Fashion Police Squad Review | Dressed to Impress

The age of boomer shooters is upon us. Or, to be more accurate, has been upon us and, just like early 2000s fashion, they came back without us even noticing. On our site alone, we have covered several different retro shooters in the last year, from Project Warlock II to Scathe. In such a saturated market, new games have to do something to differentiate themselves from their inspirations. In the debut game from Mopeful, the hook is fashion. The question, however, is whether Fashion Police Squad is in season or if it’s best left on the clearance rack. Spoiler alert: it’s not the latter.

You play as Sergeant Des, a member of the prestigious Fashion Police Squad (FPS for short) as they work to stop a massive crime of fashion. Along the way, you must use your growing arsenal of clothing-themed weapons to blast some sense into your enemies. I don’t usually like to compare games in reviews, but in the case of Fashion Police Squad, both comparisons are compliments and should help you get a better understanding of the game as a whole. The first is Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, as both games have a wholehearted commitment to telling a story that feels like a Madlib retelling of a random 80s action movie. Fashion Police Squad is nothing if not committed to the bit and through the roughly five-hour campaign, you will hear fashion pun after fashion pun, most of which are amusingly creative.

The second comparison I have to make is with Titanfall 2, but this one will take a bit more explanation. Fashion Police Squad is a first-person shooter where you will not just shoot wave after wave of enemies mindlessly. Don’t get me wrong, there are waves and waves of enemies to fight, but doing so requires some focus. This is because there are several different types of enemies in Fashion Police Squad and they can each be dealt with by one (or two in the late game) of the weapons in your arsenal. For example, if you see an enemy with loose, baggy clothes, then you have to use your tailoring gun to fix it. If the enemy is donning a drab grey suit, then you need to splash them with a bit of color. You get the idea. This mix and matching of weapons to ridiculous enemy types mean you constantly have to assess who you’re fighting and what you’re using. Plus, the introduction of new enemy types (especially in the later missions) was a surprise in its own right. This sort of combat mechanic might lead some players to find the game too complex for its own good, for me, however, it was the reason why the game remained engaging even in its closing encounters.

Now, my Titanfall 2 comparison is primarily due to the pacing of Fashion Police Squad. It’s a short campaign but it packs in a lot of variety. There are parkour sequences, car chases, boss fights, and more. Being a boomer shooter, Fashion Police Squad wears its inspirations proudly on its sleeve, and, sometimes, boldly on its chest. Everything from its level design, which replaces the search for keycards with color-coordinated cutting scissors, to the difficulty selection menu, is reminiscent of classics like DOOM and Wolfenstein. With plenty more passing references to things like Zero Wing. It took me two days to play through the game and a big part of what kept me coming back (for multiple sessions in a day) was the intrigue of what would come next. The wild soap opera twists are pretty fun and so often the gameplay sections that follow are too.

Of course, a key part of a lot of retro shooters is not just what you see in front of you in a level, but what you don’t. Each mission of Fashion Police Squad has secrets to uncover and these often require some experimentation with the game’s movement mechanics. This encourages you to go off the beaten path where you can find something as simple as a poster of Des in bold fashion styles or even a trophy, as is the case with L’Art. At the end of each level, you’ll be shown a stat screen with your time taken, crimes stopped, swag found, and secrets discovered. These stats will also appear on the menu selection screen after completion. These are all nice but I do wish the game gave some sort of grade-based rank as well. This would help encourage more replayability in pursuit of better scores.

Speaking of replayability, to some, this might be the weakest aspect of Fashion Police Squad. After beating the 13 main missions, you can take on the three challenge missions. The first two are disappointingly short with the third being the only real challenge. After that, however, there’s not much else to bring you back. You can go back and replay the levels to get a better time and look for secrets, but there isn’t really a reward to motivate you to do so. Unless, of course, you’re going for the Platinum. That being said, the game is only $20, and especially if you can find it on sale (like right now on Steam) it’s worth the price of entry.

Fashion Police Squad‘s gameplay boasts a pixelated art style with a blend of both 3D environments and 2D enemies and objects. The style is strong overall and there’s a surprising amount of detail packed into everything. The cutscenes though are either graphic novel-style panels (another similarity it shares with Blood Dragon) or in-game animations with the cinematic black bars on top and bottom that I love (as my film professors will attest). I also want to mention that on the PlayStation 5 (where I played it) the game runs smoothly and has quite a few settings for you to tweak. You can turn off motion blur, increase the FOV, and toggle screen shake, all of which I personally did.

My only real criticisms of Fashion Police Squad are in regard to the sound. The game’s dialogues are delivered with simple dialogue boxes and for a game that otherwise has so much sass, I would have loved it if the game was voice-acted. I did still laugh at some of the humor, but hearing them being said aloud and not just reading it would have made a bigger impact in my opinion. At the same time, the few lines of dialogue there are in the game, namely in the beginning, felt flat to me. Voice-over work is always difficult for an indie game to nail down, which is why they so often resort to text-box dialogue, so I don’t entirely fault the game for it. And, luckily, the music is good and does a good job of setting the tone for the game.

Fashion Police Squad is a self-aware and often funny retro shooter full of puns and pizzazz. It’s a game I’d pretty easily recommend to anyone who enjoys first-person shooters, and not just boomer ones. Granted, someone whose gaming appetite is only AAA blockbuster titles like Call of Duty and Battlefield, however, might not enjoy the art style and the need to match weapon to enemy type. But if you like Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon‘s self-aware humor and Titanfall 2‘s short but diverse campaign, then Mopeful’s latest is a guaranteed good time. Fashion Police Squad is out now on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. A code was provided by the publisher for review.