cw: Personal trauma talk, cop talk, and misogny talk

I'm a complete hypocritical wuss. I think we all are, and I don't mean to shine a spotlight on myself and pretend I'm the only one who experiences this. Far from it. But there's really no other way to open this review, y'know? That's the straight dope, that's what this is gonna be about: the weird hypocrisy I have the most Concentrated Emotions about.

I love cop dramas, and I always have. Maybe I always will. I hate cops, and have since at least when I was 14. Nothing in particular 'happened' at the time. I grew up the daughter of an accountant and a P.I.. I grew up around tons of cops, my father (the detective type I just mentioned) hated them, but they were the people he had to work with so y'know. I grew up in some shitty apartment in a town of mostly immigrants in the American South. They were shitty American South cops the whole time I knew them, but I didn't know how to feel. Until, as I said, I was about 14 and I just kinda realized I fucking hated them. I wouldn't have a cop encounter with a cop until years later, when someone would try to kill me and the police at my university laughed me off when I asked for help. I was under no impression they would help me, honestly, but they were the first person I saw, so I thought I'd ask. But still, hypocritically, I love cop dramas.

Every cop drama is about one of three things, in my experience: being too old, too young, or too much of a woman. I've always been able to relate. Funnily enough, ever since I was a child, people would comment that I acted like an old person, and thought like one too. So, when you pull up a cop drama about some old guy feeling like he's part of the past on my TV, it doesn't matter how young I am: I'll always related. This is the Police 2 tries it's hand at all three of these conflicts. And, most importantly, it's relationship with policework is unplaceable.

Something I fail to see brought up in reviews of TitP2 is that it's a Belarussian game. One of the first countries accepted into the Soviet Union, and one of the ones hit hardest by the collapse enforced upon it. It's easy to read into the uncomfortable mundanity of the player's crimefighting efforts, and how they might reflect American policing. Or, by extension, Belarussian policing. But, to truly see the depth of the interactions, I reccomend viewing each of your attempts at policing under the guise of the 'new police force' which took the former Soviet states overnight. In mainland Russia, specifically, the Russian mafia families would do the policing (with American assistance) while the newer police forces and government heirarchy were formed. The aesthetics of the 90s cop drama, particularly Silence of the Lambs and it's character dynamics in Police 2's case, are transplanted onto this relationship. With the former sheriff being killed, Lily Reed is expected to take their place overnight. Regardless of her abilities, she doesn't feel at all prepared. And that's where you, the player, come in, taking on the role of her mob-connected mentor.

We finally get to talk about the gameplay of the video game now! Sorry for making you wait! If you played the first game, it's that but with some more to it. Once more, but with feeling, etc etc. You send cops out on jobs, sometimes they're false alarms. Other times, something's up, and you enter a choose your own adventure mode to solve the case. The phrasing is terribly mundane and vile. In one case, you happen upon a homeless man attacking people for money out of desperation. The in game options in such a scene will likely read something like this: Threaten to kill the homeless creep, attack the homeless man with your baton, or use a taser on the hobo. It varies in how much hatred it will treat the subject with at seemingly random, and even the ones lacking hatred are grossly impersonal. Just reading the text "hit them with your baton" lacks any sort of visceral detail, but when the following results slide says "the offender is dead" or "the offender has been caught", there's universally some discomfort. In reality, the police report should read as grossly detailed if handled correctly. Here, each time it's just the one sentence.

New additions to your police brutality management sim involve personality traits for your officers. None of these are good. Some of your officers are gonna be straight-up misognists, and refuse to work with women unless you threaten to fire them. Some are heavy drinks, and they'll crash on the way back from the job and end up in the hospital for four or five days. It's a stresser. But, the most notable new addition is tactical missions. Turn-based tactical RPG-style encounters where you can either stealth through and arrest every suspect, or create a bloodbath on your way to the win screen. There's no real tangible benefit to sparing lives here. In fact, it just makes it harder for you to do. But, it helps you as the player feel a bit better about what you're doing. So, y'know, of course I did it every time. I'm an empathy machine sometimes, it's hard to stop me from feeling bad about an in-game murder.

These mostly make the experience more interesting, and tougher overall compared to the first game. I like them, and they help play into this whole 'episodic' tv-like structure the game drills into your head. Shows like Homicide: Life on the Street, where a series of random weekly escapades happens before being wrapped around into a broader point.

Despite what I said earlier, I don't think the points about police corruption and abuse have nothing to do with the story. In fact, I think it plays it what makes my favorite part of this narrative, Lily Reed, so compelling. Every cop in this series is is treated with utter revulsion and disdain. I'd go as far as to say there's something unlikeable in every single man we see in this game. Except for Lily, who is this unfortunate paragon we see broken time and time again. From the start of the narrative, she's not even perfect, but she's at least trying. Unlike every person around her. Whenever she appears on screen, I dreaded whatever was about to happen. Most reviews of this game I've seen lament the game entirely because of these cutscenes.

It's easy to label the responses to Reed's characterization as sexism. It probably is in some cases, but I think it's fair to say most gamers only really 'get' comedy narratives and ironic humor when it's told to them about as explicitly as Starship Troopers would have it. There's a very Coen Brothers-esque tone to the comedy present in most cutscenes, but it's never 'funny' like those films would be. All the archetypes of a Coen Classic appear here, delivering their usual lines, but because most of it is in reaction to Lily or corrupt temp-sheriff Jack Boyd, it's hard to laugh like I have at Fargo so many times before now. To most, this seems to read as a failure to create a truly comedic product. That, or they believe it creates a tonal dissonance between how Lily is treated and how they're supposed to feel in the moment.

The purpose of this tonal choice, at least in it's effect, is to problematize the dark comedy often used in film of the last two or three decades. Even when attempting to magnify the horrible aspects of misogny for comedic effect, there is rarely ever a strong stance against misogny being made, or anything deeper going on. It simply remains a unique depiction of the concept.

I wanted to write some more stuff here, but I'm really runnin' outta juice right now and I know if I don't post this review now I'll never remember to do it, y'know? Probably just some sentence or two where I complain about Tarantino and the casual sexism his movies have inspired within the film world, or some other selfish point on my part of that nature. I don't know, check this game out? I like it a lot.