Wowing attendees at this year’s E3, C.O.P. The Recruit set out to create a completely 3D, open-world game for the Nintendo DS–something that gamers secretly hoped for with GTA: Chinatown Wars. The game received many awards at this year’s E3 for its ambitious graphics and utilization of the DS’ hardware. Now that the game is finally out in stores, does it really come through as a compelling, 3D adventure for the Nintendo DS? Check out the full review below to find out.

C.O.P. The Recruit follows the story of Dan Miles, a former street racer and new recruit to the Criminal Overturn Program. Detective Brad Winter, who has been falsely arrested, recruited you to the unit and it is now your job to uncover the truth behind his arrest. Dan quickly realizes that things are not so black and white, and that he must use his street contacts to get to the bottom of a terrorist organization which is threatening the people of New York City.

As a new recruit, most of the first hour of the game is spent in various training exercises. You’ll go through basic movement, weapons training, vehicle training, and also combat training.  Later, you’ll go through missions stopping bank robberies, car-jackings, and more.  The game’s movements are all done with the D-pad and the stylus and touchscreen are reserved for aiming while in combat mode. Most of the controls are very intuitive, but they can be a little hard in the actual implementation. The combat for instance can be a little slow as the AI enemies are very basic. They’ll walk left or right and shoot, and then repeat that process. One of the deeper parts of the combat gameplay; however, are the laying out of your backup before making a raid. You can basically ‘stack’ your units to enter various doors based on where enemies are located. It’s a little like Rainbow Six, only much more simplified. However, it gives the desired effect and can definitely help in sticky situations.

The gameplay overall is actually very deep and there are a lot of activities to do. You can chase after criminals at high speeds in whatever car you choose, drive boats to board freighters for drug busts, and go inside many of the cities’ locations such as the police precinct and casino. The driving engine is one of the more advanced on the DS and shows that the DS can process a lot onscreen and still have a solid frame-rate. You’ll see pedestrians alongside the road, various levels of traffic, and all sorts of detail such as traffic lights and mailboxes. My only complaint about the driving portions of the game are the collisions with other cars, whether it’s cars coming in the opposite direction or cars you happen to be chasing. The collision almost completely stops your car when rear-ending a car, which makes it very difficult to apprehend suspects. You have to damage their vehicle enough to get them to pull over, which usually takes about 3 or 4 collisions. This takes forever since your car grinds to a halt every time you hit the other car, while his car still keeps going like nothing happened. I also tried to ram cars from the side, and it does little to no damage. Despite my issues with the combat and driving, C.O.P. The Recruit has definitely raised the bar as to what I expect from games on the DS now. With over 60 missions and almost 20 hours of gameplay, there’s no excuse why games can’t have this graphical quality. Developers have complained about the DS’ hardware or size of the game cards, but Ubisoft has really done a number on those misconceptions.

The graphics in the game are by far the biggest feature. No other DS game has the level of detail of C.O.P. while also running at a solid frame-rate. The game has detail in almost every area of the game’s environment from people’s faces, newspaper and trash cans in alleys, vehicles, and even tall buildings and bridges. Outdoor environments aside, the game also features some of the best indoor environments on a DS game to date. The casino alone has various hallways, large rooms with roulette, craps, slots, display cars, and also various NPCs. My big gripe, from a presentation standpoint, is the convoluted interface. You have a device called the ‘3C’ which allows you to keep track of missions, maps, and all sorts of other data throughout the game. The interface for this is not very intuitive, as the icons are not very descriptive and the map controls not very touch-friendly. If you set a destination in your GPS, it provides an arrow on your top screen, but there’s no way to zoom or pan the map on the lower screen. So you have no clue if you really need to drive in one direction or if you could’ve taken a faster route until you’re very close to the destination. Probably not the end of the world, but I definitely think it should be better especially since you use it all the time in the game.

Conclusion

C.O.P. The Recruit takes some preconceived ideas about the DS’ graphical capabilities and throws them out the window. The game features one of the biggest and most detailed, 3D environments on the DS to date and also provides over 60 missions. Despite some of the gameplay shortcomings, C.O.P. has set the bar high not only in terms of graphics, but also in terms of utilizing the DS controls effectively. If you’re looking for an entertaining adventure, with some GTA-like gameplay, then C.O.P. The Recruit is definitely worth checking out.

C.O.P. The Recruit gets an 8.0/10