It’s Crime Fighting Time
‘Boomer Shooters’ are seemingly popping up everywhere, everyone is killing demons, aliens and other monsters to a metal beat while blood and guts go flying. And why not, its what the gamers love, but what if I told you there was a game that took the essence of those games but instead of killing monsters you instead are making sure people are looking fly as f#$% 100% of the time? I’ve played a lot of shooters in my time but I have never played one quite like Fashion Police Squad.
MSRP: $19.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $19.99
Fashion Police Squad (FPS) trades in the dark and gothic usual environments for these games and trades them in with a bright and open city. While graphically akin to the old school Doom or better yet the newer Dusk or Proteus, FPS has a style all its own. Instead of the usual demons as bad guys, the only evils players will find here are guys with baggy suits, Karens (and they are hilarious in this) and people wearing socks with sandals. In FPS players will take on the role of Des, who will be sent out by his partner to clean up fashion related crimes around the city.
One of the initial missions has players going after some ‘Grey’s’, who are people wearing a very drab and grey outfit. Instead of killing enemies here, Des is armed with a shotgun like weapon that fires dye which livens up the drab outfits. Each of the different enemies require a specific weapon to liven up their ‘fit and while the dye shotgun works on drab it will not help against a baggy suit. For that players will use a sewing machine gun that hems the suit to make it fit as it should. In most ‘boomer shooters’ players have gotten used to keeping an eye on ammo levels as well as health and armor. Well in FPS all the weapons have unlimited ammo, but when the game starts to throw a bunch of different types of enemies at Des, players will have to be able to know what weapon to switch too in order to give the perp a taste of style.
Honestly the only real negatives I have to say about Fashion Police Squad is that it is fairly short and very linear. Clocking in at 13 missions the game doesn’t overstay its welcome, which isn’t a bad thing at all but I would love more. I would hope with a sequel they would address how linear this one was, instead of being blocked by doors that need the primary color scale worth of key cards, players will run into colored ropes in FPS that can be cut by finding the corresponding colored scissors. There is only one path to go to find these items and while that’s cool, I would have liked larger levels with more instances to run into fashion criminals. Des’ super move where he teleports to people and slaps some fashion sense into them is truly one of the highlights and it works by building a meter which due to the levels you only get to use it once per.
One of the greatest things about this game is when you finish helping someone’s style you are met with a ‘YAAAS’ or ‘DAYUM’ while the newly fashioned perp is dancing with joy. Truly the only thing that tops it is the fashion show you get when players finish each level. I loved the hell out of Fashion Police Squad, not only did it feel familiar with its shooter roots but its premise of cleaning up the streets of fashion crimes is so unique and charmingly done that the game just exudes a swag all its own.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
