Stop fashion crimes and look good doing it - Fashion Police Squad Quick Review

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it! This old-school shooter packs way more style and flair into its dozen-plus levels than the average boomer shooter. If you’re looking for a fast-paced blast of swag and fun, you can’t do much better than Fashion Police Squad.

TIME PLAYED

I spent three hours with Fashion Police Squad, which took me through about half of the game’s main levels plus a few of the intense challenge missions. Note that I spent a lot of time exploring the levels trying to get one hundred percent completion, so you may move through much faster than I did.

Also note that I played the PC version, but the game also just launched across all current consoles (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S and Series X). With that in mind, I tested the game with both keyboard/mouse and using a controller, and it works just fine with both.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• The fashion, duh! Fashion Police Squad’s twist on the shooter is that instead of pumping bad guys full of lead, you’re fixing their misguided fits. Dudebros with baggy pants? Businessmen wearing dumpy suits that are way too big for their bodies? Tourists rocking (gasp) socks with their sandals? It’s up to you fix all of these style atrocities and make the citizens of your city fabulous.

• Great old-school design. As a modern boomer shooter, the level design, encounter design, and overall game flow of Fashion Police Squad borrows from the classics. The context might be wildly different, but zooming through these levels at high speed and taking on hordes of enemies feels like Doom more than, say, Call of Duty. The three-person team at developer Mopeful Games has clearly done its homework, as they pull off the adrenaline-rush thrill of classic shooters perfectly.

• Goofs. One big difference between something like Doom and Fashion Police Squad is that the latter has a sense of humor...and a story! The game’s buddy cop duo of protagonists regularly pause the action for brief bouts of silly dialogue. It would be easy for these to come across as more annoying than funny, but I found the writing sharp, and it never lasted too long. The overarching mystery about who’s behind the city’s fashion faux pas is also fun to follow and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

• Not overstaying its welcome. Depending on your speed and skill, a full playthrough of Fashion Police Squad should last anywhere in the realm of four to eight hours. I've got nothing but respect for a game that recognizes how long the fun lasts and doesn't try to drag things out.

• The Fab Slap Glove. The ultimate power-up wielded by the Fashion Police Squad is the Fab Slap Glove, a stylish accessory that allows you to zip around any battlefield, slapping fashion sense into any poorly dressed fool who gets in your way. Now that’s what I call fabulous.

WHAT SUCKS

• Weapon restrictions. This is a minor complaint, but each of the enemy types in Fashion Police Squad is only weak to a specific weapon. I was forced to swap weapons to deal with specific baddies rather than changing weapons based on my mood. It’s a unique take on boomer shooters, but I honestly would have preferred to clear out big groups using the game’s equivalent of the shotgun, or attack from afar using the game’s version of a machine gun, regardless of the opponent I was facing. Maybe if there’s a sequel!

💬 So how’s it looking? Are you going to play Fashion Police Squad, or does this game’s style get a skip from you?