The precinct: a cop game where you do the right thing

Recruit Nick Cordell Jr died while writing out parking tickets next to an expired meter. He never knew why he died, and barely had time to draw his weapon before bullets from a machine gun tore through him. As he clung to life, a red sedan - traveling well in excess of the speed limit - slammed into and carried him hundreds of yards down the street, as the driver and passenger continued to fire automatic weapons from the window.

It was his second week on the job. The screen fades to red, then white.

Welcome to Averno - circa 1992.

There are many ways to die in The Precinct, released in May 2025 by Amazing Storytelling. Most of them involve being either shot or run down by speeding vehicles, but it's the details that matter. In addition to senseless acts of street violence, there are criminals staring at the possibility of a life sentence who are desperate not to searched; rooftop gang fights; and what may be gas canisters - left carelessly by the side of the road - that explode when you crash into them

You can't drown, though. Fall into the water and you'll have to swim to shore.

Averno is a city of violence and vice, and almost everyone is guilty of something.

As the son of the former police chief (killed in the line of duty, naturally), you're a rookie cop on the beat: taking names, handing out fines, and using your stop-and-search powers to root out the guilty and bring them to justice.

Things never go as planned though, and a peaceful afternoon looking for spraycan-touting vandals can see you leaping into your patrol car and speeding through the city in order to stop a burglary.

Averno doesn't exist in the real world - although a maps provider tells us there's a microbrewery of that name a few streets south of the US border in Mexicali (dogs allowed).

Drive like it's Liberty City

Legend has it that the Grand Theft Auto series started life with the player on the other side of the thin blue line - controlling a cop car pursuing villains around the city - and the precinct is a look into how the series could have evolved.

There's the reckless disregard for damage, destructible scenery including fences, gates, and lampposts - and that driving on pavements, driving the wrong way, and slamming into vehicles will earn you no penalties at all. It's fun, and learning the shortcuts as you scream through Averno with flashing lights and wailing siren is a joyful experience.

We've parked back at the precinct with our car on fire more than once, and have randomly exploded a few times, too.

Despite being a 3D game - unlike the early GTA entries, which had a semi-fixed overhead viewpoint - The Precinct doesn't allow the player to adjust the vertical viewing angle. You can rotate 360 degrees on the X-Y axes, but you'll always be looking down from around 45 degrees overhead. If you're coming from games where the camera has full freedom of movement, this can be a little irritating for a while as you try to adjust the view to a preferred position.

Paperwork: Life on the street

When you're not speeding around the city, causing pedestrians to dive out of the way, the life of a beat cop is a humdrum affair. You can choose one of several types of patrol, including the aforementioned parking violations: you can do speed checks on passing traffic, general foot patrol, fly a helicopter, or take part in one of the initiatives against graffiti or gang violence.

As in the real world, there are rules and procedures involved in policework. While you don't need an excuse to stop people, there are specific things you need to do, and an order in which they need to happen. You get points for doing things by the book, and negative points for doing the wrong things, missing checks, or doing them in the wrong order. Search the suspect before checking their ID? That's a negative 50 points right there.

Kill someone when you're not authorised to use deadly force, and you'll have to restart the patrol.

Points mean promotion, and promotion means prizes in the form of weaponry, improved policing abilities, better (actually worse) vehicles, and other skill tree perks.

Crimes are divided into on-foot crimes, vehicle crimes, and possession crimes. And stopping someone for one misdemeanor can quickly spiral as more wrongdoing is uncovered. You might pull a car over for speeding - a ticketing offence - for example, but on searching, you find that the driver is wearing counterfeit sunglasses and has a pistol in his back pocket. These are both possession offenses. You add the charges and go to arrest the suspect; he runs. That's "evading arrest" - another charge you have to add. He shoots, that's "assault." Adding offences gets tired after a while, and you'll find yourself hitting the "Delegate paperwork" button again and again.

Likewise, you don't have to book every suspect yourself, and can instead call an escort car to return your prisoner to the station and book them on your behalf.

Not just a cop simulator

While we suppose that technically, you can play through The Precinct as an ordinary police officer, going in every day, pounding the beat, getting promotions, and drinking in the obligatory cop bar after hours, there's more to the game than that.

There's a gang arc, too, which sees the player character collecting enough evidence to arrest and prosecute the leadership structure of two comically stereotypical gangs. And then, there's the mystery of what really happened to your dear old dad.

If you're bored with the depressing day-to-day of a cop's life, there are unique stunts, jumps, races (marked by a pink flare), and side quests such as finding missing museum artefacts. If your own quest is for completeness, you'll want to find all the pieces.

The ending of the game isn't really a surprise, and if you're paying attention, you'll have seen it coming a mile off.

We'd have liked the option of corruption, beside The Precinct's single ethical dilemma, but no, you're an upstanding member of society.

How does The Precinct run on Linux?

The Precinct is a Windows-only game, and is available on Steam for £24.99, or you can save a few pence by purchasing through the Epic Games store for the oddly specific £23.79 price point. It's not a long game by any means, and you could probably finish it in a day if you had a big enough supply of coffee and doughnuts.

We found it ran perfectly on our 3060M gaming laptop, using Proton Glorious Eggroll with settings maxed out.

Gaming on Linux is constantly improving, and even in the absence of dedicated Linux ports, it's rare that we find a PC game that won't run on our system. Some of our recent(ish) favourites include the enormous, fan-made Fallout London expansion, and Gameloft's Oregon Trail remake.

Of course, if you're looking for some retro-gaming action, you can do worse than Colossal Cave Adventure - the world's first text adventure game.