Rebel Cops is a spin-off game from This Is the Police, which exclusively focuses on the series' turned-based tactical operations. Lead a ragtag squad of cops in rebellion against their town's new criminal power to see how long you can hold out when you're constantly short on supplies and a single shot can cost a cop their life.
ou’re not exactly the police, but you're the only ones on the side of justice
Viktor Zuev, a sadistic crime boss new on the scene, has quickly taken the town of Ripton by the throat. The community's leaders and local police have surrendered to his will. A master of intimidation and blackmail, Zuev has seized every major business in town, all of which he now controls as his own private fiefdom. An outlaw band of renegade cops refuses to bow, however. With little hope of success, they fight on — for justice, and the soul of their town.
Steam User 17
This game has an unlimited in-mission save function you can unlock from the menu. I'm upvoting it just for that.
SAVE-SCUM TO VICTORY
Steam User 8
Game from the same creators of "This is the Police" and "This is the Police 2" (later refered to as "TiTP").
I've bought all the games and heard nice reviews about TiTP series and was about to play those games, but for whatever reason started with "Rebel Cops" (later refered to as RC). And without any spoilers I would recommend to start aquitance with all above mentioned games with either TiTP1 or this one. Developers call RC a spin-off to TiTP2 and there are definitely reasons for this!
Why would I recommend starting with this game?
If you start with RC while not playing TiTP series you don't loose much in terms of a story, you get the other way round, that 1 hour comic intro that people refer to as agonizing and boring cartoon takes on the meaning and becomes far more interesting after RC playthrooth. But, well, let's leave that part to TiTP2 review, just take my word for granted, you'd better start with this game. Besides story, one can get a firm grab of a turn-based strategy (TBS) part introduced in TiTP2.
Here we don't get that much of a narration, rather the style, briefings for the missions, some jokes common for game authors and only one story fork alongside with one non-obligatory side mission.
Story and game design
You'll be playing a company of ex-policemen who got tired of local police being a servant of sole mafiozi having the outright power over the town Ripton. Instead of resigning themselves to the inevitable, they resigned from local police and took up arms against a hefty threat. Lore is nice and quite fun, but RC is not about story telling.
The whole game is focused on strategy, on one hand it's simplified version of TiTP2 TBS, on the other this strategy is a refined version with less perks but more dynamic mechanics.
In fact, most of your play time is on battlefield with short briefings, gunning up your arms in a shop and allocating stuff to mission members.
Maximum of 6 cops for a mission and usually around 30-100 turns to accomplish it. Small maps are fun to play while huge maps will make you cry in a bed put more concentration to finish 'em, although quite challenging to play from a strategy perspective.
New missions bring new challenges and while after 3-4 ones you'll make yourself confident with the game mechanics it won't result in a boredom.
Let's leave further description to guides and your personal discovery of this game.
Downsides
From my perspective the major one, especially compared to TiTP - lack of variety of music. Let's be honest, each level it's the same with a few exceptions. After completing several missions ears tend to bleed, so my advice is to prepare your favorite playlist and just switch off the in-game music, unless you like the track, I do not.
Extra-objectives don't make the game more challenging, in contrary theyprovide extra spawn spots, that results into better map coverage and speeds up the progress.
Poor reputation system, it's almost useless, there is only one thing it affects:
Prices in the shop. Oh, and btw, if you pal decided to read the spoiler, here is a hint. Don't sell collecttables in one go, but one-by-one, this way there is no need to share money or have rep penalty.
Several bugs:One of the achievements is supposed to be buggy, while went fine for me, there was a thread in discussions
Game got frozen while hanging up a corpse
Tough guys (ones that need two baton hits) can be shut down with one baton hit after save / reload.Collectibles are hard to find, some even add up fiddling by caring them to a safe zone and all this just to grab some cash and believe me, cash is not a big problem in this game.
After being put in handcuffs suspects... ehm... disappear. Are you ████ing serious? TiTP2 had a better eye on this.
Game is not challenging if you proceed with stealth compared to Leeroy Jenkins approach, literallyjumping to a suspect with a baton and putting handcuffs is the easiest way. Becomes even worse after unlimited saves have been introduced. One would expect an achievement for playing hard? I'll put it at one stroke: play with unlimited ones and lay aside nerd-style for some other game.
Recap
Nice chance to freshen TBS games memory, cool and a bit enhanced graphic style of TiTB if you like it. Dynamic gameplay and a vast deal of fun unless you don't take this game serious. It's not "I wanna be the Boshi" or "Super Meat Boy", just relax and beat the game with ease.
Steam User 10
Takes brains and a lot of guts to go through this game!
Living my childhood cop dream haha.
5/5 Gameplay for its genre.
4/5 Storyline.
4/5 Graphics for its genre.
1000000/5 Feelings because I'm trying so hard not to let anyone die..
Steam User 10
Its pretty fun but it can be a nightmare if you want to find every little thing, Makes my ocd Go insane
Steam User 12
It's like SWAT 2 in Chess mode!
Steam User 5
This game is very flawed, but I think it's still worth a playthrough. Now, I haven't played TITP 1 or 2, but I have played games with similar gameplay like Invisible Inc and the Shadowrun series. This game is decently polished, but the available settings are quite basic. The gameplay is not amazing, but I didn't find it nearly as tedious as some reviews made me expect, more on that in a moment. While the story is not as robust as in some games, I felt it was enough to set up the tone, mood, and themes of the game which seamlessly were continued in the gameplay. The explorations of theme and mood are why this game is worth playing. This game doesn't touch explicitly on any of the contemporary issues that have arisen around policing, but the game absolutely invites the player to think about the core of policing. It sets up a situation where a town is in need of a big change for the positive, i.e. ousting an autocrat, and presents policing as the tool you have available to fix things. The gameplay really does serve to further this feeling of being in an uncertain situation. Even the limited saves system is in service to this theme (even though I recommend turning on infinite saves). The experience as a whole I found realistic enough to really make me think, which is why I believe the game is worth picking up.
PS: If you'll permit me a highly personal/politically controversial opinion, it's in the spoilers text. I am part of a group with whom police have a very mixed record. This game, more than any other argument or discussion, let me try to think of the police in the best possible light, and give them the best chance at being the best they could be--that is, truly protecting, serving, and being part of the community without racial and other issues at stake. I found the institution of police wanting in this best-case scenario, and that's going to stick with me.
Steam User 3
My favourite from the franchise so far.