Contraband Police Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 & PC)

Contraband Police finds its marker at the border crossing alongside the likes of Quarantine Zone: The Last Check and the ever-famous Papers, Please, not as a direct and somewhat shameless rehash of former observational exploits, but as a highly engaging social deduction sim that excels in its own unique way. With The Cold War being at the forefront of its communist narrative, it places you—a rookie border patrol officer—at the heart of the threshold, with an agenda that suits the interests of those on both sides of the border.

In a similar vein as Papers, Please, Contraband Police drops you directly into the thick of a double-sided battle. With passengers, tourists, and the long arm of a criminal network at the foot of the border, it falls to you to juggle the paperwork, analyze the credentials, and decide who earns the right to proceed, and who gets the boot. But, here’s the problem: even the slightest error in your judgment can cause a butterfly effect in the narrative. The border might feel like a small piece of a puzzle, but the entire world watches your each and every move, waiting for you to stumble.

Contraband Police is a bit like a puzzle box: you peel back one layer, and another appears, only slightly more complex. In the beginning, you receive a simple slider mechanism—a task that requires you to check documents for legitimate credentials. As time begins to move forward, however, the trickier sections soon begin to emerge through vast layers. Forgery begins to feel more commonplace, as do missing stamps, unchecked cargo, and illegal packages that serve only to fuel the propaganda. The world falls in your hands, and you soon begin to realize that the only formal line of defense is your stern eye for the smallest detail.

While the opening sections of Contraband Police can begin to merge into one drawn-out cluster of mindless inspections, the game, as well as the routine itself, is a lot of fun to watch unfold from the border. Moreover, as it hands you new details, potential suspects, and a wide variety of border upgrades to experiment with, the journey itself is one that keeps you hooked from the beginning to the final check. In a similar fashion as Quarantine Zone, you unlock more opportunities to extend the search with each passing shift, and with them, more customization options. It’s a simple loop, but one that manages to cram a lot into the process.

The document-checking process itself is both highly engaging and filled to the brim with weighty surprises.  But on the other side of the job—in the act of pursuing suspects and stowaways, that is—the game begins to lose its rhythm. An example here would be its combat and its driving mechanics. Unlike its Papers, Please-like routine—an exercise that allows you to creatively comb through various details and experiment with a wide range of deduction techniques—the steps that often follow on from a routine inspection are sadly quite clunky and wooden. The gunplay, for example, is rather stiff and pulseless, as is driving and chasing certain suspects.

Due to its lack of consistency in its border procedures, Contraband Police does fail to deliver a seamless experience that gets everything right. Given that the latter halves of the process—the driving and combat, that is—hold smaller parts in the overall campaign, it is possible to forgive the lack of technical polish. That said, it does pose as a problem, given that it dampens the immersion and frequently removes you from an otherwise immaculate experience.

Stiffness aside, Contraband Police captures a brilliant snapshot of the eighties, with time-appropriate Cold War imagery, authentic gang culture, and a harsh emphasis on trafficking and border manipulation. To that end, there is little here that I can complain about, as it knuckles in on the root of a subject, and it does all in its power to authenticate it as a believable time period. Granted, it exaggerates a lot of its features, what with the Michael Bay-esque shootouts and car chases and what have you. But, that’s a video game for you, and its natural pairing of both fields works well here.

The fact that Contraband Police makes an effort to fill its border crossing with several game modes makes a huge difference here. In addition to the Endless and Ranked modes, you also have a fully-fledged story mode, which essentially pits you against two warring factions, The Rebels and The Motherland. With that same story mode, you have the opportunity to build your repertoire of inspection tools, engage in border-wide conspiracies, and gradually develop your skills and checkpoint capabilities. And, to be fair, there is a lot of content for you to explore here, with dozens of vehicles to inspect, cargo holds to comb through, and tasks to keep you busy as you strive for a flawless shift grade.

All in all there’s an incredibly entertaining game here that handles most of its cargo with utmost respect, with in-depth inspection mechanics, plausible case scenarios, and believable communist propaganda that serve its Cold War setting incredibly well. Aside from the odd hiccup and technical issue, it works well for as a self-contained simulation game. Is it a perfect game that blends the best of both worlds, the observational exploits and the first-person action sequences? No, but it’s definitely one of the better inspection games of its kind. Honestly, I’d say that counts for a lot here.

Verdict

Contraband Police takes a leaf out of Papers, Please’s book to compile a thorough border-based deduction sim that blends the best of two elements into a simple yet effective first-person cocktail of Cold War flavors. With a ton of different ingredients that bode well with the communist regime, as well as a satisfying loop that feels both rewarding and engaging, Crazy Rocks finds itself as a solid torchbearer in its chosen genre. It might have its fair share of technical hiccups, but to give credit where it’s due, it does make for a brilliant simulation game that will surely get the cogs in your head working overtime.

If it’s a combination of several genres that tickles your fancy, then it’s likely that you’ll get your money’s worth out of Contraband Police. In spite of its few minor flaws, it serves its purpose as an entertaining sim that gets the job done with the tools it has at its disposal. For that reason alone, I’d say that it’s more than worth the investment.