‘Fashion Police Squad’: Fun, Fashionable, Frustrating
Growing up in Florida, I’ve always wanted to be able to slap some fashion sense into folks who wear socks with their sandals. Fashion Police Squad (FPS for short, in case you missed this like I did) is a Doom-like game with a handful of twists, the most significant of which is that the game is entirely non-violent: instead of hurting your enemies, you’re sprucing up their wardrobe. So instead of bullets, you’re shooting splashes of color, sewing needles, or entire wardrobes (from the B.F.G – the big fashionable gun). Fashion Police Squad really lives up to its name, with its entire story being built on fashion puns and a highly colorized world that looks great on a micro scale. Still, it feels frustratingly incomplete in ways that don’t ruin the experience but certainly mire it.
After having just recently played Super 3-D Noah’s Arc, the infamous Doom-like where Noah shoots animal feed at rogue animals on his boat, I was itching for something that felt good to play but achieved that same sense of level familiarity and almost survival-horror levels of inventory and ammo management. Fashion Police deviates from that pretty early on, offering combat encounters that are a little more wide open, but still feeling more linear in general. A checkpoint system offers a much more straightforward experience, moving the game along from one fight to the next. There are secrets (in the form of hilarious fashion posters), but they never feel particularly difficult or rewarding to find. Thankfully, the combat is rewarding in itself with a dozen or so enemy types that require mastery of each weapon in the game (of which there are five, with a small handful of variants). Fashion Police actually requires a specific weapon type for each enemy, so it’s less about experimenting to find a favorite and more about learning the basic mechanics of each.
Each weapon has a fair amount of feedback, with the starting shotgun weapon (the “2DYE-4”) being a fun starting point. It feels like a standard Doom shotgun, but with the added bonus of seeing the enemies go from a dull gray to a vibrant black suit and golden tie. The best weapon, however, is the “Wet’Ones’”, a double-edged supersoaker with bubbles you can shoot at the ground to speed up your movement, and a direct machine gun that builds up pressure as you shoot. It seems like Fashion Police puts a real emphasis on speedrunning, with a lot of different movement options (including a belt that can snap to street lights) that feel pretty good once I got the hang of it. Fashion Police is at its absolute best when things feel fast-paced and frantic.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that slow the experience down. There were several bugs I ran into, including my key bindings not saving after I reloaded checkpoints or died (which I did quite a bit of on the hardest difficulty). There were also a dozen or so instances of enemies flooding the walls, and while they could still aim and shoot at me, I could not hit them. Even worse, some of the checkpoints would load you minutes before the checkpoint pops up, which was particularly frustrating when I’d get reloaded right before a set of story exposition that I’d have to go through over and over again. Again, it just served to slow the experience down to a level I’m sure Fashion Police doesn’t want anyone to have to experience.
There were also a handful of balancing issues that I noticed. Some enemies, like “The Flasher” do an inordinate amount of damage compared to other enemy types. It’s too bad too, because the enemy design is really pretty genius. For instance, there’s an enemy touting way too much leather in a BDSM-esque outfit. When you go to use the belt on a different enemy type (one whose pants hang at their knees with their boxers showing), the BDSM enemy jumps out in front, delightfully taking the belt whip for them. It’s funny and interesting, and a showcase of what Fashion Police is capable of. It’s just unfortunate that when the big combat encounters take place, some waves are just way more difficult than others because the enemies do shockingly high levels of damage and are hard to hit.
The thing I appreciate most about Fashion Police, however, is how much it commits to its bit. It’s not an overly long game at about 5-6 hours, but there is never a dull moment. There’s a lot of gameplay variety too, especially for a Doom-like. The bosses force some really interesting platforming, there’s a driving sequence where you’re blasting from a vehicle at full speed, and the platforming can get pretty challenging with the bubble weapon. The entirety of the experience is built around fashion – it’s clear this game was made with love.
And that’s why I think it’s easy to recommend it: this is a game that feels so distinct and unique, even within its own genre, that I’m quite certain there is nothing like it. It’s colorful, it bounces with energy, and it’s short enough that the frustrations don’t sit for too long. Fashion Police is as fun as it is fashionable.
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