Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 20/Mar 03:31

Police Shootout – Review

After becoming a digital paramedic less than a month ago, we now trade in that uniform for another one, namely that of a police officer. Police Shootout is a title that was originally released in 2022 for Steam and has only recently made its way to Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. With mixed reviews on Steam, we were curious to see if this title would perform better on our current generation of consoles. Sadly, while Police Shootout certainly has its moments, we weren’t really that impressed. Story You’ll be playing as Scott Price, a cop who recently transferred from the big city to a smaller town. You are already fairly experienced, as you are used to dealing with bigger gangs in the busy city, but now you are here for a more personal reason. Your brother went missing, and you’re determined to find him or find out what happened to him. This narrative, however, often takes the backseat during missions. As the game feels more like a simulation title, it’s not that bad that the game’s story frequently moves to the background, as it’s all about the crime scenes and the detective work. All in all, the narrative isn’t bad, but it didn’t immediately blow us away or captivate us. Graphics Graphically, Police Shootout left us with mixed feelings. We were in a way rather impressed with some of the game’s sceneries, the highly polished textures, and just the assets that we found on certain crime scenes. But, upon closer inspection, things ended up looking a bit rough around the edges, especially when looking at the different character models. Character diversity was almost non-existent, the facial features were rather underwhelming, the animations were janky, and everything felt a bit lifeless. Even so, we have seen far worse when it comes to games like these. Sound Like the graphics, the sound design was also a mixed bag. The music was reasonably okay, and so were the sound effects. We were surprised to see a lot of voice acting in this indie title but said voice acting wasn’t always of high quality. It was clear right off the bat that most voice actors weren’t exactly native English speakers, and these cast members focused more on pronunciation than emotion. Even amid a shooting scenario, most NPCs seemed rather unfazed at what was going on. This did ruin the immersion a bit. Nonetheless, kudos to the studio for actually adding this much voice acting. Gameplay Police Shootout sounds like it would be an action-packed shooter, but it’s more of a detective simulation title. You’ll go from one location to another (by selecting these on a map) to defuse hostile situations or to take out the bad guys. You’ll talk to witnesses, collect evidence, perform interrogations, and possibly enter an armed conflict. The latter is actually presented in a first-person turn-based format, rather than a first-person shooter formula. We were surprised by this choice of combat for a game such as this. Most mechanics in the game work somewhat as you’d expect. You have to go around crime scenes or locations to collect evidence, talk to witnesses, and radio through your findings. It’s rough around the edges, but it still feels fairly enjoyable. It’s the odd interrogation mechanics and the unconventional way of ‘shooting’ that make the game feel a bit off. Interrogation works by selecting cards with facts about the perpetrator on them, and by selecting the correct ones, you can defuse the situation. Some cards are worded accurately and still have accurate information on them, so we didn’t exactly understand what we were doing wrong to get a negative response. Even though the game has ‘shootout’ in its name, you’ll be going through turn-based battles. In these battles you have limited action points, which you can use to get to cover, actually duck to take cover, and shoot. Shooting feels awkward at best, and the very limited action points often leave you out in the open. It does take a few battles to get used to this, but it kept feeling somewhat off throughout the entirity of Police Shootout. The game is only about four hours long, which means it doesn’t really overstay its welcome. All in all, the gameplay isn’t too complex and even has some potential. Sadly, everything is held back by clunky controls and bland shooting mechanics. When selecting items from our gear, the game would sometimes become unresponsive or completely change the stick controls when choosing an item from the inventory dial. The shooting feels off, even when our aim was ‘perfect’. The shooting works with a quick-time event of sorts. You’ll have to press the shoot button at the correct time to have increased accuracy. Sadly, even when timing our shot perfectly, we would miss the assailant. If this area was a bit more polished, Police Shootout would have a fairly enjoyable gameplay loop. It’s still somewhat interesting as it is, but we couldn’t help but get annoyed by the underdeveloped mechanics from time to time. Conclusion Police Shootout has a few interesting core mechanics, and it’s really not the worst simulation-like title we have played. The game has a couple of good ideas, and it was somewhat entertaining trying to solve all the different cases, even if many of them ended up in a gunfight. Even so, the game is currently a bit overpriced when you are considering picking it up on console, so we suggest going for the PC version instead, which has a more realistic price tag. With some polish, this could have been a quirky and amusing detective sim, but as it stands now, it’s somewhat mediocre.