Bust crime in style in these awesome police games!
Everybody loves playing criminals. The massive popularity of the GTA series is proof of that. What most people don’t realize is that busting bad guys and giving crime what it deserves can be just as awesome – as long as you’ve got the right game and right developer.
This article lists down the 10 Best Police Games for 2015, and only includes titles released in the last five years. Sorry, fans of SWAT 4 and the original Max Payne – as great as those police games are, they’re already showing their age.
And so, without further ado, let’s start with police game #10…
10. Battlefield Hardline
He'll smash your face in, THEN read you your rights!
The Battlefield series is known for its military games. With Battlefield Hardline, however, it finally pays tribute to the other men and women who risk their lives daily to fight injustice.
The war on crime is the focus of this first-person shooter. The single player campaign revolves around Officer Nick Mendoza and his attempts to destroy a drug ring that is destroying lives in the city of Miami. You’ll get a taste of everything you’d expect from a police drama, such as violent drug busts, massive shootouts, suspenseful stealth action, and being framed for a crime you didn’t commit.
Where the game truly shines, however, is multiplayer, which lets you play either of two factions: the police Special Response Units, or the criminals. Players get lots of military-grade vehicles and weapons to play with, as well as police equipment including handcuffs and tasers. Game modes include Heist, which tasks police with stopping criminals from breaking into a vault and stealing money; Rescue, in which S.W.A.T. officers must rescue hostages from criminals; Crosshair, which gives the police a VIP to protect from criminals trying to kill him; and more.
Few police games give players such a complete crime-busting experience!
Let fly the bullets!
You can't outrun the law forever, scum!
9. 9mm
Tiny but deadly
Sometimes, when you’ve got a city run by cruel gangs and crooked cops, the only good cop is a bad cop.
This is the case in the mobile game, 9mm. Here, you play as John “Loose” Kannon, who leads a specialized team of super tough cops who aren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty to clean up crime-ridden streets. The perp you just captured not forthcoming with information? Introduce his nose to your knuckles. Some lowlife scum pushing drugs? Shoot him in kneecaps and ask questions later. A gang not up for negotiation? Great, now you’ve got a valid excuse to riddle everyone with bullets.
Combat is a whirlwind of gunfire, fists, and blood. You’ll break down doors, crash through a glass ceiling, and snipe evildoers from afar. 9mm also borrows from Max Payne with a slow-motion move that lets you off bad guys in style.
So do society a favor: break some bones and use criminals as target practice, bad cop-style in 9mm!
Aim for the jugular
Bringing the crime rate down
8. Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments
Reading the poor stiff for clues
Admit it; at one point in your life, you’ve fantasized about being the world’s greatest detective (no, not Batman). Well, in Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments, you can solve crimes as the master detective, Sherlock Holmes, himself.
The game comprises six murder, theft, and disappearance cases. To solve them, you’ll have to investigate crime scenes, speak with witnesses and suspects, and attend victim autopsies. And because you’re Sherlock, your intelligence and observation skills are like superpowers that give you a special “detective vision.” This highlights objects of interest in the environment.
After gathering clues, you’ll have to interpret them on a “deduction board.” Depending on how you link information together, you’ll end up with a variety of deductions. This means every case can have more than one conclusion, which in turn means some cases can end in failure. What, did you think solving crimes was going to be easy?
One of the most mentally challenging police games out there!
Crime, like love, crosses the boundaries of culture
London crime story
7. Driver: San Francisco
Partners
There are few thrills in life more high-octane than a police chase. But a police chase involving superpowers? Now that’s an entirely different level of awesome.
Driver: San Franciso puts you behind the wheel as a detective named Tanner. After a car crash puts him in a coma, Tanner realizes he can teleport, or “shift,” into people. And what better way to celebrate his new gift than to use it to teleport between cars?
Because you’re basically a super-powered mutant, your momentum is never interrupted by pesky activities such as removing your seatbelt, opening the car door, and running across the tarmac to commandeer another vehicle. Makes chasing after bad guys a whole lot more convenient!
Looks like a good time to shift!
Leave them in the dust
6. LEGO City Undercover
Bringing justice to LEGO city
Everybody from your granddad to your 8-year-old niece loves LEGO – so what better way to punish crime than to do it, LEGO-style?
Borrowing generously from the GTA series, LEGO City Undercover is an action-adventure game set in a freely explorable open world. Except this time, you’re one of the good guys – an undercover cop named Chase McCain, who’s on the hunt for perps.
As a LEGO character, donning a disguise is as simple as switching your bodyparts for others. Costumes come with special abilities; for example, as a robber, you can break locks. You can even be a cheerleader, a clown, a ninja, or a mummy!
Despite your blocky figure, you’ve blessed with insane athletic skills that allow you to perform wall jumps, break bones like a professional wrestler, and kick evildoers in the face like a black belt in karate. You’ve also got a variety of vehicles to drive. And because the world is made of bricks, you can tear objects apart to build new ones, such as ships and cars.
Colorful, funny, and chockfull of criminals to bust, LEGO City Undercover is an experience for all ages, making it one of the best police games you can play.
Leave no brick unturned
A world of bricks
5. Need for Speed: Rivals
The sexiest police cars in existence!
Need for Speed Rivals continues the series’ adrenaline-pumping action involving breakneck police pursuits, hundreds of different cars and events, a vast open world, and stunning visuals and sound.
The game boasts two storylines – one of which lets you play as a Cop. In this mode, you’re a police officer tasked with infiltrating underground street racing circuits by posing as a street racer named F-8. Alternatively, you could assume the role of the racer Zephyr, whose street shenanigans have put him on the police’s chopping block. Both campaigns eventually lock F-8 and Zephyr in a high-speed battle for the mastery of the wheel and the road.
