Fashion Police Squad Review: A Cut Above The Rest

We’ve all been there. Out and about, running errands around town, minding our own business, and then we see it. We can’t take our eyes off it. We fall into a stunned state that someone dares think their behavior is acceptable in this day and age. Appalled at what our poor eyeballs are being subjected to, we mutter under our breaths, fuelled by pure unadulterated rage, “how can someone think wearing socks with sandals is still appropriate in this day and age?”. We’re decent people, though, so we ignore it and walk on, but you better believe we’re spending the rest of the day riled up by this crime against basic fashion, dreaming of slapping that person silly and reprimanding them for their fashion faux pas.

If you at all relate to the above, Fashion Police Squad is the perfect slice of video game escapism. Stepping into the shoes of Sergeant Des of the Fashion Police, it’s your job to take to the streets of Trendopolis, cleaning the streets up one fashion crime at a time in one of the most innovative FPS titles I’ve perhaps ever played.

A Worrying Trend

As I’ve mentioned, Fashion Police Squad sees players stepping into the shoes of fashionable law enforcer, Sergeant Des. Des and his team serve one purpose; keeping the streets of Trendopolis free of textile-related trouble. Worryingly, trends in Trendopolis are going south, and it falls on Des and his team to get to the bottom of what’s happening to this once-bustling fashion hub, restoring Trendopolis to its fabulous former self in the process.

True Innovation

What this all amounts to in practice is an FPS that’s positively dripping in style and innovation. At its core, Fashion Police Squad’s moment-to-moment gunplay looks to emulate the visceral and frantic feel of classic boomer shooters, but, it uses its whacky concept to elevate itself and become so much more.

Whereas a typical boomer shooter sees you reducing enemies into pools of bloody pulp, Fashion Police Squad simply asks that you make its citizens look terrific again. The enemy variety is absolutely on brand given the nature of the title and leans wonderfully on well-known fashion crimes to create a brilliantly diverse enemy roster, including businessmen in drab and ill-fitting suits, electric scooter riders draped in neon, vapers wearing baggy jeans that barely cover their asses and Karens wearing loose potato sacks.

This not only allows for a great deal of visual diversity amongst the villain roster but also within the breadth of attacks that you’ll be dealing with at any given moment. Baggy suit-wearing bores will launch briefcases at you, some of which explode on impact. Vapers will leave clouds of harmful vapor lingering that locks down portions of the combat arenas you step into, and Karens will pounce on you from a distance, enveloping you in toxic gas, which I can only assume is intended to represent the toxicity spread by angry Karens around the world.

It’s incredibly clever stuff. Not only does it keep things visually diverse, but it also lends itself to ensuring that combat encounters are genuinely difficult and tactical as you work out what enemies you need to prioritize. Each enemy engagement turns into a combat puzzle, which is only complicated further by the fact that each enemy is only susceptible to damage from a specific weapon type. Baggy suits and potato sacks need to be stitched into shape by a rapid-fire sewing machine gun, drab outfits need to be injected with color via the dye gun, and on it goes. Each fashion crime has a very specific counter, so unlike, say, Doom, where I inevitably settle on one or two guns as my go-to weapons, Fashion Police Squad forces you to engage with your full arsenal.

It’s genius stuff, quite frankly, and as alluded to above, Fashion Police Squad almost becomes a puzzle/shooter hybrid. Unfortunately, the constant weapon switching can begin to grate in the second half of the campaign, where you’re often required to switch weapons every few seconds to combat the increased enemy variety. I suffered many frustrating deaths at the hands of trying to make sense of the mayhem on screen while I frantically scrambled trying to find the right weapon. It’s not a deal breaker, but it does become a lot to deal with and can lead to some really rough difficulty spikes.

Hit The Streets

When you aren’t ridding the streets of unfashionable monstrosities, Fashion Police Squad settles into a more predictable rhythm. Each level is stuffed with secrets aplenty in true boomer shooter fashion, with some of them requiring precise platforming to reach.

Much of the platforming revolves around the ‘Belt of Justice,’ which isn’t only used to tighten up the waistline of hipster vapers but also to swing around the many grapple points that line the streets of Trendopolis. You’ll need to get comfortable with it regardless of whether you want to hunt down secrets, as the critical path of each level isn’t shy about throwing in tricky platforming segments that must be mastered in order to progress. In addition, boss arenas also contain grapple points which can be used to evade screen-filling attacks, so it’s a mechanic that cannot be ignored. Thankfully, grappling across levels feels great and feels precise. Whenever I failed a tricky platforming section, I always knew it was my fault; a huge accomplishment when you consider how often first-person platforming can feel out of place if the physics aren’t balanced quite right.

Runs Great On Switch

It may be because it employs a simple yet effective graphical style, reminiscent of the boomer shooters it riffs on, but it’s worth pointing out regardless that Fashion Police Squad plays superbly on Switch.

I played in both docked and handheld, and both presented a smooth framerate that gave me no issues. The only issue that I did encounter was combat readability when playing handheld. As the levels ramp up and more and more enemies get thrown into the mix, it can be tough to differentiate between enemies when you’re in the thick of it on the small screen, hence why I switched to docked play about halfway through my playthrough. If handheld is your only option, however, don’t sweat it, as this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, given how great the game looks and how well it performs overall.

Get Your Glad Rags On

Fashion Police Squad is a boomer shooter with a fashion-infused twist, and that twist has resulted in one of the most innovative shooters on the market right now. Despite the latter stages of the campaign proving somewhat frustrating due to the sheer amount of split-second decisions that need to be made, Fashion Police Squad rises above any gripes I have by providing something genuinely new and, most importantly, incredibly fun.

Final Verdict: 4/5

Available On: Switch (reviewed), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC; Publisher: No More Robots; Developer: Mopeful Games; Released: 2 February, 2023; Players: 1; ESRB: $19.99

Full Disclosure: A review copy was provided to HPP.