I did a bit on this regarding the demo that came out way earlier, and there were plenty of personalities to find here. This is a GZDoom mod that doesn't involve blood splattering, and brutal reckoning with an arsenal of weapons. All you do is color the world and add chic, to put a stop to the dull, mundane, vigorless society around you.
Putting sizzle back, that here is what the Fashion Police Squad is for. It's also a fun GZDoom mod that reminds me why shooting games back in the mid 90s and modern middle market games were so exciting to check out. Because not everything revolved around shooting people fast as possible, even to the mindless degree.
Combining platforming and puzzle solving, the rest is just fast reflexes and your ability to, well, fixing your enemies attire as fast as possible while dodging and weaving. No, I wouldn't call this game the most distinguished one I played this year, but here's why I kept going, and how I was really having fun the whole time.
A busy day coming for Fashion PD, a bigger day for Sergeant Des, as he goes all out against anyone out of style now in the major city. Wearing baggy pants, loose suits, tight clothes with pants above ankle, socks with sandals, and so on. There's a grand conspiracy behind all this, and it's up to the police squad to get to the bottom of.
The Saturday morning cartoon intro, some snazzy dialogue, fast mouthed wit, and silly aesthetics just tells you what you're really in for. What I was in for. It's silly in a way that it reminds me of the Looney Tunes Show, and some of the stuff we recently see in Cartoon Network. I even started liking the characters well enough that I just wanted to keep going with the story, right from the 1st hour I've played.
The game perfectly blends FPS shooting with platforming and puzzle solving. Later levels get trickier as I was surrounded easily by so many different enemy types, and it later turns into a bullet hell dodge fest. It all works out as the game pushes me to improve while having fun too. I wouldn't call it flexible in terms of play style since you have to use fixed weapons against certain enemies, it can be sometimes the case where two different weapons can work on the same enemy type. The game is even letting me swing with poles midst battle for crazy verticality.
To be clear, there is a market that makes games like Ultrakill thrive, a place that has seen inception since the day brutal doom mods and ones inspired by such have been coming out in waves. A response to AAA gaming that have mostly focused on production quality, and shock value rather than purely engaging gameplay.
I played while laughing, dodging, and weaving enemy attacks, while being fast on the KBM. The level design changes as the locales do, from suburban towns, commercials areas to underground subway stations. Everything I've learned from playing in these levels, I had to use em during tricky situations time to time. It kept me on my feet since I was playing on a higher difficulty, and was fairly designed around that too.
You got a gun that shoots water, takes out pyromaniacs and fire, but also can be used as a faster way to travel distance and can be used to jump further. A gun for both combat and platforming, that's neat. The game's version of a grenade are gnomes you throw for removing socks over sandals.
The various arsenals you get are for taking out specific targets, you're shooting to fix things, not destroy them. So it makes sense in-mid gameplay that you have to juggle between them while battling different enemies to fix their attire problem. The belt acts as a melee weapon, but also as a platforming whip to swing around poles.
It's easy to get into a game like this, depending on the kind of player you are. Me, of course, I chose the veteran one, and you can see I am getting my can whooped. It's fairly designed, and yet introduces newer challenges based on changes of both the level design, and different enemy encounters.
I've been swinging like Tarzan above ground, but also trekking around areas to find secret bonuses, and pickups for health and SWAG (armor) too. I do apologize if my fashion lingo has kind of faded away, but the gameplay showcased here even fun without the fashion glow plastered all over. The fashion elements complement the game by being silly, and cartoonish in interesting, charming ways.
And the boss battles, oh boy, they're wackiness incarnate here. Not only am I swinging, but the dude has 4 other guys throwing bombs at me. In his other mode, he goes jumping here and there, and starts throwing me gold bars. I guess the temptation of money is Des's greatest weakness? Eh, maybe leave the allegory for much later, and just focus on the stitching.
All of this is what I mean when I say, the game is absolutely charming to look and play at. I mean, anyone can just play a game like this. It's 30% 3D, not even that demanding for a non-discrete GPU. I really had fun, I'll remember this one very fondly. If you're a fan of classic FPS, I implore you to check it out. It's criminal how only few in Steam is playing this.
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