Depending on whom you choose to play as, you can use several weapons against your opponents. As a Cop, you can summon a helicopter to heckle criminals, or order your pals to install a roadblock. And then there’s the spike strip, which can bust tires. Pursuit tech include a shockwave, which is a sonic blast that pushes away vehicles; an electrostatic field, which offers your car protection against EMP and stun mines; and the EMP, which temporarily kills the electrical systems of your opponents’ cars. Beware though, as non-police racers also have tricks of their own!
You’ll likely be playing this one for months, making it one of the best police games.
It's time we upgraded crime-fighting with a litte tech!
Fleeing the scene of the crime? The cops are here to give chase!
4. Detective Grimoire
Decisions, decisions...
Solving crime doesn’t have to a be a dull, grim affair, as demonstrated by the witty puzzle adventure game, Detective Grimoire.
In this point-and-click game, there’s a murder to solve, and to do that, you’ll have to explore a swamp for clues, interrogate a colorful collection of characters, and analyze evidence. Puzzles are diverse and entertaining, from figuring out a safe’s lock combination to rearranging objects on the forest floor to find a footprint. Advancing deductions and conversations involve combining phrases and items in particular order, giving room for plenty of flexibility.
Aside from the puzzles, Detective Grimoire’s charming art style, fluid animation, top-notch voice acting, and memorable score also give it its mysterious yet playful atmosphere – placing it at spot # 3 on our list of best police games.
A mysterious murder in a mysterious swamp
Colorful characters await
3. Sleeping Dogs
Slice and dice
The open-world game, Sleeping Dogs, puts you in the shoes of an undercover cop in East Asia.
As Wei Shen, you’re a police officer posing as a thug in order to infiltrate and bring down Sun On Yee, a Hong Kong Triad gang. While you can still pack heat and whack hoods with a well-placed bullet to the temple, Sleeping Dogs’ melee combat is the highlight of the action. Shen is a martial arts expert, able to splinter backbones with a well-timed grapple and dislocate jaws with a flurry of punches. The environment can be interacted with, too, such as when you introduce someone’s face to a brick wall, shove them in a dumpster, or cook them in an industrial furnace.
Like an RPG, there are experience points to be gained and spent, which award you with different skills, from fancy kung fu kicks to disarming gun-toting enemies with ease. To be awarded cop skills, you’ll have to behave like one – which means no to running over innocent pedestrians and unnecessary destruction of property, among other things.
Thanks to fluid, brutal combat, a gorgeous, colorful setting, and a tale rife with violence and drama, Sleeping Dogs is one of the best police games around.
Hot on the heels
Burning asphalt
2. Heavy Rain
A heavy responsibility
A serial killer is on the loose, murdering his victims by drowning them during periods of extended rainfall.
And now it seems the Origami Killer has a new victim. Ethan Mars, still mourning over the death of one of his children, is now being taunted by the killer, who has kidnapped his younger son, Shaun. Hot on the pursuit of the killer is ex-cop and private investigator Scott Shelby. Also assisting the police force in the Origami case is FBI profiler Norman Jayden, who uses high tech augmented reality glasses to analyze crime scenes. Then there’s Madison Paige, a photojournalist who becomes embroiled in the investigations.
In Heavy Rain, an interactive action-adventure game, you control all four characters as they attempt to solve the mystery of the Origami Killer. Your choices can move their stories forward in various, unforeseen ways. You could even end up killing some of them. Will you let Ethan go through the killer’s brutal trials, knowing his life will be on the line? How will Norman deal with the crooks who are out for his blood? Will Madison escape the men who just invaded her home? What will Shelby do with the evidence he finds? The way this tale ends depends on you, and it can end either happily, or disastrously.
An excellent PlayStation 3 exclusive, and one of the best police games to play.
Raining outside? Stay indoors and look sexy!
It's going to be another busy night
1. L.A. Noire
Crime-fighting has never been this classy!
Rockstar Games, renowned for gaming’s greatest crime simulation franchise, GTA, gives us the best police game in the form of L.A. Noire.
Like GTA, L.A. Noire is a third-person action-adventure sandbox game. But you’ll be getting a lot more in addition to its breakneck car chases, shootouts, and fistfights. At one point, you’ll be descending into the dark, gore-adorned lair of a serial killer; in another sequence, you’ll be scouring shadowed alleyways for clues to a murder. This is the game’s strength – its ability to seamlessly intertwine action with quieter, more pensive moments.
The investigations are the highlight of L.A. Noire. Set in 1947, you are Cole Phelps. As an officer of the law and later a detective, you examine crime scenes – from dead bodies to objects of interest in the vicinity – in order to solve mysteries. You’ll also be interviewing witnesses and suspects. Thanks to the amazing technology used to realistically model and animate characters’ faces, you can tell what emotions they’re feeling, and – depending on how good you are at reading facial expressions – whether or not they’re hiding something. These visual clues go a long way in helping you solve a crime. How well you piece together bits of information is integral to solving cases – be too complacent or uncritical, and you can fail.
In addition to its innovative gameplay and excellent use of technology, its top-notch voice-acting, film noir atmosphere, and authentic vintage aesthetic make L.A. Noire our favorite police game you can play in 2015.
Buckets of blood
A gruesome scene? Just another day in the life of a cop
And thus we come to the end of another article! How about you, fellow gamers? What are the best police games you’ve played? Share your opinions with us in the comments section below!
