Allen Christian reviews Fashion Police Squad…
With Fashion Police Squad, Mopeful Games has created one of the strangest titles to come out of the retro-FPS boom of the last few years. If you aren’t aware, the glut of throwback action shooters has become a growing niche in the PC gaming community (with some titles creeping onto consoles as well). What these all share in common is a desire to get back to the fast-paced, gameplay centric design of 90s first-person shooters. This has taken on several forms, from Quake clones, to expansive games built on top of the original Doom engine. Fashion Police Squad feels much more akin to a Duke Nukem 3D or Shadow Warrior, though somehow goofier.
In Fashion Police Squad, you play as Sergeant Des on a mission to solve the rampant fashion crimes in Trendopolis. It’s a first person shooter where you don’t actually kill anyone. You just make them more fashionable.
I know what you’re thinking, and I thought it too. Isn’t the joke of fashion police as actual police a bit tired? It is, but that doesn’t mean there’s no mileage left on it. Digging into the joke and building a world around it produces some solid comedy throughout the game. It doesn’t all work, but there’s enough there to keep your eyes out of the back of your head. It isn’t a long game, so it doesn’t really overstay its welcome in that regard.
Make no mistake, Fashion Police Squad wants you to laugh, but its design is gameplay first. I’ve played enough of the more recent throwback FPS games to understand that the “retro” concept means different things to different people, but the common focus is on the gameplay. Specifically the combat. Combat isn’t the only element to a shooter like this, but it is undoubtedly the most important. Here I like to focus on four main aspects: weapons, enemies, movement, and level design.
Generally I would evaluate all of these things separately. The special sauce is always in how they are combined, but they are their own design elements. However, weapons and enemies are more tightly linked than usual here. In particular, we have enemy-specific weaponry (though there are some minor exceptions that don’t do much to alleviate this issue). This is usually a cardinal sin in the FPS genre. Yes, you should have weapons that are more efficient at dealing with certain enemies than others, but having enemies that are immune to all but one weapon is generally considered a big no-no.
However, this isn’t immediately an issue in Fashion Police Squad. In fact, given the premise of the game, it works for a little while. Of course you can’t fix loud attire with a blast of color. The problem comes when you have too many different kinds of enemies stacked together. Clearly, in these hectic arenas, the designers want you to weapon swap constantly. But when so many of your shots are being absorbed in the clutter, it’s not a fun mechanic, it’s annoying. Perhaps there is a flow state that you can reach where this becomes fun, but I don’t think the actual swap mechanics are fluid enough for that to be the case. Ultimately this results in either a lot of ducking for cover while you prepare for your next priority target, or just a lot of trial and error. When the game intends to be at its most challenging, it is at its most irritating. You don’t feel a sense of achievement at overcoming something difficult. You feel like someone who was pestering you finally left the room.
The level design throughout the game is fairly decent. Some sections become repetitive and overstay their welcome a bit, but something different is never too far off. It’s all very linear, so when it pretends to be an open-ended key-hunt kind of shooter, it feels a little like a cruel tease, but that doesn’t make the level design bad. One thing you will notice is an increased emphasis on platforming. Platforming in a first-person shooter is difficult to get right, and Fashion Police Squad unfortunately falls short, but it’s in good company. However, it isn’t due to the design. The level design for the platforming is probably the best I could imagine anyone pulling off in a 2.5D game like this. The ideas are interesting, and they break up the gameplay fairly well. It’s just that the movement isn’t there to compliment it. The movement as it pertains to combat is pretty good. It’s standard for this kind of shooter. Above average, honestly, especially as you get deeper into the game.
When it comes to the platforming, it’s just too imprecise to be fun. The growing amount of movement mechanics that are introduced start to give you a feeling that maybe it will all come together into a neat package, but it never really does. It’s not awful platforming, and if it was mostly used for optional secret hunting, it would be perfectly serviceable, and it kind of starts out that way. But once it becomes key to the gameplay, it’s much less forgivable. Points for the mechanics being interesting and well-integrated into the theme, but I just don’t think this is the style of game or kind of engine where this was ever going to work out well. The belt grapple might be fun if you can achieve some level of mastery with it (I admittedly did not, and I’m a fan of grappling hooks), but outside of the platforming challenges, it doesn’t factor into the gameplay.
If you’re struggling to find the positives in my review, I do want to make it clear that I still enjoy this game quite a lot. It never fell apart for me. Somehow, with all of these little annoyances chipping away, there’s still something solid about the way in which the elements that do work coalesce. The weapons, with the exception of the sock gnomes (it’s what it sounds like), all feel very good. The combination of visual and audio feedback make them a blast to use. The music and sound design are fun, the visuals are vibrant and strange, and the humor is wacky enough to get past some of the more tired meme jokes (we’re still making “Karen” jokes?). The overall presentation was just given so much care from top to bottom. If you’re looking for an introduction into the throwback FPS craze, I don’t think this isn’t it. If you’re looking for something wacky and unique in the mold of 90s shooters, this fits the bill. It’s hard not to find joy in blasting the unfashionable with style.
Pros:
- Fun, responsive weapons
- Visual and audio design pop
- Great movement in combat scenarios
Cons:
- Overuse of mediocre and frustrating platforming elements
- Combat does not scale well
Rating: 8/10
A review code was provided by the publisher.
Fashion Police Squad is available now on Steam.
Allen Christian
