L is for Lacking linesmen. Football Referee Simulator almost earned itself a Police Week article. Until Referee Simulator and Football Referee Simulator 26 arrive, Vladimir Pilashkun’s 2D effort has the ref sim genre pretty much to itself. Because you don’t get assistant referees for your seventy new pence, some of the trickiest decisions in FRS relate to throw-ins and offsides.
Volkssturm militiamen biding their time in camouflaged foxholes close to the rail bridge espy an irresistible target early in Turn 7. Unfortunately for Sergeant Venison, the target in question is him and his bank-traversing half-team.
Using the following clues (the map above is purely decorative) in combination with Street View, work out my location.
G is for Games for a future Police Week? If there’s a Police Week in 2026, there’s a good chance the following three titles will – assuming they’re finished – figure in it. Bharat Police looks from a distance a lot like an Indian take on This Is the Police. According to the Steam blurb developer BharatPoliceGroup intends to grapple with India’s “unique social and cultural landscape” and depict a world in which “justice is never simple” which sounds promising.
Every Friday, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers. All are welcome to participate.
A is for Alphabetised game news. Roman believes arranging game news alphabetically is “pointless” and “stupid” and THC should cease doing it forthwith. While I agree with him in principle, I feel a fifthwith or sixthwith cessation would be more sensible.
If I keep stumbling upon games as novel and engaging as this one, ‘Police Week’ may never end. Approachable, jaundiced, and beautifully soundtracked, This Is the Police packs pithy RTS, management, and adventure game elements into the back of the same pungent paddy wagon.
I’ve written hundreds of reviews, previews, and retrospectives during my twenty-odd years as a games inspector. As many of these appeared in the British version of PC Gamer magazine and nowhere else, now and again something from my archive may appear as one of THC’s daily posts. Why did a WW2-era grand strategy title that currently enjoys a ‘Very Positive’ review rating on Steam score a measly 30% in PC Gamer on release in 2010? Read on.