🚨👮 Autobahn Police Simulator 3 Review 4.5/10 "New ideas can’t paper over the issues that carry through the series" 🚔 @AerosoftGmbH #IndieGames #GameDev

I reviewed Autobahn Police Simulator 2 back at the end of 2020, and, whilst I enjoyed my time with the game, the unavoidable technical issues really hacked away at what was a solid premise with some great ideas floating around. In my review of the previous entry, I stated:

 “Whilst Autobahn Police Simulator 2 is a tough one to recommend due to the above-mentioned issues, I really hope that a third game comes out and has more time spent on the basics such as camera work, animation, controls and overall smoothness.”

Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Beginning with your character returning from a vague accident that has kept them out of action for an unspecified – but seemingly lengthy – amount of time, you must build up your experience and ranking in order to ultimately get to the bottom of what caused your accident, all the while keeping the drivers of the Autobahn safe from the myriad incidents that befall them. 

The previous game kicked off with a case that instantly grabbed my attention, I remembered that I had to find out who was throwing bricks off bridges at cars– and naturally, I did this by finding out what fags he smoked and tracking him down that way – brilliant! Autobahn Police Simulator 3 had a similarly esoteric start to a police crime procedural…I had to shoo a load of cows off the Autobahn and sweep up their defecations within a strict (and tedious) time limit, that was my introduction to the world of German policing. Good.

There has been an overhaul in terms of how the game moves forward this time around, with ranks 1-50 being available, and the need for your character to ascend to rank 50 in order to solve the case of his initial accident - which drives the story - as information gets drip-fed through conversations with dead-eyed colleagues etc.

I quite liked the wonderfully bonkers ranking system - for each rank, you must complete certain actions, perhaps you’ll need to complete successful traffic stops, chase down a car or impose a fine on someone…or perhaps you’ll need to just buy a doughnut, who knows?

You can spend your accumulated experience points to bypass some of these requirements, or you can spend them on boosting various aspects of your characters’ vehicle and combat skills, although I struggled to notice any real difference whenever I did for the vast majority of them – upping a vehicle’s handling when the basic mechanics of driving in the game are flawed is a tricky one to judge.

I did enjoy flagging drivers down and going through the process of checking if they’d taken drugs, been drinking ‘Grandpa’s cough medicine’, checking their lights and tyre pressure, or maybe they had an out-of-date first aid kit in their trunk, and then sternly imposing a fine and ramping up those experience points. There are also times when you have to get to the bottom of the cause of an accident – and again – whilst this could be a key, enjoyable part of the game, the writing and mechanics hack away at the fun.

For example, I arrived at the scene of a crash, popped on my high-viz jacket, lined up the traffic cones and took photos of the accident scene, before interviewing the drivers involved. For context, I’d found some broken straps on the highway AND a bottle of whisky next to the smashed car.

I assumed that the driver had been on the sauce and lost control when the strap broke, causing the load to fly off somewhere, but – and this happened multiple times – I could never reference that they had been drinking, even though there was clear – and acknowledged - evidence of it. It doesn’t help that the dialogue trees are obtuse, limited as they are to one-word descriptions as to how to proceed.

You’ll find yourself unable to choose the specific questions you’d like to ask using the knowledge you’ve attained from your investigation of the situation at hand, and that removes any impact of completing the case, as it feels random, and out of your hands.

Aside from the issues that continue to plague the series such as erratic camera, awkward driving controls and bewildering menus, I also found that my car would flip wildly whilst driving in a straight line, or I’d be sent on a car chase, and arrive at the scene to find the ‘escaping suspect’ quietly parked outside a rest stop and staring straight ahead.

The audio levels are all over the place and I could never get them how I wanted, the gently enjoyable music was always whisper-quiet whilst the dialogue/radio chatter etc. are all mastered at different levels and yet tied to a singular volume bar, making in-game adjustments inaccurate. 

All these things – combined with the waxy character models and various other negative quirks mean that once again, I’m fighting against the game to enjoy myself. I love the fact that I’m an officer of the law going around clearing up accidents, getting to the bottom of cases, collecting rubber ducks, checking if telephones work, questioning suspects and all the rest of it, but the game does its best to work against you, with the myriad problems that arise.

Even the slightly better framerate here comes courtesy of the game just running on a more powerful system as opposed to an overhaul of the game engine or tweaking – I installed Autobahn Police Simulator 2 on my XSX (I’d previously reviewed it on the Xbox One) and if anything, it runs better than this game, if not exactly the same.

Once again, I’m in a situation whereby I just wish that the developers had spent more time on the fundamentals of the game – camera, controls, driving mechanics -  to make the experience smoother. I can forgive the atrocious voice acting and dated graphics, there is a great game somewhere bursting to get out, but now – at three games in, I perhaps have to accept that it’ll never see the light of day.