Men with gray suits litter the streets, rubbing arms with neon vest-wearing scooter jockeys and women in ill-fitting potato sacks. Who is causing this unfashionable nightmare? Is it possible that there’s a coordinated effort to create a less fashionable world? Yes, that’s possible. And beyond the trench coat flashers and socks-with-sandals wearers is a detective unit that was specifically designated to root out and solve fashion-related crimes. That unit is the Fashion Police Squad.
Fashion Police Squad
Developer: Mopeful Games
Price: $20
Platform: PC – Steam
Born of the “Boomer Shooter” genre, Fashion Police Squad is a pixel-art, humorous dive back into retro-fps. In it, you take on the role of Des, a member of the Fashion Police Squad set out to solve fashion crimes and determine why such unfashionable behavior is happening in our fair city. Tasked by his partner, Haley, to take care of a few “gray suits” in the area, Des sets out with his 2DYE4 Carbine Elite to blast some color into those monochrome fools.
The fashion crimes laid out in the opening paragraph are usually on-point. Many of the fashion crimes range from baggy pants, oversized suits, socks with sandals, and speedos – things that you’re apt to see in your day-to-day life and might snicker at to yourself or make you roll your eyes. And while most of the enemy types make sense and are fun, there’s a bit of a stretch and a heavy focus on male fashion crimes. In fact, my only grievance with the enemy types is that there are only two women enemy types, and neither is particularly compelling. Between the Karen who wears an ill-fitting sack of potatoes and the DJ whose main issue appears to be too much color in her outfit, I didn’t think the women enemy types were well thought out.
That grievance aside, the enemy types, in general, are well thought out and fun to fight against. Each enemy introduces new combos and weapon features. The Tailormade is essentially a ranged sewing machine, allowing you to pin up and tighten the fit on some of those unfit, oversized suits. If you run into German tourists wearing socks and sandals, just whip out a sock gnome to munch those suckers off their feet. If someone’s outfit is a little too loud, you can suck the color out of them with your 2DYE4’s alternate fire, which will boost the primary attack. There’s a lot in play here, and it’s a rewarding experience to get through without assistance or a reminder of what to do. Though, if you forget, Haley is always around to remind you what gun is needed when fighting an enemy.
The Belt of Justice is another weapon in your arsenal that also assists you in navigation. Aside from taking care of those pesky pant-saggers and stunning enemies, you can use the belt as a whip to latch onto poles strategically placed around the city and swing from them. There’s a fair amount of first-person platforming in Fashion Police Squad, and it’s made actually enjoyable by the gadgets provided. Likewise, the Wet’Ones, which is really just a soapy water gun, can be shot on the floor in front of you to make you move faster. This becomes especially helpful when trying to clear larger distances by getting a good running start before jumping. A lot of care went into level design and weapon cohesiveness.
The impressive design of Fashion Police Squad doesn’t end there. Some sections of the game reference older titles both in and out of the FPS genre. At one point, I was playing as Des in a Wolfenstein 3D-style game, followed by a sniper mission where I had multiple bullet types to make sure no fashion crimes were happening during a red carpet event. Mopeful Games wasn’t afraid of pushing the bounds of the genre they had chosen for their game. The challenges provided were fun, refreshing, and – most importantly – engaging.
Many of the little things about Fashion Police Squad really spoke to me and made it such a fun game. Each enemy type, on “death,” will turn into a more fashionable version of themselves. An enemy type, “The Flasher,” who wears a trenchcoat and reveals his fashion crime to you upon opening, tells you you’ve helped them turn their life around upon defeat. When you defeat a “Tiny Suit,” whose suit is way too tight, they comment that they can feel their hands again. When playing Fashion Police Squad you can feel the humor-inspired writing radiating the whole way through the game.
There are several areas where you’ll be greeted by references to older games like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII. One thing that stood out was the lack of meme-culture humor that seems to infiltrate a lot of humor-based indie titles. I really appreciated that while, understandably, the fashion crimes will fall out of style, the humor won’t. The antagonist’s primary trauma they were born from is that they had to wear hand-me-down fashion. So while references exist, the humor is fashion-centric, which is a huge plus in a comedy-style game.
Fashion Police Squad has its issues, but it’s a very good game. Likewise, some of the things like being unable to change difficulty on the fly or being able to get out of bounds are staples for the genre and decidedly non-issues. More importantly, from a foundational level to the highest highs, Fashion Police Squad is an incredibly fun game. The shooting feels great, the humor is enjoyable, the platforming is fun to master and easy to understand, and Fashion Police Squad didn’t overstay its welcome.
The Final Word
I can’t think of a game in the genre I’d recommend more right now than Fashion Police Squad.
MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
