Police and Firefighters take The Squad to the fire and the flames - Game Pass or Play EP02

Quick Overview

The games reviewed, Firefighting Simulator - The Squad, Police Simulator: Patrol Officers, and Retro Classics, are largely broken, tedious, or poorly implemented, making them not worth playing even with an existing Game Pass subscription.

Key Points: Firefighting Simulator - The Squad is a buggy and poorly designed co-op game with clunky controls and unrealistic fire mechanics, often leading to soft-locks and frustrating gameplay. Police Simulator: Patrol Officers offers a tedious and repetitive experience focused on minor infractions, lacking engaging gameplay and suffering from technical issues like poor frame rates and long load times. The game's 'bad cop' mechanic, where players are fired for excessive force but minor assaults are ignored by AI, is highlighted as an unrealistic and problematic design choice. Retro Classics is a collection of streaming-only retro games that suffers from severe input lag and poor streaming quality, making many titles unplayable and frustrating. The Retro Classics collection is primarily an upsell for the Antstream subscription service, with many advertised games removed and a confusing interface that makes it difficult to exit games. Despite some minor differences, all three games are criticized for their lack of polish, repetitive nature, or fundamental design flaws, making them generally not recommended. The reviewer concludes that while Game Pass can offer amazing titles, it often includes 'unsufferable' games like these that are not worth the time to download or play.

Context: ShotGaming.com's 'Game Pass or Play' series reviews the latest games released on Xbox Game Pass, a subscription service allowing access to a library of games on PC and Xbox. This episode evaluates three diverse titles: Firefighting Simulator - The Squad, Police Simulator: Patrol Officers, and Retro Classics, to determine if they are worth playing.

Detailed Analysis

This episode of Game Pass or Play reviews three titles available on Game Pass: Firefighting Simulator - The Squad, Police Simulator: Patrol Officers, and Retro Classics. Firefighting Simulator is a mission-based online co-op game plagued by bugs, including a fire truck flipping over upon loading, soft-locking when placing victims out of bounds, and unrealistic fire mechanics where players can stand in flames unharmed. Interactions are simplified to holding a single button, and animations are often missing or clunky. Police Simulator: Patrol Officers, while less buggy, suffers from tedious and repetitive gameplay focused on minor infractions like parking tickets and jaywalking. The game features an unrealistic 'bad cop' mechanic where excessive force leads to being fired, but minor assaults are ignored by AI partners. Technical issues like poor frame rates, long load times, and graphical glitches are constant. Retro Classics, a collection of streaming-only retro titles, is criticized for its poor emulation, input lag, and streaming quality, making many reaction-based arcade games unplayable. The collection also acts as an upsell for another subscription service, Antstream, and has removed advertised games like Mortal Kombat, leading to negative user reviews. Overall, none of the reviewed games offer a compelling or polished experience.