This Is The Police 2 busts down the door and launches two days early
I shot the sheriff. Oh god, quickload!
Sooner than expected (better than delayed because they forgot to press the button, I guess), This Is The Police 2 - sequel to morally messy police management RPG This Is The Police - is out now. Below, the rather intense launch trailer, suggesting that things might be a little more Fargo than Northern Exposure up in these colder climes. Just because you're out of the big city doesn't mean things are any simpler.
Update: Hard-boiled detective Matthew Castle has been interrogating this one, and has 20-odd minutes of Let's Play footage below, too.
While the Weappy Studio's original This Is The Police was more story and management-focused, the sequel expands its horizons, asking you to be more involved in the gritty minutia of detective-work, plus manually controlling your people as they resolve complex turn-based tactical situations. While ideally you'll want to bring every suspect in alive and healthy, you're not always working with the cream of the crop. Some of your officers just might be as belligerent, drunk and surly as the folks you're trying to arrest, and a single bullet can easily be fatal.
That's not to say that the sequel is leaving story at the door, as you can see from the trailer up there. Yes, that was Jon 'Duke Nukem' St. John as beardy meanie and first game's protagonist Jack Boyd, and Sarah Hamilton (April Ryan from the Longest Journey series) as the frazzled, intimidated young sheriff. It's definitely setting up a morally complicated team dynamic. Good cop/bad cop is played out - let's see how shit cop/dangerous criminal works out. For some reason I'm expecting at least a couple characters to end up fed into a wood-chipper, but maybe I'm being a bit pessimistic.
This Is The Police 2 is out now for £12.59/€13.49/$13.49 on Steam and GOG.