The Precinct Review - Too Repetitive
5I was excited for The Precinct after playing the demo. It had promise, and the idea of patrolling a city as an 80s-style cop felt like a fresh angle. But after playing the full release, I realized the demo pretty much showed me everything the game had to offer. Once I got into the main game, the excitement wore off fast.
Pros:
-Fun 80s cop theme with occasional fitting music
-Decent AI partner support during missions
-Serviceable graphics and visual style
-Cutscene voice acting is solid
-No major bugs or crashes encountered
Cons:
-Very repetitive gameplay loop
-Gunplay feels clunky and unsatisfying
-Poor performance and frame rate drops
-Small game world lacking variety
-Weak progression system with little payoff
-No ambient voice acting during gameplay
-Limited and repetitive soundtrack
Steam Curator: store.steampowered.com/curator/36307721-Healthy-Criticism/
Let me start with the good. The setting can be fun at times. There’s a bit of charm to cruising around while the occasional 80s cop show music kicks in. It makes you feel like you’re in a Lethal Weapon montage, at least for a few minutes. The AI is also surprisingly serviceable. During basic patrol tasks like breaking up fights, your partner will usually take care of one suspect while you handle the other, and they do a decent job backing you up.
Unfortunately, most of the game’s systems don’t evolve beyond that. The graphics are fine, nothing standout, but the performance is rough. The frame rate drops in busy areas, and that kills a lot of the immersion. The city itself feels tiny and more like a stage than a living world. There isn’t much traffic or crowd activity, and while there are a few areas to unlock as you level up, they all blur together after a while.
Progression is technically there, but it’s uninspired. You gain levels by completing shifts, which unlocks new patrol zones and missions. The core loop revolves around gathering clues to eventually trigger a boss mission for each gang. It sounds like it should be engaging, but in practice it feels hollow. You just do the same shifts over and over to grind out clues and move the story forward. It is a progression system, but it never really makes you feel like you are advancing or changing anything.
The campaign structure suffers from that rinse and repeat feeling. You respond to crimes, collect evidence, and eventually take on a gang boss. Then you do it all again for the next faction. It gets old quickly, especially since the missions lack variety.
The biggest issue though is the gunplay. Combat is clunky and awkward. Aiming feels stiff, shooting lacks impact, and fights usually boil down to hiding behind cover until your health slowly regenerates. There is no sense of weight or urgency in the gunfights. They feel like a chore more than a challenge. For a game that leans into police action, that is a huge let-down.
Audio design outside of cutscenes is another weak point. There is no voice acting during gameplay. All dialogue in the open world plays out with subtitles and character grunts. The cutscene voice acting is actually decent, which makes the lack of voices everywhere else even more noticeable. The soundtrack has a couple of catchy tracks, but there is barely any variety, and it loops quickly.
On the technical side, I didn’t run into anything game-breaking, but my cop car did flip into the air a few times when hitting fences. Aside from that, no major bugs or crashes, just a lack of polish overall.
At the end of the day, The Precinct feels like a strong concept that wasn’t given enough time to grow. It is not a terrible game, but it is shallow and repetitive. I wanted to love it, especially after the demo, but the full experience just did not have enough content or gameplay depth to keep me hooked.