The Precinct Review: Nathan Fillion’s Favorite Game

Yeah, I’m a big fan of The Rookie and Castle, as it might be evident from the title. There has been a dearth of quality games that let you live life from the perspective of the police force. Most games tend to be story-based and highly linear in nature, and while that’s not bad, it doesn’t exactly give the player the freedom to explore the world and its intricacies in itself. There have been a bunch of good TV series that dropped since the 90s that focus on the police force, but not so many good video games that do the same. L.A. Noire was probably the last good game about the force that had the unique aspect of deduction and solving cases from it. Highway Police Simulator gets the job done, but it has its own rough edges to deal with (which is going to take some time to polish out). I casually browsed through Steam Next Fest six months back when I first found out about The Precinct. Fast forward to today, I’m playing through the game while I jot down this review for Gameffine.

The Precinct is an open-world neo-noir action game made by Fallen Tree Games and published by Kwalee. The game releases on both PC and consoles on May 13, 2025. Excited folks can now check out the demo to get a good feel of what the game is all about before they decide to make a purchase decision on the release date (or after).

The Precinct takes us to a make-believe city set in the United States called Averno City. Averno City is a city rotten to the core with gang wars, street violence, and other forms of corruption running rampant. Corruption has become so rampant that it has affected the everyday functioning of the Averno City Police Department, too. The story tells about how the previous Chief of Police, Nick Cordell Sr., was associated with a total cleanup of the city, eventually ending up in a grave at the hands of the largest gang in Averno City – the August Gang.

Nick Cordell Jr., looking up to his father as the head of the police, joins as a rookie in the Police Department to learn more about the death of his father. Following a number of high-speed chases, high-profile arrests, and the like, Nick quickly becomes one of the most decorated officers in the department, until he discovers something he was never meant to see. Yeah, that’s about as much as I can say without getting hit on the head by a spoiler warning hammer.

The main story of The Precinct looked good in the demo, but the build-up for the same in the real game felt really shallow and whimsical. Occasionally, during the everyday free-roam and repetitive grinding (yeah, there is quite a bit of repetition in the game – something which brought back flashbacks of my Mafia 3 PTSD), Nick would complete story sections, which gradually build the story.

The problem with this approach is that a lack of regularity with playing the game is going to mean players would forget what the last story segment completed was, and what happened in that. Also, the story becomes really predictable near the end, which is more linear in nature and involves a lot of action. It felt like the developers ran into budget issues near the end of the development, so they simply kicked out the writing staff and hired more developers to work on fixing bugs and performance issues (more on that later). Pacing issues are a consistent theme with the game, as are plot points that add up to nothing.

The Precinct’s main gameplay loop lies in the everyday routine police work that cops do in major US states (particularly in big cities) to keep the peace. Players will fulfill beats on foot, in the car, or in a helicopter as they search for citizens committing misdemeanors or full-on felonies. Depending on the severity of the offense, the player has to take down the citizen, just fining for minor offenses like littering to straight up gunning down folks in case of armed resistance. Using excessive force than needed penalizes the player and resets the game to a checkpoint following the crime (maybe this isn’t a game that should be played by real American cops). Of course, the most villainous yet the most boring task would definitely be handing out parking tickets to improperly parked cars (there’s even an achievement if the player keeps doing it).

Nick is accompanied by old Sergeant Kelly on his mission to bring the city’s criminals to their knees. More often than not, criminals come in numbers (most often in duos), and Nick needs Kelly’s help to take them down (even though his back and hip joints might not be in proper shape anymore – okay, I’ll stop). I did feel that the pathfinding for the partner AI was pretty lackluster in general, as it takes a long time to find the shortest path to the police car. The game does have a safety check for this – while it wants the player to travel with their partner, it is not rigorously enforced. This means that if a criminal is making a run, Nick can just hit the gas, a nd Kelly will automatically spawn in the car after a while (even though the big flashing “Wait for Kelly” text will want the player to wait for Kelly to board the car before hitting the gas). I also felt that criminals are programmed to be much faster than the cops in general, so more often than not, a few upgrades and backup from the station will be required to push them behind bars.

Calling for backup is one of the most important features in The Precinct. This is non-negotiable in the case of helicopter patrols with Martinez, because the helicopter’s main job is only to identify the criminals and keep them under a floodlight while backup arrives to take them down. In a case of ground chases, backup is optional – but more often than not becomes necessary to pin down the enemy in case of a tough chase or a heated firefight. Backup can be called through a feature called Support Tokens. Support Tokens are generated from chasing an enemy closely – when Nick has enough Tokens, he can call for police cars, riot vans, roadblocks, and so much more! Most of the backup stuff needs to be gradually unlocked with progress throughout the game, but the initial options are just as viable for pinning down a fleeing suspect. The police AI, unsurprisingly, has issues in chases and arresting suspects. Imagine sitting on a helicopter while seeing a criminal gun down multiple police officers because they are attempting to take cover with their back exposed to the enemy (that happened in-game multiple times, and Martinez wasn’t pleased – she asked for calling for more fodder from the station!).

There’s a progression system for Nick in the game, which unlocks progressively more powerful stuff for players to put to the test. More support options for Nick to take on the road, more firepower to take on firefights, more cardio options to chase down fleeing suspects, and so many more (guess someone stopped snacking on the donuts). The backup options at a higher level do have an impact, especially in chases where the suspect has a head start on Nick. Arresting and collecting evidence will make Nick progress along the rungs of the criminal ladder, eventually making him face off against some of the hardest gang bosses who have brought Averno City to its knees. The crime ladder system ties into the story progression, even though story events are few and far in-between.

The Precinct is an isometric top-down action game. If players are aware of The Fugitive (supposedly the Predecessor of this game, which tells the story from the other side of the cops-and-robbers tug-of-war), then they know what to expect. The only difference is that The Precinct is set in a densely populated city and not the suburbs, which means a whole different challenge for the technical team working on this. There are significant improvements to traffic density as well as overall environmental design. Most of the models are drawn on point, too. The drawback of handling too much traffic at once also means there are frequent framerate drops, especially during heated chases in high traffic areas like on the highway. This makes steering or aiming difficult. The game was made with a focus on consoles, so both aiming and steering cars work kind of awkwardly on the mouse and keyboard combination. The game also had a myriad of bugs, ranging from bad AI pathfinding to vehicle glitches (I can see why the focus was on fixing these bugs – even after a delay, quite a few bugs were left for the team to deal with).

The game’s sounds, as well as the dopamine-pushing music during chases, are pretty well done. The voice acting is one of the things that The Precinct did absolutely right. Nick and Kelly’s voices are very well done, as are the voices of the other folks at the station. If players are not stuck complaining about how giving out parking tickets for achievements isn’t worth it or how car chases in the game suck because the criminals always have an advantage, they definitely vibe to the chase music of the game, closely followed up by the calls of Dispatch alerting us about backup and the last know location of the target.

Driving down the highway of Averno City while taking in the sights, with the occasional arrests for misdemeanors and felonies, is definitely a policeman’s dream come true. I’m not sure about the dark overtone set at the beginning of the game, but the “policing” part of it is something that players can spend hours on, and not get bored. It definitely sucks that the story didn’t have much progression from whatever was seen in the initial Steam Next Fest demo (which was very good to begin with). If players are big fans of police games and Highway Police Simulator isn’t exactly their thing, this is the game to binge on until L.A. Noire 2 (or a remake of the original L.A. Noire) comes out. 

FINAL SCORE: 70/100