Police Week: Punishing Prelude

The preparations for Police Week started yesterday somewhat inauspiciously. Within five minutes of commencing my first shift as a Flashing Lights cop, my over-confident avatar was flat on his back on a warehouse floor leaking invisible blood from multiple invisible gunshot wounds.

When I dabbed ‘Y’, jumped into my flash 4WD jam jar, and sped in the direction of a mini-map beacon, in response to a report of ‘suspicious activity’ at 17-54, I was anticipating something low key – a gentle introduction to FL policing. Influenced by memories of prosaic/pacifist Police Simulator: Patrol Officers, and forgetting that Nils Jakrins’ game randomly generates shouts, I strolled towards my first suspect expecting a friendly but firm conversation with a petty pilferer, graffiti artist, drug user, or rough sleeper.

Instead, without warning, the beskirted ne’er-do-well at the destination drew a pistol and began taking potshots. Before I could unholster and aim my own sidearm, I was on the deck awaiting the arrival of incorporeal lifesaving medics (FL lets you cheat death). Trigger-happy Miss Creant recommenced her alarmingly accurate fusillade the moment I got up, so I fled. Feeling pretty uncharitable by this point, I resolved to Take Her Down, and edged back towards the entrance with pistol levelled and finger pointlessly (FL doesn’t do leaning) poised over the Q key.

Cue another unplanned nap on the concrete floor, another brief wait for medical miracle-workers. Not realising I had access to a shotgun and an assault rifle (both stored in the back of the car) I swallowed my pride after resurrection #2, and summoned a SWAT team.

While these ‘tactical specialists’ behaved like Keystone Cop Academy graduates, and managed to lose an officer during their assault, they did, it has to be acknowledged, succeed where I’d failed. Searching Annie Oakley’s body shed no light on why she was in the warehouse, why she was so violent, and why she was so stationary, but did earn me my first few XP.

My second shout – breathalyse and arrest a drunk-and-disorderly – was positively restful in comparison with my baptism of fire. Perhaps FL can do ‘realistic’ and ‘routine’ policing after all?

Shout number three – apprehend an arsonist – sounded fairly innocuous, but with memories of that warehouse bloodbath still fresh in my mind I went in expecting trouble. Sure enough the lady loitering by the burning dumpster turned out to be another gun-toting, cop-hating psychopath. It took a warning shot and a shotgun aimed at her head to persuade Dolores Wright to drop her weapon.

What next? Jaywalkers with zombie knives? Pickpockets with pit bulls? Shoplifters with grenades?

Nope, just plain old bankrobbers with boomsticks. Helped by the fact that FL’s vault plunderers are sedentary souls who never use human shields, and someone had thoughtfully set up a healing station outside the building before my arrival, my first heist foiling went rather well.

I don’t believe I accidentally shot any clerks or bystanders, and bar a bit of unplanned comedy involving some summoned firefighters (I was hoping they’d Halligan a locked door for me, but they refused, preferring to follow me around like lost sheep instead) everything went swimmingly.

Shout #5 showed Flashing Lights’ policing at its most plausible and rewarding. Locating ‘missing person’ Blake Summers and delivering him, uncuffed and safe and sound, to the nearest police station, could have been more interesting if the mini-map clue had been vaguer and questioning passersby had been possible, but because it produced a pulse of satisfaction that I didn’t get from rounding up silent drunks and eliminating gun-wielding gangsters, it qualifies as my most satisfying experience in an FL police uniform so far.

A few minutes later, as I approached another blazing dumpster guarded by another armed female firestarter, I was still thinking about Blake. Hopefully, he won’t be the only relatable person I encounter during Police Week.