. It’s a bit like playing an isometric GTA, just on the right side of the law.

Your journey in Averno City begins as a rookie cop Nick Cordell Jr. – fresh out of the academy and ready to take on Averno’s meanest streets and it’s even meaner inhabitants. You’re here to climb your way up through the ranks, one crime at a time, while searching for the truth behind your fathers death in the line of duty. There’s a conspiracy keeping the gangs in power and only your investigation will reveal just how deep it goes.

The Precinct feels like a love letter to cops-and-robbers movies, to gritty crime thrillers, and action flicks from the 70’s and 80’s. It has all the high-octane car chases and shoot-outs it needs to meet it’s cinematic inspirations. Aspirations paired with relatively simple but no less engaging police simulation gameplay in an open sandbox world.

The simulation side of the game is where you will be spending the bulk of your time, paying your dues as a rookie cop on the beat. There’s a great tutorial that takes you through your daily duties of pavement pounding and how to respond to the various crimes you’ll come across. You’ll be spending just as much time handing out fines and parking tickets as you will be slinging slugs during bank heists gone wrong.

There’s an in-depth but simple system to engaging with perps, which lets you check their ID, search them, do breathalyzer tests, determine whether or not you need to call in support, what crimes to write them up for, and whether or not to arrest or fine them. All of this handled with a radial menu that keeps it clean and responsive as the game doesn’t stop time while you’re making these decisions. You’ve got to be quick on the job because perps can attempt to escape while you’re busy writing up their friend.

And if you have trouble remembering how to react, the game keeps it simple with little UI descriptions on the type of force you’re allowed to employ, if any. But, if you’re having trouble on what to write someone up on, there’s an in-depth police handbook in the menus to remind you of the regulations. You can, however, toggle on the games auto write-up to choose the correct crime for the situation if you want things to be faster or simpler.

Patrols can be broken up into on foot patrols, where you pound the beat, or in-cruiser patrols. where you’re taking sedate drives around the city looking for infractions. Different types of patrols have different crimes associated with them that are generated on the fly. Some you’ll see happening, others will come through from dispatch that you can choose to take on or ignore. There’s a decent variety of crimes for you to resolve which helps to keep the gameplay relativelty fresh and engaging during each shift. One minute you’re stopping a mugging and the next the DUI you’re trying to pull over turns into a hit-and-run.

Your actions during a shift reward you with XP to level up your career and character with. Everytime the XP bar is filled, your station is increased from a trainee, to a rookie patrolman, and so on. Each level up also unlocks new vehicles and weapons for you to use along with new support options to call in. There’s also a simple skill tree that lets you upgrade the amount of ammo you carry or how much stamina you have by investing points earned with each level up. Of course, you want to keep things on the up and up, as doing anything unlawful during a patrol will deduct from your XP. You may not get pulled in for a chat when using excessive force, but it will cost you all the same.

Initially, you have to choose what patrol to do for your shift with more areas of the city, and patrol types, opening up when you complete a certain amount of objectives in any patrol mode. These can be anything from passing out eight parking tickets to stopping five crimes of any type. There’s a clock always ticking away when you’re on a shift though, so it may take multiple shifts to open up a new patrol route.

After a certain amount of shifts you’ll open up the custom patrol mode that lets you choose what you want to do, when and where. This functions as a free-roam mode, albeit with objectives like a regular shift, but just tailored to your liking. During these patrols, it is easier to take on the games side-quests, such as infiltrating an illegal street racing gang, à la The Fast & Furious.

The campaign missions integrate nicely, from your very first patrol, to your first homicide scene, to moments of undercover work, etc. Evidence and information gathered during patrols furthers your investigations and pushes the campaign forward. And, like the sim side, it’s a nicely varied campaign that will have you running down gang leaders in rooftop shootouts, and arresting corrupt cops.

The game is played from an isometric perspective and is broken down to vehicle gameplay and on-foot gameplay. In vehicle, what you can do depends on what vehicle you’re driving. In a helicopter, you’re limited to following perps while calling in support moves such as spike traps. Ground vehicles let you engage in car chases where you can ram other cars, call in support or, in worst case scenarios, fling some lead around with an auto-lock on system. Cars do seem a touch oversensitive and prone to over steering and spin-outs.

On foot gameplay can be broken down into melee combat where you can taser, chase and tackle, or engage in simple fisticuffs with a criminal. It’s simple and mostly effective, though I could have done without the button mashes required to subdue criminals every time. The other part of on foot gameplay is shoot-outs, which play out like most cover based third person shooters, with the noticeable exception that you need to manually aim a cursor over your enemies to shoot them.

It’s the one area of the game that felt like a mouse control scheme was what it was designed for. There’s a bit of a whack-a-mole rhythm here as you wait for enemies to reload before popping out of cover to take shots at them. This, for me, is easily the games weakest mechanic. It gets the job done, but I can’t help but feel that there should be a better way to aim with a controller.

Those gripes aside, the story carries the experience and is told with some really great writing. Some of it is cliched, such as the veteran you’re teamed up with who is close to retiring, but the bulk of it is really engaging and kept me invested in where the investigation was going and the fate of the protagonist.

This year has already produced a bevy of surprisingly good games, from big budget to indie, and I feel like The Precinct can be added to that list. There’s a great, wonderfully written story coupled with fun, simulation-like gameplay, that had me pounding the beat on foot every chance I could get. While it could use a few tweaks, it’s a fun, addictive time.

The Precinct was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC and PS5.