Contraband Police is a unique simulator that allows you to become a real border guard. Our main tasks are to check the documents of visitors, look for contraband in cars by checking them with an ultraviolet flashlight, engage in skirmishes with criminals, detain and arrest smugglers, solve criminal mysteries, help comrades and resist the Blood Fist rebels. You can update your post to make it more secure and your colleagues. This is our Contraband Police for PC review.
Contraband Police is a 3D simulation game in which we watch the events through the eyes of the protagonist, which takes place in 1981 in the People’s Republic of Akaristan, a fictional country modeled after a typical USSR. We play as a young policeman delegated to control border crossings without experience. Your task is to protect the peace of your native country, keeping smugglers, scammers, and other criminals out of its territory.
Announced back in 2018, Contraband Police has become one of the most anticipated games in the PlayWay S.A catalog. Considering their large and wide deck of games, that speaks volumes. For people who played Papers Please back in the day, the memories will immediately come flooding back with this game.
This game builds on the foundation laid in Papers, Please, but adds to it by allowing you to hire new employees for the border post, upgrade them, upgrade your apartment, buy new cars, and finally decide whether we are in the form of a state or for the people.
What is this game about
The first thing you should pay attention to is, of course, the creators, namely Crazy Rocks, a small studio from Poland, founded in 2015. So far they have released 2 games on Steam: Street Warriors Online and Ski sniper.
In the game, our duties include, initially, the control of the entry of cars and the verification of passports and entry documents. Having developed a little, you should inspect the car from the outside and the inside. Almost every second entrant wants to deceive the border guard and carry out smuggling. Contraband can be found anywhere, so be careful. Those who are caught red-handed, we will arrest them and then send them to a labor camp.
While the core gameplay is fun and extremely addictive, the game doesn’t feel easy – just keeping an eye on the core data over time won’t be enough. With each new chapter, new conditions are added to check. Then Akartistan will begin to prohibit entry with cargo from one country or another, and another time there will be a ban on the passage of heavily damaged vehicles.
What the game pleasantly surprised me with was the fact that it made me drive my own car and leave the border post, which opened up a completely different gameplay and opened up a game atypical for games of this genre.
And yes, it happens that the villain does not want to surrender to justice voluntarily, jumps behind the wheel, and goes on the run. Then you have to get into a company car, turn on the siren and follow it so that after the chase you still catch the smuggler and return him to the post. And since this is a smuggler, after his arrest, you can search his car and either hand over all the contraband found to the police or find someone on the side.
And it is also restless in the surrounding forests – rebels from the Red Fist are prowling there, dreaming of overthrowing the legitimate government. They periodically raid the border outpost, so there are frequent cases when you need to get up in the middle of the night, pick up a machine gun and fight for your place of work and fatherland. And if we talk about handing over contraband to the police or someone else, then on the way, they can attack us and take everything away.
Story
It’s amazing how important the story is. It’s not just an additional branch – it’s a seamless gameplay that evolves and evolves along with our decisions, leading to different endings.
Even things beyond our control, such as the international situation, natural disasters, or the health of citizens, complicate things. For example, one day we will know; about the pandemic outbreak. Therefore, it is necessary to check the strains’ certificates, considering their validity. In turn, during the Olympic Games, more comments need to be returned to the cars’ technical condition and weight.
There are even those whom we will not let through the border. They may send us threatening letters in the future and show what our decision has led to. In addition to the main “gameplay”, here we also have thematic missions in which we have to, for example, track down a suspicious person or even solve the mystery of the murder and decide the fate of the criminal.
In Akartistan, there is a shortage of personnel. Otherwise, how can one explain the fact that our border guard periodically moonlights either as a policeman or as an investigator? And this activity in the game is not “for show”: the investigations are implemented quite interestingly. The protagonist interrogates witnesses, looks for evidence, and excludes those who, in his opinion, are innocent to point to the suspect eventually.
There are not so many such unique missions in the game. However, attacks, if you add to them the side tasks mentioned and periodically issued by the authorities (for the most part they come down to a trip to a specified point on the map and participation in a shootout), they become enough to dilute routine into which the process of checking documents and machines turns. In addition, such missions are generously paid, which allows you to get a substantial increase in your meager salary.
In Contraband Police, the main character is fully responsible for the post entrusted to him. Therefore, each day ends with the calculation of income and expenses. If you are not too lazy, carefully check the cars and their drivers and correctly draw up an inspection report, then you can count on a monetary incentive. If you show negligence and let the smuggler through, a large fine cannot be avoided. If you don’t have the money to pay your employees or keep your job by the end of the day, you’re fired.
The money is spent on the maintenance of administrative buildings, employee benefits, as well as the purchase of cars, and the purchase of weapons and tools for checking cars. The state will not maintain a loss-making border outpost at its own expense, so it is important to fulfill the duty to the Motherland and make a profit from the enterprise. And for the sake of this, you can sometimes even turn a blind eye to violations and, for example, let a smuggler into the country for a small bribe.
Chases, base defense, stealth missions… Is this still a simulator?
However, it should be noted that the game was created at a minimal cost. Everything suffers from this, from environmental elements, character models, and animations, to gameplay – especially very primitive driving and combat models. However, I quickly got used to them, and after a while, I stopped noticing problems in the models, but what caught my eye was the very empty world of the game.
On the other hand, I did not encounter any technical problems – for example, with, which could greatly spoil the game. Yes, if you got out of a car that was still moving, you flew 30 meters in an unknown direction, but this will be fixed soon. And while there are not so many different cars and people in the game, only 5-7 types of cars, and after a while, you already remember how to quickly check everything for smuggling. Contraband Police is not a perfect game, but you won’t regret spending your time and money on it.
I had a lot of fun with Contraband Police, and I hope that in the future, we will see some additions or a patch that will add and fix current problems. I can definitely still recommend this game, but with caution in its current state. The best way to describe Contraband Police is a pinch of Paper’s Please mixed with a lot of action and a bit of sim/management. The story and side missions are pretty good and well-developed at the moment. As soon as you start to feel that the monotony of the daily routine of checking documents, catching smugglers, surrendering prisoners, and smuggling begins to grow.
Speaking about the game, it is worth noting the poor graphics, very boring fragments and unprincipled chases. Sometimes some bugs are not always correctly encountered with objects. And after the final mission, the campaign ends without trying on, for example, continuing to connect in endless mode with a random generation of tasks.
Our review was complete thanks to a code provided by PR.
