THQ Nordic announced today that corrupt cop simulator This Is the Police 2 will be released for PC on August 2. In a slightly unusual move, it did not put out a new trailer to "celebrate" the news, but if you haven't seen the gameplay video from April, I'm here to help you get caught up.
This Is the Police is a management-adventure about a corruptible cop in a dirty world that showed promise but didn't quite live up to it. For This Is the Police 2, developer Weappy kept the lead character but moved the action to a very different sort of locale and added an XCOM-style layer of turn-based tactical combat.
It's a big departure from the original, and not a change I found particularly attractive at first: I'd rather have seen the developers focus on strengthening the core narrative and ensuring that choices and actions have real consequences—a shortcoming we called out in our review of the original. But game director Ilya Yanovich told us in April that the tactical missions will be closely intertwined with, and impacted by, your handling of the department, which makes it sound potentially interesting.
"Your setup affects your playing style. If you're in the luxurious position to have good cops and good equipment, you'll find tactical missions less challenging," he said. "If all you have are drunken bums the puzzles become more challenging."
This Is the Police 2 is listed on Steam (but not yet available for pre-purchase) and there's also a website up at weappy-studio.com.
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