Forum Overview :: Mischief Maker's Maker's Mark :: Still enjoying it. Not too hard. Not TOO easy either.

[quote name="Rey Mysterio Jr. "]I'm mainly playing it because the voice-overs are all done by Duke Nukem. If you enjoyed how Max Payne did exposition and story, it's a similar thing here except without the cliche voiceover narrative. If I had to fault the writing it's only because they're juggling way too many things and some of them wind up being inconsequential. The point of the game is to amass 500,000$ in any way you can, by either being a completely corrupt asshole or trying to be a good guy while looking out for yourself. But meanwhile there's a serial killer sub-plot, a Banksy wannabe subplot, a Mafia corruption subplot, and some shit with the District Attorney. The difficulty curve flattens once you figure out how to game the system. Basically: - You can increase your officer/detective capacity and improve your SWAT team by begging City Hall. If they like you they'll generally approve all the requests at once (you can submit all 4 simultaneously, but you're limited to asking once every 5 days). So there's no penalty for asking for all 4 at once other than that if it happens to fall on the same day as you pissing off the Mayor it'll generally be denied. I think they also calculate an approval score based on how good a job you're doing generally but if you don't beat people's heads in at the local women's suffrage protest then fuck you, you're not getting another cop that day. But who cares? You can always call back 5 days later. - When you piss off the mayor he'll inevitably call you and announce they're slashing your budget as a personal fuck you. Getting a "budget cut" also allows you to fire someone consequence free because your officer capacity is reduced. So sometimes it can be useful to get a budget cut just to purge a low performer/alcoholic/goldbricker/snitch. - The SWAT Team acts as a multiplier and can allow you to pull off an undermanned response without casualties. The SWAT Team gets six upgrades. 3 increase the number of times you can use it per day (up from 1 to a max of 4) and increase efficiency (from 50% up to a max of 200%). SWAT Teams are never subject to budget cuts. <i><b>Trenchant commentary on militarization in American policing? Or bad game design that's easily exploitable? <u>YOU</u> decide!</i></b> - You can also demand a raise but this is only useful for offsetting any weekly extra expenses you might have (like hiring a snitch to rat on his fellow officers). The real way you squirrel away income for your 500,000$ goal is through unethical use of public resources! With the timeline of the game these issues can easily make things turn repetitive fast, so I was unsurprised by some of the reviews that rag on the game for getting dull after the first 3 weeks. And remember you have <b><i>180 days!</i></b> However at Day 30 the game smacked me with a curveball and began to ratchet things up. - After month two, fans of "The Purge" begin to target solo police officers, so you can't dispatch a single officer to a call and sometimes even two officers will tell you to go fuck yourself. - Also in month two some other crazy shit begins to happen. Serial killers, mob war, etc. My favorite moments in this game are some of the ways you can use the multiple objectives to satisfy each other. As an example some rich businessman decided he wanted to give me funding for two extra police officers, on the condition I hire on his loser inbred son as a third and never fire him. I felt that was an acceptable trade off. But I didn't want to have a Casino-esque situation occur and was trying to figure out how to get rid of this loser. [youtube id="-L5Zx34mjUU"] I mean, I'm not a bastard so I didn't want to pay off the Mafia to set up a false break-in and assassinate him, or do anything that might offend my other, competent officers. THEN someone comes to me with a proposition: They're doing a shitty Law & Order SVU ripoff and they want a real police officer to play the perp of the week who's a police officer that fucks little children. So I call him up and send him to the set. Later that day I get a message from him that says simply "FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE. I QUIT!". Problem solved! And the producer gave me 1500$! [/quote]