This open-world sandbox Steam Next Fest gem is basically GTA but you're a cop, and it totally rips

gamesradar.com:

My latest Steam Next Fest obsession is the demo for The Precinct, an old-school top-down open-world sandbox game that plays a lot like Grand Theft Auto except you play as a cop instead of a lawless citizen.

Now, I know what you might be thinking. Isn't being a criminal a whole lot more fun than being a narc? And to that I'd say, in real life, maybe, but in Fallen Tree Games' riff on the early GTA formula I've been having a blast. You've got the same interactivity and freedom of choice within a large urban simulation, except you're in charge here. Since you're a cop with apparently unquestionable authority, you can bomb along in your police cruiser, casualties, walls, and small buildings be damned, and there's no one there to stop you!

I managed to behave for exactly one shootout at a bank with some armed robbers and one police chase before I abandoned my mission with a detained citizen in the back of my cruiser and took to the streets with reckless abandon. I wanted to see how far this game would let me flaunt the rule of law as a cop, and as it turns out, it let me flaunt it pretty darn hard.

'80s-era synth pop pumping auditory courage from my car speakers to my ears, I carved through traffic and red lights in winding streets, plowed through fences, and reduced stone traffic barriers to rubble with extremely satisfying destruction physics. I was looking for something to really test the limits of The Precinct's in-game law and order system. I found it: a large body of water and the perfect slope to use as a ramp, as if the game was tempting me to break its own rules. I answered the call, putting pedal to floor and catching air in pure sandbox nirvana before crashing into the water and escaping the sinking car along with my prisoner.

A nearby ladder out of the water beckoned me, and I climbed out of the river, turned around, and wasted the poor fool with my pistol. Finally, a fail state. The game had had enough. "Don't shoot civilians!" it warned me before reloading