Highway Police Simulator claims to have an engaging story according to the store page on your platform of choice. The “engaging” story is not really much of anything. It feels like a generic story of a prisoner escaping a prison transport bus and that’s about the gist of it.
High Police Simulator really does a good job of making you feel like a highway patrol officer, I will give it that. After choosing to be a male or female, you’re on your way to a traffic stop and then are involved with the prison transport escape.
This opening crime scene as well as others have you sketching out the scene, finding clues, and writing reports. Putting together the accurate reports isn’t easy as it really requires you to pay attention to the scene, and put the pieces together correctly. In addition to sketching out the scene, you have to put your observations of the scene together in your reports. Leaving anything out or not being truthful in your report can cost you. By being untruthful or not getting all of the facts in a case, can cause you to not do well on your performance review as well as affect the way your partner, peers, and management perceive you.
Besides crime scene investigation, there are random things you can come across if you choose to just drive around. You could come upon a drug deal, a car jacking, or someone not obeying the laws of traffic. Depending on the crime, you could have a shootout with the criminals or you could talk your way through the situation which could lead them to being arrested or let go with a warning.
Traffic stops are neat in the fact that you can have the people you stop perform the standard traffic tests for intoxication. You can also check their plates to ensure their tags are up to date, check their trunk for contraband, make sure their headlights and tail lights are working.
To aid you in your job as a highway patrol officer, you have several vehicles you can drive, which will open up the more you play the game and do good at your job. In addition to different vehicles, you also have the opportunity to use drones and other equipment. Once you unlock the equipment and vehicles, you can unlock upgrades for them to help make using them or completing your task easier.
The amount of things you can do that emulate the real world of police work is rather impressive with this game and very enjoyable.
Highway Police Simulator looks really good. There is a ton of detail to the environments and the buildings that you can go into. The textures of everything look really good. The character models actually look like people and over all, graphically the game is very impressive.
Playing the game on the Xbox Series X, I expected it to look as good as it does but I wish the same could be said about it’s performance.
Where do I start with the performance issues? Well moving the camera round your character or vehicle while it’s moving, the camera stutters quite a bit. This can cause some issues when it comes to high speed pursuits or chases on foot. In addition to the camera issues, the entire game tends to dip considerable frames when there is a lot of traffic in the area you’re driving in. I guess a better way to put it would be if there is a lot the game has to render in the area that you’re in. I say this because as much of a dip as it takes while in traffic outside on the streets, it’s even worse and in fact nearly grinds to a halt when you’re in the police station.
Yes, you read that correctly, the game nearly locks up when you’re walking around the police station. I guess the number of police, bright lights, and all of the environmental elements of the building are just nearly too much for the game engine and console to handle. This isn’t a constant issue, but happens often enough to dread having to go in there for anything for fear of not being able to come back out in the event the game locks up or completely crashes back to the Desktop or home screen of the platform you’re playing the game on.
Aside from the frame dips, there is the issue with trying to stop crimes as they happen that are outside of requested through dispatch or the story missions. You see the game performs so badly, that you will have criminals you’re chasing just disappear. You can be chasing them down a street, turn a corner and they are just gone. Sometimes if you’re trying to look behind you with the camera, turn back towards the perp, and they have just up and vanished. Yet despite this, the game tells you to continue chasing them.
This is a similar thing with traffic stops. You can stop a car, they will pull over, and the game will tell you to pull over behind the car, yet you’re both stopped and pulled over. Your patrol car lights are on and you’re standing outside of the civilians car, and the game still tells you to pull over to a complete stop. Almost like the game can’t keep up with the actions of the player. Another fun thing is that once you stop someone, they may not even be in the car anymore. This makes it so that you can’t question them, you can’t complete your investigation and just have to wait for the game to forget about the person that you just stopped. In a couple of instances, I stopped someone and they were in the car, I did what I was supposed to do, came back from my patrol car computer and the person I had just stopped is just gone. Again, leaving the game to just eventually forget the traffic stop so that you can keep playing.
Sound effects in Highway Police Simulator are pretty solid. You have the sound of the cars that make the appropriate car and engine sounds. You have people that sound and talk like people, and the sirens you hear in the game actually sound like sirens instead of something completely off-putting.
That’s really all I can say about the sound. Background music? Well there really isn’t any except for when story cinematics happen or during story missions when you can hear the intense music to go along with the high action chase. So when you hear it, it sounds pretty good, cheesy, but sounds good.
I was hoping to have some constant music in the game or at the very least a radio you could listen to, but there is neither with this game. Which honestly, is kind of a let down. The lack of music in the game kinda makes the game feel a tad bit empty and almost autonomous or robotic when it comes to the police force and those that populate the world in which you’re playing in.
I really wanted to like Highway Police Simulator. The trailer and the screen shots I saw for the game really got me excited to play a fun and enjoyable police simulation game. But that’s not what you get with this game.
Instead what you get is a game that tried to be a fun and intense police simulation game but kinda fell flat on it’s face. The lack of music, NPCs disappearing for no reason at all, driver-less cars, game elements that can’t keep up with the player, nearly game breaking performance issues, and overall severely poor optimization of the game as a whole make this game one that I can’t recommend.
Now don’t get me wrong, this was a game that was a lot worse than what I am describing here if you can believe that. When I first started playing this game, it had a ton of issues. Characters you were supposed to talk to would flicker in and out of existence, fall through the ground, your character and car would also occasionally fall through the map for no apparent reason. Mission objective queues would just not be present which forced you to restart the game or resort to a previous checkpoint in hopes that it would stay so you could complete the mission.
It’s things like that that would happen prior to the game getting patched. So I am very grateful for the patch that addressed a lot of those issues I just mentioned. But with the patch came additional issues I mentioned above in the performance and graphics section of this review.
If the game can be patched to the point of better optimization and address some of the previously mentioned glaring issues, this game could really be a fun and enjoyable game.
If you pick up this game, you’ve been warned. Either hope these issues get patched, or look at other games that offer the same kind of game but with a much better experience.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.