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Anticipation for Rockstar’s long-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI is astronomical. But it’s easy to forget that the influential crime series started as a 2d sandbox game with crude graphics and a top-down perspective in the 1990s.
You can tell that indie developer Fallen Tree Games is a fan of this era. Its first game, the underrated American Fugitive, was an enjoyable homage to early top-down GTA games, where you take on the role of a felon on the run after escaping prison.
Alongside the usual hallmarks of stealing cars and going on crime sprees, American Fugitive introduced some novel ideas, including stealing clothes from washing lines to disguise your character and breaking into buildings to steal valuables.
Six years and several delays later, the studio’s new game flips the formula. Rather than a criminal, The Precinct sees you play as Nick Cordell Jr., a rookie cop tasked with restoring order in Averno, a grimy, crime-ridden city inspired by New York. It’s a refreshing role reversal, as open-world sandbox games rarely let you play on the other side of the law.
While not a direct sequel, The Precinct is set in the same universe as American Fugitive, so fans of the last game will spot a few references and easter eggs.
Police academy
As you patrol the streets in timed shifts, you’ll respond to a range of random crimes. One minute, you’re fining someone for petty vandalism and issuing tickets for parking violations. Next, you might be responding to gang shootouts, drug deals or bank heists. Crimes can also escalate, with routine traffic stops erupting into high-speed chases, shootouts or physical confrontations. Every shift feels unpredictable.
However, you can’t choose to be a good or bad cop like in the True Crime games and Sleeping Dogs. The Precinct doesn’t glorify police brutality: going on rampages, gunning down civilians or making unlawful arrests is penalised. Police procedures must be followed, so lethal force is only authorised if a suspect opens fire first.
While it’s not a realistic simulator, the police systems are surprisingly in-depth and take time to learn. Each crime requires a different level of force. For instance, you can’t shoot a suspect who doesn’t resist arrest for graffitiing property.
Once you’ve caught a criminal in the act, you must read their rights and add each committed offence before arresting and escorting them back to the station, where you can book them. Alternatively, you can arrange for police escorts to drive arrested suspects to the station, allowing you to return to your duties.
To save time, there is also an option to turn on automatic arrests, which don’t require you to add offences manually, but the catch is that you earn less XP.
The abundance of rules to follow feels convoluted at first. Even parking violations have multiple conditions for issuing fines. Luckily, everything is helpfully explained in a comprehensive police handbook, and it soon becomes intuitive.
When not responding to crimes, you can stop and search random pedestrians for narcotics and stolen items or check their identification to see if they are wanted felons. Out on the streets, you can also scan license plates and monitor speeds to catch car thieves and speeding drivers.
It effectively immerses you in your role as a police officer. However, despite the variety of crimes to solve, the gameplay loop of chasing, catching, and apprehending suspects gets repetitive once the novelty wears off, and the scroll wheel used for adding offences and making arrests can feel cumbersome.
A skill tree system adds depth, with XP earned from apprehending felons and following police protocol unlocking upgrades such as improved stamina while sprinting, storing more ammo and reducing car damage.
Pursuit force
High-speed car chases are a highlight in The Precinct. As you screech around the streets, weave through heavy traffic and smash through conveniently placed piles of cardboard boxes, you feel like you’re in an 1980s action film.
Criminals in faster cars can be hard to catch in a standard patrol car, forcing you to find alternative routes to cut them off. During pursuits, you can also call for police backup and set up roadblocks or spike strips. It’s possibly the closest we’ve had to a sequel for the forgotten PS1 game World’s Scariest Police Chases.
The responsive driving makes it easy to pull off Hollywood-style handbrake turns, but it lacks the satisfying weighty feel of the Driver games, with some cars feeling too twitchy. You aren’t restricted to driving police cars either. Story missions sometimes have you following fleeing suspects in a helicopter, tracking them with your search light.
Once you’ve unlocked the special ability in the skill tree, any civilian vehicle on the road can also be commandeered, with a police siren automatically appearing on the roof as soon as you enter it.
Since it’s set in the 1980s, you’ll be driving period-accurate boxy sedans and wood-panelled station wagons, though none are licensed. Amusingly, you can even turn garbage trucks into makeshift police vehicles, which unlocks a trophy/achievement. We also spotted a homage to the green 1960s Ford Mustang famously driven by Steve McQueen in Bullitt – the godfather of car chase films.
Big in ambition but small in scale
Away from free roaming, The Precinct centres on a story about taking down two gangs, investigating your father’s death and uncovering a conspiracy. Story missions are unlocked by gathering evidence on each gang member from suspects while out on patrol.
Once enough evidence is collected, these missions are longer than the patrols, but typically follow a pattern of tracking down a gang’s hideout, engaging in a shootout, and chasing the target suspect on foot before making an arrest.
While the voice acting is decent enough, the cutscenes are presented with static, comic strip-style character illustrations that lack facial animations. This cheapens the cutscenes and breaks the immersion; in-game cutscenes would have perhaps been more effective. Coupled with a lead protagonist that’s blander than a Toyota Corolla, it’s difficult to get invested in the story.
Another issue is the map’s small size. The Precinct was developed by a tiny team of four, so expecting it to match the size of GTA’s gigantic maps would be unreasonable. However, the locations become overly familiar, and there aren’t many interiors to enter.
Despite its small size, the city is dense with alleyways, parks and subways to explore beyond main roads, impressively detailed and soaked in neon lighting. Combined with a soundtrack that mixes synth and jazz, there’s a moody, neo-noir-style atmosphere.
With random crimes, heavy traffic and plenty of pedestrians, the setting feels alive. On top of the city is fleshed out with secret street races, stunt ramps and vehicles to discover, along with optional side quests.
Impressively, the city is also fully destructible, with street signs, fire hydrants and mailboxes to smash into during the chaotic car chases. It’s a shame, though, that vehicles are less destructible. Panels detach and bumpers hang off, but you rarely see the bodywork deform in crashes.
On consoles, the frame rate is capped at 30fps. A lack of a 60fps mode even on PS5 Pro is an unfortunate setback, but the performance remains smooth and stable, even with a lot of on-screen action.
The Precinct’s limited resources also likely explain why there’s no online multiplayer. It’s a shame, because the police chase gameplay lends itself well to manic multiplayer matches.
Overall, The Precinct is an enjoyable GTA-style police sandbox, featuring pulse-pounding car chases, comprehensive crime systems and a gritty city to explore. However, its ambition is often undermined by its small scale, repetitive gameplay and subpar story elements.
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