Rebel Cops

It's a good blend between wanting to spend save points and thinking you're going to be fine, until sh*t hits the fan and suddenly you reload to 20 minutes ago. Infuriating! And very enjoyable!

It's a lot of fun! ...BUT.

That's this game in a nutshell. It's one of those games that makes me wish Steam had a more nuanced rating system than it does. The core gameplay is really gripping and there were some moments where I was so immersed that I was about ready to call this one of my new favorite turn-based strategy games. That said, it has some serious issues that hold it back from true greatness.

Rebel Cops is a sequel/spin-off to Weappy's This Is The Police franchise, specifically the second game. It takes the big new addition introduced in that game and refines it to be the entirety of the experience: grid-based turn-based strategy, but with added stealth and arresting mechanics to help spice it up.

This is a strictly gameplay-centered experience, as there's essentially no story to speak of. The set-up is that you control a small handful of cops who decide to rebel against the reigning criminal empire run by Victor Zuev. And that's it. The game doesn't really grow or develop past this initial premise, and the only cutscene you get is at the very end of the game. Text is hardly if ever spoken, and there's no on central protagonist to tie the whole thing together. The story exists to get you from mission to mission and nothing else and the ending is simply unsatisfying. If the appeal of the This Is The Police games for you was the story, then you're out of luck with this game.

With gameplay taking center-stage, as much fun as the moment-to-moment is, two major things keep this game from being truly stellar: massive fucking maps and poorly conveyed mechanics and set-pieces.

Depending on the mission, you will be tasked with exploring gigantic maps that can and likely will last you a few DOZEN turns, and it can start to drag out the experience considerably. The game's second proper mission is huge, with several buildings and landmarks (not to mention a shit ton of guards) to consider. A later mission at a supermarket took me at least 60 turns to complete, and no, I am not exaggerating.

But that would be more tolerable if it wasn't for the game throwing you a few too many curveballs that serve to make playing the game more frustrating than fun. Without even telling you, sometimes the game will just straight up include certain ideas that only serve to catch you off-guard. For example, one mission has one of your officers hold a security guard at gunpoint to ensure he does not radio his buddies and make sure you are there sneaking around. What the game DOESN'T tell you is that this only lasts so many turns before the guy rats you out, leading to all the enemies becoming aware of you and a firefight breaking out.

So if you had an idea for a stealth run that mission, good fucking luck. Needless to say, I was not a fan of this trick the game pulled on me, especially since it heavily encourages a more deliberate, methodical, sneakier way of play. Killing guards is one thing, but you rewarded more XP to your units for having them make arrests instead, which not only requires you to sneak up to them and get them to freeze, but arresting them also erases them from the board, whereas killing them leaves their dead bodies to be discovered by other patrolling enemies. Seems contradictory to the game's general design philosophy.

Ultimately, as fun as the core mechanics are, the huge maps and cheap surprises will more-than-likely hamper the experience. If you know these things going in and still wanna give it a shot, then by all means. I can't claim to have hated this game.

It's a nice short game but tough, but having played both This is the Police and This is the Police II it was fun to try a different playstyle. They don't joke around when they say you have limited resources. Inventory management was also fun and frustrating. There's a lot of things that you can't go back on which they don't really tell you, so I guess that is my only complaint.

I was gifted this game and left it on the unplayed shelf for when I was burnt out on all the others that I play. It has been three days since I downloaded it and I am at 27.7 hours on record. I am at a loss for words on how well together the game is.
I would love to see a sizable UI slider and extreme ultrawide support.

If you are a fan of this gameplay style, the art style, and perhaps the story threads from the previous games from this developer, this is worth checking out. I wish this had more of the previous titles management of the police station gameplay elements as those really made it interesting and you had to make sure things were balanced out a lot. I know this is a different story with ties to the previous titles, but doing the constant repeat game elements gets a little stale after a while. i would also recommend not putting such a tough and major map at the start of the game for players to do deal with, seems a bit complex for just starting off the game. Otherwise, I do like there are some little ties to the previous game installments, and hope they write some other stories later on that are original and similar to "This is the Police" and "This is the Police II".

Fun XCOM-like strategy game while simultaneously incredibly frustrating.
Yet another game that makes me wish Steam had a 'mixed' rating.

If you like strategy games like Xcom this is just the game for you, all the ways you can deal with one mission makes you really think of the ways you can tackle one problem due to the tools you have, the skills you have and how long you are willing to take to do it.
Overall it is a great game, the only thing I didn't like was that the farm mission which is massive is dropped onto you so early when your team is really ready to deal with it.