It’s 2019 and without many options in the gaming world for realistic style police simulator, for many the recent release of LSPD-FR (Los Santos Police Department – First Response) is a welcome sight. But how welcome is it really? And how much of an improvement is it from the previous patch?
LSPDFR 0.4.0 is said to offer many new options for creating a character, having a car and apartment while giving you the ability to work as a police officer in the city of Los Santos. After having played with 0.4 for a few hours I wanted to give my first reaction on what I have noticed with this new update of LSPDFR.
Features and missing features
LSPDFR 0.4 now allows the creation of your own character which is a nice feature. EUP (Emerency Uniforms Pack) was a addon that injected many uniform options to LSPDFR and that can still be added to the game but why not just integrate those uniforms with default LSPDFR 0.4?
At first glance the character creator menu seems expansive but after spending some time creating characters, I have noticed many characters end up looking much like one another–no matter how much hair you put on them. It would be nice to see more change in the features such as adding eyelashes or better manipulation of the eyes, nose, mouth and hair. For now I will have to settle for a bald guy I guess (since that is what short hair looks like?).
LSPDFR 0.4 has added an apartment for your character to live in and the ability to save a personal vehicle. This is a nice option but it can also be a slight hinderance. LSPDFR gives you the option to load your character in the apartment which means you must drive to the nearest police station or you can start in the pre designated police station in Rockford Hills. This police station is new, made just for LSPDFR and is nice to have but I think it would be better if the option existed to start in any police station.
As far as game-play, LSPDFR 0.4 has changed some keybindings which now seem to conflict with other add-ons. Feature-wise, I have not noticed many new changes with actual game-play. The arrest animations have improved which is great and you can actually walk with suspects or they will follow you automatically which helps a lot. Transporting of prisoners still seems to be lacking however and I have yet to find the option for a coroner or how to put the arrested person in my car. Arrested perps must be placed on the ground before they can be transported which I don’t quite understand. When calling for backup during a traffic stop, the responding officer will not stay during the entire stop, which is one reason one would call for backup in the first place!
Final thoughts and Overhype
Overall, the addition of the character creator to LSPDFR 0.4 is a good step in the right direction but I would have liked to have seen more relevant improvements to police response, AI vehicle handling and arrest management. By the way, the new cinematic camera during police pursuits can also hinder game play as I don’t see what purpose it serves.
Improvements that can still be made are with the starting game locations, police computer, citation options, improved AI, arrest features, realistic police response, traffic control, and coroner. (Note: adding third-party plugins to the game will still incorporate many of these options.) I think including or improving these features would be better options for this update than having a luxury apartment. Hopefully we will see these types of improvements someday within LSPDFR itself.
What do you think of the new LSPDFR update 0.4? Let me know what you think.
Watch gameplay with LSPDFR 0.4
Will We Ever See It (in gaming)?
Police 1013 coming to Steam – Spread the word
top image source
In-game images are my own
tinkerXperience 