Just got Police Simulator a few days ago. Not what I thought, but pretty decent. Here's a review POLICE SIMULATOR Police Simulator is all about managing the town's police resources. However, this is not in the same way as in EM4. In PS, you have to hire personnel and buy vehicles, while maintaining the equipment. There are several incidents that can happen, which require certain types of officers. I'll explain some important stuff in this picture. Top: Public safety, crime solve success rate, forgot the other ones - they're at 0% because I'd just started. Date, time, budget, help. Vertical column in bottom left: View map, view map and highlight units, view city with units, view crime hotspots in city, forgot last one. The bottom bar is all about information. You've got Crime stats, money stats, personnel, vehicles, duties, investigations, department, and advisers. Onscreen: Setting up a patrol with a vehicle and two officers. A patrol route set up. Notice the areas on the map where crime rate is high (red + orange) Black is out of your area. List of Personnel: policeman - bread and butter of your police department forensic officer - Goes to a crime scene, collects evidence and organizes it undercover agent - infiltrates gangs and smuggling rings detective - creates a case out of the evidence collected by forensic officers helicopter pilot - pilots any helicopters special task force - used for riots or terrorist attacks The vehicle list is surprisingly large and well thought out: City Rover Patrol City Prowler Patrol Dust-devil patrol Cougar patrol lynx patrol panther patrol Saber operations Rapier operations Dagger operations Wagoner van Conestoga van Chariot van S.W.A.T Juggernaut water canon Firefly observation helicopter firefly multipurpose helicopter The patrol vehicles are just like your Policemen. I've put them in order of price + performance. All vehicles appear to be versions of real vehicles, like the City Rover is a smart car. It is essential that you assign your vehicles wisely, otherwise you'll end up with alot of unsolved cases. I'll explain: Duties are assigned in order to keep crime down and public safety up. There's two types of duties, people check and patrol. Both of these can be done without a vehicle, but it fatigues the officers faster and takes them longer to get to their destination. However, you don't want to send your best vehicles to do people checks as patrolling units tend to be closer to a crime scene. Crimes can happen anywhere in the city at any time, which is why you always need officers ready to cover time slots. The types of crimes are: vehicle theft burglary robbery stabbing homicide drugs smuggling terrorism riot In the short while I've played, I have responded to 3 robberies and a homicide. This is a sequence of what happens: Incident called in (e.g Robbery) Select a unit on patrol or set up a unit at the station Dispatch unit Unit arrives on scene, and one of three things will happen - A)Police arrive in plenty of time, and catch the crook almost instantly B)Police arrive just as the crook is leaving. After a short chase, the crook will be arrested (or have escaped) C)Police arrive too late. The officers secure the scene and begin a case Once the case has started, you have to assign forensics to the case. They will go out and collect evidence. This takes time, but is essential to catching the crook (the longer you wait to assign forensics, the less chance of catching the crook) Once the forensic guys are finished, you then need to assign detectives to the case. This is always quicker than collecting evidence The detectives will work out who the crook is and where he is. You then need to dispatch a unit quickly to catch him before he escapes. (If you catch a crook before he leaves the scene, you do not need forensics or detectives - even if it's something like a homicide). Totally different robbery, but you get the idea The gameplay is nice, with the graphics being pretty decent. Crimes seem to be totally spontaneous and you can go for almost a day without anything happening. However, this does make a bit of sense because when you first start, you are only in charge of a small area of the city (and I was playing on easy). Despite this sense of "safety" to you, the virtual city dwellers feel differently and the town will get worse if you don't create a presence. For example, my public safety rating was at 46% at 16:51. I continued patrols up until midnight then stopped, because I realised it was far easier to just dispatch units, like in EM4. Unfortunately, such attitude caused the safety to drop to 27% by 08:00. When I looked at the crime map, most of the city was rated 'highly likely' to criminal activity. At which point I quitted because I was a useless commander and needed to re-think my strategy (i.e, load the last save). I've probably missed out a lot of essential detail, but it's just such a different game than the other Emergency games. If you like games that involve balancing, management and looking at charts to determine your choices, then you would find this game easy. Personally, I like this game. But I think the majority here would hate it. There's a lot to think about and consider (When and where do most crimes happen? How should I tackle this? How can I keep the presence and safety up elsewhere? Is my budget big enough to do this?) There's also the lack of interaction. At most, you'll assign officers to a vehicle and tell them where the crime is. Then just simply watch. Would I recommend this game? I'd really like to say yes, but realistically, no. Younger members will find it confusing, and older members will find it boring. If you do have money to burn or find stuff like this interesting, then by all means, buy it. If you don't, consider it - you might be surprised.
