Police Tactics: Imperio Preview

Mixed reviews on steam; something that worries most gamers as they browse the store but then again I could be speaking for myself. Mixed reviewed games are often a bit of a gamble as to if you would enjoy it or not, it could be a great game ruined by bugs but it is simply hard to tell.

This is one of those countless games with mixed reviews, so when I first booted this game up I wasn’t expecting anything grand or anything tragically awful either, boy was I in for a wake up cool. I passed the first part of the tutorial with boredom in my eyes, another management game with way too much simplicity involved was my first idea of a teaser for this game.

Five minutes later, I was hooked.

Police Tactics: Imperio is unbelievable. I am struggling to find words that describe just how gripping the game is and how much the game can drag you down into deep micromanagement but at the same time make it so simple that it doesn’t become tedious or repetitive!

The game’s intro is far from useless, it gives you a small insight into the upcoming story and a little bit of confirmation as to just what you will be up against and what you will be doing. It actually felt informative rather than unnecessary which I personally found as a surprise. The tutorial, whilst constant as it progresses alongside you throughout the main game, is rather blunt in the sense that it tells you what you need to know and the simplest way to control your units; It doesn’t attempt to over complicate things.

Aside from having an actually useful introduction and tutorial there is a multitude of other things that Police Tactics: Imperio does well, including the patrol function. God I love the patrol function. This simple feature allows you to allocate cops, specialist units (more on those later) and their cars on patrols, or on foot patrols if you prefer. Which causes them to respond to any crimes that pop up on their patrol routes and search for suspects that might have escaped a recent crime in the nearby area! This tiny useful feature means that you don’t have to constantly manage each and every crime that appears on your screen, a feature that definitely takes off a lot of pressure that could and most certainly does build up as you progress and unlock new areas for you to manage.

As you progress through the game you will unlock new “specialists” that allow you to complete certain types of missions and roles that you unlock throughout the game. After all, would you really send a CSI agent to assist with crowd control in a riot? Of course not, you would send riot officers who are rather useful at foot patrols as well, being the bullet sponges they are they can easily distract a few armed robbers whilst your cops (though I send S.W.A.T for overkill) move in for the arrest.

Of course, there will be times where you can’t capture the criminal and you just can’t find them no matter how hard you try. Thankfully, that's where the previous mentioned CSI agents come into play! You can send them to crime scenes and they will investigate, searching for clues and before long you will need to send in your detectives to interview the eyewitnesses. Once both of those tasks are complete a blue ring will appear showing you the predicted area of the suspect, at this point I frequently made the mistake of sending a squad car out to try and locate the suspect. What I should have done, however, was merely send out multiple patrols so they could scour the area, check for IDs all whilst making everyone feel safe!

So what are my final thoughts on this Early Access title? Simply put; it is absolutely fantastic! A really developed and fleshed out early access title with plenty of hours of playability and possibly replayability (though admittedly the replayability factor could probably use with some improvements, maybe a sandbox mode? Custom player maps? Perhaps when full release comes around maybe add the ability for player made modifications?)

This game is definitely worth getting and definitely worth a positive review.