With the title of Police Shootout, you can be pretty sure what to expect. However there is more here than a single-player 911 emergency gun blazer. Police Shootout offers detective work and a turn-based FPS twist, taking players through eleven enjoyable linear missions to solve classic cop-like cases – murder, hostages, vice and more.

Originally launched on Steam back in 2022, Police Shootout launched on Xbox Series on 20 February 2025 and is due to land on PlayStation 5 in March. The game has the aesthetic and feel of yet another title from the bloated ‘simulator’ genre. But interesting dialogue and innovative gameplay makes the game surprisingly competent, yet flawed.

Story

Players take control of the incredibly brash and often foul mouthed, Scott Price from the fictional San Adrino Police Department. Price, a new member of the P.D. is dispatched to deal with the mafia and other mobs at a variety of cliché American crime locations including motels, gas stations and warehouses. Although all locations are rather small, each are well-designed and are fun to explore. Whilst there is some overlap in characters across the various locations, each of the missions stand on their own and can be tackled in any order once unlocked.

Each mission will take approximately twenty minutes to complete and none outstay their welcome. My playtime to completion, including completing all miscellaneous Xbox Achievements, was a sweet spot of around six hours.

Gameplay

Whilst being a generally simplistic title, Police Shootout offers a fresh blend of turn-based FPS and detective gameplay. All of the eleven missions follow a very similar pattern – find information, then take out the bad guys.

Shootouts are turn-based affairs, where the player has a limited number of action points to unleash some pistol or shotgun lead on suspects, or manoeuvre to better cover. The short tutorial mission competently teaches you these elements in just a few minutes.

The other core gameplay element is playing detective. During each of the game’s eleven missions across multiple areas – some you will revisit more than once – you will meet NPCs who you can interrogate to garner information that will influence each mission’s final showdown. If you are able to gather a wealth of information from NPCs, you can avoid a shootout and instead talk bosses down and ‘cuff them instead. A gun-less approach earns you extra mission XP which can be spent on the rather basic skill tree. Despite being very farfetched at times, Police Shootout is surprisingly well written for a smaller title. Conversations with NPCs are actually rather engrossing as they reveal information that you can use to your advantage including unlocking alternative routes to surprise enemies.

Stealth is also a very viable option in Police Shootout. In one mission, after gathering a lot of intel from NPCs I was able to secure an alternative pathway to the suspect and satisfyingly sneak attacked them with my baton.

Shortcomings

Despite having a good time with Police Shootout, there were definitely a few shortcomings along the way. Scott Price speaks more like a criminal than the adversaries of the game, which made me feel there was a dark undertone to his law enforcing role. However, the protagonists story never develops which was frustrating as there could have been a solid plot line with aggressive colleague Captain David Summers who follows Scott throughout the game.

Another jarring issue was that the game features NPC voice acting, with a broad range of English-speaking accents including British, Australasian and North American. Whilst you expect to hear any number of accents from a game set in a fictional city based on Los Angeles, this took away from the immersion of an American big-city crime sim.

A second NPC issue is that so many models look identical or very similar. Across various missions I was often seeing the same looking NPCs but with a new name and story. Notably one with long hair who seemed to appear in almost every mission! Although I’m not a game developer, this feels like a simple change that would have helped players easily distinguish characters from one another.

Finally, I should add that there is some vulgar dialogue in the game that may be uncomfortable for some players. Including someone being referred to as an “extraordinarily p*ssy whipped husband”; and another character referring to Chinese automative parts as “Chinese s***”.

Bugs – and not the police wire kind

As with the territory of games of similar small budgets, there were a number of bugs encountered throughout my playthrough. During the first and last missions I had to restart the level as I was unable to progress. Although the levels were short, this isn’t acceptable for a game that’s a port of an almost three year old Steam release.

Despite the games sound design generally being solid, there were multiple times where the audio volumes jumped including some NPCs being louder than others. Additionally, as someone who has subtitles on all media, I spotted numerous spelling mistakes.

Top cop?

Police Shootout is a competent game that delivers on its premise. The game is certainly rough around the edges and some extra QA should have been implemented given the period of time since the 2022 Steam launch. The turn-based FPS battles are a fresh twist on the genre, though they’re not something we need to see become a trend.

With various ways to tackle missions including shooting, stealth and good old fashioned detective work, there is a lot of replayability here. To unlock some Xbox Achievements I found myself replaying a handful of missions in new and fresh ways.

Despite mild frustrations with the aforementioned bugs, I had a good time with Police Shootout and would recommend players to pick this up during a sale, including its 20% off Xbox launch promotion. With less technical issues, I would have scored Police Shootout a little higher.

A download code for the Xbox Series version of the game was provided for review by publisher Ultimate Games and was played on Series X. The game can be purchased using the following store links:

• Xbox Store
• PlayStation Store – release scheduled for 14 March 2025
• Steam