Hear me out here: It’s 2019 and neither of us like cops.
Astral Chain is a Cop Game. It’s not just a Cop Game It’s The Cop Game. You play a police officer gifted a special ability to control Legions and you use those to engage in the world through well-enacted Action Game stuff. Roll behind a guy and hit him, wrap him up in a chain to stun him.

Rocket yourself across the level and slow down time in midair so you can cut a weak point in half. Platinum Games make candy bars, and this one is filled with so much crunch and caramel.

All of the other stuff you do is distinctly more Cop Flavored. It may be that the world is ending and the Anime Police only have so much time to save it – but you also have time to hunt down graffiti artists, foil murder plots and help lost children find their parents. You never pull a gun on the wrong person, you never use too much force – even when you use your Legion to subdue someone having a panic attack.

Videogames wear the fantasy of Cop Flavor on a different colored sleeve than normal, and Astral Chain may be able to say a little about why. After all the number of videogames where you are a cop are pretty easy to count on two hands. Most of those examples are in reality, games where you play a disgraced cop. Someone who’s been forced outside the power structure of Police for one reason or another. More often than not, those games end with you finding out the badguys and the police were in it together all along.

Moving more into the realm of fantasy, Videogames are instead populated with traditional heroic fantasy archetypes of the Knight Errant. The player character may not directly benefit from upholding the status quo of the setting, but that’s still presented as a goal nonetheless.
The closest I can actually then – besides Astral Chain get to games where you play as a Cop are Superhero Games.

Astral Chain would be that type of game, if not for the fact that the player character is rooted deeply in the power structure of militarized police. Astral Chain is not a serious game, by the way. It is littered with Anime tropes as much as it could possibly be – referencing popular anime in whole cloth sometimes and others taking the cheapest, shortest route to a sinister reveal.

What’s revealed in this game is how post-apocalyptic narratives are dependent on a return to order through force and law. The setup plot for the game pits the player and the organization backing them up against an unknowable force of chaos. It can’t be reasoned with, but it can be imprisoned. All methods are acceptable in the face of certain extinction, and a badge all but ensures people respect it.
Police in the real world are dependent on using that accepted authority and power to ensure the Rule of Law. Just like here, the world of the game tells us The Rule of Law is the authority of whoever has the power to enforce it.

A moment happened I actually wasn’t expecting at around the halfway mark. The main character goes off the reservation (in cop movie terminology) and does some Real Loose Cannon Shit. Cryptic things are said about your superiors. It’s suggested they may be providing an enclave of the poor and desperate once thought to have been all killed drugs so they can be used as test subjects. For a second, the game goes into some Real Cop Shit. The people pulling back on the chain are the ones most set to benefit from it.

End of the world narratives are rife with leaning in on ideas that only those capable of restoring absolute order can save us – Astral Chain just happens to take place in a gleaming metropolis instead of a post apocalyptic desert.