Contraband Police – Review

Papers, Please, released in 2013, was a game-changing event for the business. Lucas Pope’s game demonstrated that games don’t need an overarching story or much in the way of fascinating gameplay to be great, yet most games are focused around interacting with things in a heavily stylized 2D or 3D space while an interesting narrative plays out in the background. Several imitations have appeared in the nearly decade since its first release, and most of them are rather bad. There are few people you can have a civil conversation with outside of the media regarding Not For Broadcast, which is a hidden gem that is vastly underestimated in comparison to Not Tonight 2 and Beat Police. Yet, it’s good news that Contraband Police is excellent in most respects, despite being more of an evolution than a spiritual successor to the much-loved Eastern European bureaucratic simulator.

You play the role of the supervisor at a Soviet border checkpoint in the newest and, potentially, one of the best video game adaptations of Lucas Pope’s work. Everyone knows that your duty is to verify the paperwork of everyone seeking to enter the semi-fascist state and make sure they aren’t bringing in any illegal contraband. Like in the movie “Papers, Please,” this is a menial job that requires paying close attention to the smallest of details in passport applications, taking careful note of when a driver’s car develops mechanical issues, and receiving reprimands from higher-ups when mistakes are made.

This facet of Contraband Police’s gameplay works fine for the most part. It’s not as dismal as other games in the bureaucracy simulator category, but it’s still fun to play as a guard at a European checkpoint. With the help of an in-game intuition metre that helps you to discover anomalies in people’s paperwork, it never becomes a chore to complete your daily work as you must always pay attention to an ever-evolving list of things that will cause you to deny someone access into your country. The entire game is in 3D, making it hard to get bored with the boring portions of the game, and destroying smugglers’ vehicles while searching for contraband is very exciting.

But, the game really shines in its many sections that don’t replicate a typical 9 to 5 work. There are a lot of things that need your attention while you’re not blocking the way to some scoundrel’s version of the promised land. Along than transporting illegal border crossers and solving murders in a semi-open world, you’ll also be tasked with delivering the loot of others to a police base and upgrading your own facilities. You can also drive around the area aimlessly, shop for new weapons to help you with your main mission, and engage in gunfights with the various rebel factions.

While the majority of the gameplay in Contraband Police has the distinctive jank that Eastern European games are known for, these elements help distinguish the game from being merely another Papers, Please clone. The roughly ten-hour runtime of the title is punctuated by a steady stream of non-administrative tasks that must be completed. Killing bad guys, supervising your fellow cops, and purchasing new vehicles all add a layer of interactivity that is lacking in many bureaucracy simulators.

But these factors also imply that Contraband Police’s plot and overall tone aren’t all that engaging. While there is a story to follow, it and the moral decisions you’ll be presented with rarely compare to the sophisticated storytelling and choices seen in other games. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the title; it’s hard to make a compelling message about the worth of human life in a Communist regime when you’re busy shooting down dissidents with an AK-47.

Thankfully, for what it’s worth, the gameplay in Contraband Police is also a lot of fun. Although it’s not an especially creative game, the visuals do a fine job of keeping you engaged and the Slavic tunes you hear throughout will ease your mind. Shooting, stabbing, and engaging in other 3D interactions with the world generally feel nice, albeit a little dated. Even on hardware from a decade ago, the game plays smoothly, and there aren’t too many serious coding difficulties to work around.

As a result, for better or worse, Contraband Police is among the best iterations of Papers, Please-like gameplay available. The addition of actual gameplay features more than makes up for the fact that it lacks the complexity and interest of games from the mid-2010s and won’t win any BAFTA awards for its plain tale. A rather repetitive gameplay cycle is kept interesting by a variety of tasks, such as checking the legitimacy of documents, having one-on-one conversations with insurgents, and transporting smugglers to a labour camp. You’d be better off searching elsewhere if you wanted a game that revolutionised the industry, but if you just want to have some fun with a game that captures Lucas Pope’s spirit, Contraband Police is a solid option.