Not a bad stump of a good game. Rebel Cops Review.

Belarusian developers from Weppy Studio in his first game This is the Police placed the main emphasis on management mechanics, in the second part of this series they added the mechanics of tactical combat with an isometric view. While a third part is possibly being developed, a spin-off called Rebel Cops, where the tactical combat mechanics were cut out from the second part and made into a separate game. Let’s figure out how justified such a bold decision is.

We find ourselves in the city of Ripton, which was in fact captured by mafioso Viktor Zuev, who fled Russia after the collapse of the USSR. The villain quickly became the most influential person in the city, having bought or taken by force everything that was there. The local police also came under the influence of the bastard leaders. However, not everyone agreed to obey the criminal. After leaving the police force, several former cops went into the woods outside the city to plan a secret fight against Zuev.

To be honest, this all sounds formulaic. In the game, the plot is presented purely as text inserts between missions; it is essentially there only to motivate the player to complete the game, to set some kind of goal. At the same time, both the developers understood this when creating it, and the players when playing through the game. But at least they bothered to describe the purpose of each mission in more detail, which is good. An interesting point is how they tried to connect the plot of this branch with the main series.

We are essentially managing a nameless squad of cops whose characters and stories are unknown to us. Some cops will come in the course of the story, and some will leave or die (this is up to you).

From This is the Police 2 they https://luckyowlclubcasino.co.uk/bonus/ left only the mechanics of tactical turn-based combat and a very simplified leveling system. The game in a general sense is a set of tactical operations. Before the operation begins, our staff officer describes all the nuances of completing the task, as well as what and why we will do it. Also in some missions there will be additional tasks from city residents, for example: rescue your wife from captivity, pick up important evidence, etc.d., which is rewarded with additional money, ammunition or weapons, as well as respect. A few words about the reputation of our squad: it determines whether the arms seller will cooperate with us. All. And it is very easy to gain, just complete all the additional tasks in Operation "Estate", and this is essentially the very beginning of the game, you will gain 5 points of respect – this is the maximum.

The largest map and the most difficult mission is the fourth operation in a row, which can stop a curious beginner from further passage.

During the planning stage of the operation, you can buy firearms (revolver, pistol, shotgun and rifle), ammunition for each barrel, auxiliary weapons (baton, knife, taser, flash-bang grenade), body armor, master keys, silencers for pistols and sights for rifles. The most popular – a revolver and a knife. Often a baton, a taser and a silencer for a pistol can come in handy, but it breaks after some time, which ruins the opportunity to complete some mission completely in stealth. A shotgun is practically not needed here, since it is effective in close combat, where you can use a knife or baton, or at short distances, where a pistol, revolver or taser does an excellent job. The sniper rifle works well at long distances, but it only becomes truly necessary on the last mission. Before starting, you can select up to 6 cops and arm them based on the needs of the mission.

Operations have undergone only minor changes compared to the "second police". Let me remind you that here we have turn-based tactics, we perform 2 actions for each cop, and your enemies also perform 2 actions. At the same time, you have some abilities that allow you to diversify the gameplay. The mechanics are reminiscent of the gameplay of a good board game, but instead of friends there is AI. By the way, maybe it would be worth adding a PVP mode to the game? It would be interesting to conduct tactical operations with or against friends.

Many people didn’t like the fact that they had to wait a long time until all visible units on the map took turns doing something, but now you can speed up this process by holding down the V button. Cops have learned to warn of dangers (the enemy is around the corner), shoot back while the enemy is moving, perform some actions obliquely and apprehend the criminal from afar. Some abilities are activated only by perks, so you can fully experience all the innovations only after halfway through the game on easy difficulty.

Speaking of complexity. The game has 3 difficulty levels: hard – for hardcore gamers, medium – as intended by the developers, and easy – for casual gamers. I didn’t try the hard level, I started playing on the medium level, but during Operation “Estate” (by the way, the largest map, the most difficult operation at the beginning of the game is essentially a difficult test), I decided to switch to the easy level and already completed the game on it. I found differences only in the pace of leveling and endless saves, which can be turned on at the average level.

Yes, you can save during the operation. On medium difficulty you can mark your progress three times, but there is also the option to enable endless saves, and on easy they are immediately enabled. And here we come to the main problem of the game – randomness. Shooting, attempts to arrest, dodge bullets, etc. – all this is randomized, and when the scale of possible success of an action is more than half, the result will be 80% negative. For example, you have already built an ideal plan in your head to capture a hangar with a bunch of criminals, you made it so that your charges came in from different directions and caught the villains by surprise, but at the same time one cop tries to arrest an enemy standing closely, and he says “no, I don’t want to,” that is, on the next turn this cop will die at the hands of a nearby bandit, another cop shoots 4 cells from the enemy and misses, the alarm is raised and then you are already minus one cop and one is wounded. Here you either restart the mission or go to the previous save, fortunately you can save at any time. Therefore, if you want to complete the game with minimal losses of your people and your time, you will use endless saves, but you will play like this: do the action, save, do the action unsuccessfully, save, reboot so that the action is successful on some attempt – and so on throughout the game! That is, the randomness of events is worth working on in the studio’s future games. At the end of the operation, we upgrade our cops in three parameters: strength (the ability to carry objects further in one turn), shooting (the ability to shoot more accurately) and speed (the ability to walk further in one turn). We are also given a choice of two skills after each pumping column, which can sometimes help out in a difficult situation.

The game also has a separate Rebel Yell mode for fun, in which we have to collect weapons, ammunition and other items at the location, and then shoot back from the advancing waves of bandits. Entertainment does not lure you from the word at all, if you just go for once. They could actually do PVP operations, thus extending the life of the game.

In fact, we have almost bare mechanics, on top of which they threw a “to be” plot and a couple of new touches. One of the reviewers called Rebel Cops "a rough draft of a good game", which is hard to disagree with. The naked eye can see that this is some kind of sketch with a reserve for the future. And I really want you to Weppy Studio it turned out to be a very good game in the future. As for exactly Rebel Cops, then you shouldn’t be lenient about the status of the game. In essence, this is a bare and unbalanced, but quite working and interesting mechanic. This not a passerby, A strong average guy, so from me 5 out of 10. I can recommend the game for informational purposes only.