Oh man, I loved this game. Fashion Police Squad is a boomer-shooter where you “punish” those who commit fashion crimes. Weird, I know, but bear with me.
Unlike what feels like every other old-school Doom-inspired first-person shooter, in Fashion Police Squad you don’t shoot to kill demons, ghosts, zombies, or whatever. You don’t rip and tear them. Here, you drip and tear them, and I’m sure I am not the first or last person to use this pun.
You are the Fashion Police and your job is to save Trendopolis from going out of fashion. The streets are littered with enemies like plain drab businessmen, neon-colored shirt-wearing scooter bros, saggy pants vaping dudes, tourists wearing socks and sandals… you know, people who commit crimes against fashion. Something feels fishy as there must be someone behind pulling all the strings and that’s what you’ll try to uncover. I know it’s pretty out there, but at the same time, it’s something new and unique.
While blasting a demon with a shotgun up close never gets old, it’s also fun to blast a barrage of paintballs from a paintball gun to bring some much-needed color to a plain suit. Or use an old treadle sewing machine as you guessed it, a machine gun to fix unfit suits or potato dresses. There are also 3 different guns plus the belt and the glove at your disposal to bring fashion back.
Something really cool that this game does with its enemy designs is that to “fix” specific enemies you need to use a specific gun. Blasting the paintball gun won’t work on a loose suit or using the soap gun will not work on a vape dude. To fix loose suits you need to shoot them with the sewing machine or the soap gun and for the saggy pants dudes you need to whip them with your belt, cause you know, it’s a belt. The adaptive triggers and haptic feedback feel also great on the DualSense.
What this whole deliberate design accomplishes is that it forces you to always be on the move and switch up your guns. As you progress through the levels, new enemy types get introduced along with alternate firing modes for your guns so you can drip them up. This sort of transforms each encounter into a mini puzzle as you might need to shoot them with something first to then finish them off with another gun.
Then you have the special ability, the one-shot, the Glove. Once the meter is full, you can use the Glove for a couple of seconds which does exactly what a glove does. You will slap some fashion sense onto these “criminals” one by one and man, slapping them is utterly satisfying.
There are also a couple of really cool boss fights, each unique not only in boss mechanics but also in presentation. One, in particular, has three different stages that transport you to different virtual realities that pay homage to some of the OG boomer shooters.
Apart from the gunplay, the movement also plays a big role. There’s a lot of platforming to do across the levels as you’ll need to jump across barriers to move forward and yes, there’s a grappling hook for some exhilarating sequences. Levels are fairly large and very well put together with encounter environments ranging from tight corridor-like spaces to big open town squares filled with enemies. I must say that movement feels absolute on point, fast, and responsive with tight controls, especially since I played this on the PS5.
As for the presentation, the game looks really great. The 3D environments look great, and vibrant with tons of references and puns from the fashion world and not only. The guns and the enemies feature a 2D pixelized cutout art style similar to the old Doom games. Throw into the mix some pretty awesome music and you’ll have a blast playing through this game.
I had a ton of fun with Fashion Police Squad. It’s funky, quirky, and filled to the brim with fashion puns. Movement feels on point and the mini-puzzle-like design approach to gunplay keeps things interesting. Yeah, Fashion Police Squad is an easy recommendation, play it. Thanks for reading.
The game was reviewed on a PS5 using a promo code provided by the PR. Fashion Police Squad is available now on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch.
