This Is Not The Police

I should have figured that not every game was going to be a hidden gem, but my gut said otherwise. I was at gamestop one day, going through some games because I had some cash to spare and I wanted to spruce up my selection. One game I hadn't heard of before caught my attention, This Is The Police. It looked like it might be pretty neat, so I decided to pick it up to see what it was about. I regretted that decision so much that practically the very next day I returned it and got the Mega Man collection instead.

So, what exactly is This Is The Police? It's a management sim with minimalist graphics and heavy story elements. You play as a corrupt police officer who works with the mafia to accumulate 500k before retiring in 180 days. You have to use your minimal staff and resources to do your best to protect the city as well as profit.

What makes this game good? Well, it has a decent soundtrack, you can purchase vinyls with the in-game currency for music to listen to while managing your force. Of course, there's only a few that are really quite good, but I have a weird taste in music, and you might find a lot more pleasure from the tracks than I do.
Other than the music, the feeling of having your own squadron to control and dispatch on plentiful missions to stop crime is a great euphoria. Of course, this may just be a me thing, some people might find the limited staff quite stressful at many times.

Sounds like an alright game so far, what makes it so bad? Well, the story is... lackluster. To put it bluntly, it's boring and bland. I honestly can't find any words to put together to describe it. There's some weird subplot of your wife cheating on you or something, and you frequent a strip bar where you meet a lot of mafia members, but other than that, that's really all there is to the story. Maybe I'm just not far enough or something, but I've tried and tried to progress through the story, but it's just so boring. It's a real deterrent to the game, especially since it relies so heavily on its story.
Other than that, well, as I've said, it can be unnecessarily stressful, especially when a lot of it comes down to RNG. The management aspect of the game should be meant to be strategic, but it doesn't feel like you're making decisions to strategize to the best advantage. It feels like you're doing whatever you can to have RNG always work in your favor.

Overall, I'd give this game a 4 out of 10. It has it's moments, it has a few good things, but overall, it's a bland game that deters me so much that even the fun parts become a chore.