![]() ![]() Like St Michael and St Gabriel, right,” he says. ![]() But they can’t change the fact that I felt like I had to slog my way through the game’s obnoxious second half, even if the two sniping sequences and car chase level both focus on fun over tedium and remind me of how fantastic this game could have been.It’s not about killing for pleasure, or being a “homicidal maniac”, he says. It’s a real shame, because the concepts, general gameplay ideas, and visuals are all so good. I wish the game had quicksaves instead of checkpoints too, as many of said checkpoints force you to redo encounters far too often. Therein lies the problem with Fashion Police Squad‘s design philosophy: it’s more interested in being hard than it is in being fun, but instead of being hard, it’s consistently annoying. It’s pretty decent for most of its duration, but, again, the last section gives way to extreme tedium as you spend minutes dodging the boss just to wait and wait for a chance to attack. The final boss battle at the end of the game is clever, but it can’t compete with the level of fun and quality of the second one. The BFG gun also gives you such little ammo that you almost never get to use it prior to the final boss fight. If you use it beforehand, you can make your life much harder. There are also encounters that seem designed with you using your super in mind. But it takes so long to charge that you can only really use it once a level. You have a chargeable super attack that gives you about 20 seconds of invulnerability, and the ability to teleport to foes and take them out with a melee attack. Belly-flopping enemies threated to knock you off the roof, while two other kinds of enemies shoot at you while there’s nowhere to run. Another level has you fighting hordes of foes on narrow rooftops. Unfortunately, Fashion Police Squad trots out these sorts of situations time and again. These sections are horrible, and are the kind of thing that will keep me from ever playing the game again. You need to use the water gun to spray the floor to make it across the tracks while dealing with multiple enemies taking potshots at you, all while the fire enemy sets what little ground that isn’t electrified on fire. ![]() The first level after the second boss has you dealing with enemies in a subway station while you jump over electrified railroad tracks. Whenever a big group of different varieties of foes appears, that means that you have to use a single weapon to pick off the most threatening one, while avoiding attacks from their friends. Fashion Police Squad isn’t all that difficult, but it does get cheap and tedious in equal measure. ![]() It’s necessary to constantly switch between weapons during combat encounters. Specific weapons need to be used on specific enemies. One of the game’s biggest problems is the way damaging enemies works. But it doesn’t take long for the game to introduce a healthy amount of frustration. Fashion Police Squad has a very agreeable difficulty curve up to this point, as it mostly makes sure you’re comfortable with the mechanics as it briskly offers up new ones. But things sadly start to get as sloppy as a jacket that’s a few sizes too large. I was impressed and definitely leaning toward giving it an 8.5, especially considering said first half ends with one of the best boss battles I’ve ever seen in a retro shooter. The first half of the game mostly satisfied me. Naturally, it’s up to Des to get to the bottom of things and stop the influx of fashion crimes. But there’s something strange about the number of cases they’re seeing. These include such faux pas as wearing too many dull colors, wearing ill-fitting clothes, or wearing socks with sandals. They’re literally fashion police, so they show up on the scene whenever people commit fashion crimes. The titular squad (which actually appears to just be two people) is made up of Des and his partner Haley. Unfortunately, it’s also let down at times by uneven difficulty, extremely cramped, linear levels, and some design choices that would have been better off taken to a nearby tailor. The game certainly has more to set it apart than most do. And it has a lot of intriguing ideas that are as humorous as they are creative. Fashion Police Squad (its initials are FPS, get it?) is visually pitch-perfect. I feel like they hit the mark more often than not, and I’m glad there’s still this much interest in the genre Half-Life mutated so long ago. I try and play every throwback first-person shooter that comes out. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |