What we’ve been playing – cops, kicks, cups and climbs

21st June

Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing. This week, we’ve got a bumper crop! Alex tries out being a police officer, Tom O tries out being a footballer, Dom excels as a monk, and Connor lets it die.

What have you been playing?

Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.

The Precinct, PC

My internet went down the other day. When this happens, it’s always pretty stunning to realise how reliant we are on a constant internet connection; most of the stuff I’d been playing requires some sort of internet validation. Even though you can play Magic the Gathering: Arena against bots, you can’t do it without a connection. While you can boot Hitman, it feels a bit pointless to play it without the persistent progression online hooks provide – something that feels likely to make the Switch 2 version more irrelevant than it should be. So, with Virgin Media bequeathing me 24-hours of downtime, I had to find something truly offline.

I already had The Precinct installed, after a friend of mine mentioned it. A game recommendation in a ‘boys chat’ of guys I went to school with is pretty rare, so I figured this was worth a look… and then promptly forgot about it. But here it was, installed, ready, with no connection required. Fate.

The Precinct is an interesting thing. Brazenly inspired by the 2D Grand Theft Auto games, it’s a top-down(ish) perspective title set in an open world city – but this time, you’re on the other side of the law. I never quite know how to feel about stuff like this – there’s always the risk of sliding into weirdly reverent copaganda, but I have a soft spot for the Police Quest adventure games, and there’s shades of that here.

The Police Quest echoes come in the form of how procedural the gameplay feels. There’s a heavy focus, literally, on police procedure. You can patrol the open-world city streets and issue parking tickets for being incorrectly parked or having expired tickets, or issue verbal warnings to graffiti artists. There’s a bit of discretion here – do you arrest, fine, or simply warn someone who was speeding? You’re meant to follow the book, and only use force as necessary. There’s also shootouts and car chases, of course, but so far the charm comes from the focus on the minutiae of the process, hammering a separate button to ensure someone is read their rights as you cuff them.

I’ve only played a few hours – I’m not that far removed from the game’s late, title card drop, in fact. But what I’ve played so far is a promising little start. I’ve no idea if it’s going to become grindingly repetitive, as is always the danger in games structured like this,but I intend to return. That’s a pretty good start for a game picked out on a no-internet whim.

-Alex

Rematch, PS5

“The idiots are winning.” Fans of underappreciated British TV comedy will recognise that one, but importantly it sums up a lot of my time with the recently released 3/4/5-a-side footy game, Rematch. It’s a team-based online game, and let me tell you, the people playing are testing me. Usually a calm, level-headed man, a few sessions this week have taken me close to breaking point.

In the spirit of playground football, goalkeepers are fluid. If one player leaves the zone around the goal they become a standard outfield player while another can run over and magically have gloves on and be ready to dive about. This is great, in theory, but it encourages people to go on little walks up the pitch. Again, fine, as it pulls opposing players towards them, leaving gaps for attackers to exploit. That is, if the goalie doesn’t fluff it almost every time.

It’s early days in Rematch, a game that has only been on release properly for a day at the time of writing this, so I’m hoping people learn from failure. A goalie who has discipline is far better than one who thinks they’re Mbappé, gets dispossessed by the first attacker and then leaves the goal wide open. Fair play for having the belief in yourself to do such a brazen act of team sabotage, over and over, I guess – I feel sheepish if I accidentally misplace a pass. If there is a gaming god out there, please tell these fools to understand the very basics. The fact that my team mates, absolute liabilities to be kind, generally score more points in each game than I do is bananas.

-Tom O

Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster, Switch 2

“I just summoned your Tiz,” reads a text from a friend I got at some point in the last week. “And he absolutely one-shotted the boss I was fighting!” Mmm. Yes. Good. My minions are doing their work. This was always my favourite part of the original Bravely Default on the 3DS, making use of the social elements to feel like you’re almost shortcutting through the grind of the game.

But you’re not, you see: it’s designed this way. The devs at Square Enix were incredibly smart in the way they balanced the Final Fantasy-like RPG, allowing for little areas where super-powered friend summons could rush in to help you out and trivialise otherwise difficult boss fights. After a few hours of play time, you can customise your Limit Break-like attacks with unique names, effects, and animations.

My Tiz, for example, is a beefed-up monk that can deal 4x unarmed damage to human enemies – which a lot of early bosses are – and apply debuffs whilst he’s at it. My friend used this to great effect. The move I crafted, I’m afraid to reveal, is called “Get Fisted”. Monks gonna monk. You still need to pay attention to the gimmicks and the way things work (many boss fights have multiple enemies, and typically a Friend Summon will only take down one), so this isn’t some sort of game-breaking panacea.

Another little boon is that by connecting with mates, you can start rebuilding an in-game town. Gather 10 in-game NPCs or people from your friends list, pop them all into the item shop, and have them work for 45 real-world minutes, and you’ll be able to purchase new wares from travelling merchants. Commit enough resources to, say, the weapons shop, and you can start getting late-game items as early as 10 hours in. It’s a wonderful way of utilising player downtime, and a delightful reworking of a tool that used to rely on the oft-mourned StreetPass feature on the 3DS.

Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster is a charming little game. And I should hope so, since it’s pretty much the biggest draw the Switch 2 had for me at launch.

-Dom

Let it Die, PC

Every now and again I’ll remember some bit of games industry news from a year or so ago, and it’ll send me down a rabbit hole. Let it Die has been this rabbit hole for me recently.

I really like Let it Die! It’s this super bizarre, charming action game with a rad multiplayer component which allows other players to invade your base for spoils. Sounds simple enough, but it’s a Grasshopper Manufacture game, so there’s a lady obsessed with mushrooms, you pull different bodies from an industrial chain of body bags, and Death is your companion throughout. Not, like, the concept. The literal reaper – and he does kickflips.

The game remains a lot of fun. It’s a free-to-play title so there are some pretty gnarly microtransactions present but I’ve yet to feel the desire to buy any. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. It’s got jagged edges and can feel a tad repetitive from time to time, but it’s got soul to it which I value more, the older I get.

There was a multiplayer PvP spinoff called Deathverse: Let it Die which had an incredibly brief life. It wasn’t great, but again, it had that golden soul to it that I loved. The game was taken offline some time ago, and as far as we know, it’s still in the process of being remade into a totally new thing. I’m aware that you can’t keep a game running with only 100 players online, but darn it, I do find myself missing Deathverse every so often.

Anyway, tangent over. Let it Die is a bombastic little game that has had years of free updates, so if you’ve got little else to do this weekend, why not give it a try!

-Connor