From the moment I saw Fashion Police Squad’s first trailer, I knew I’d stumbled on something special. For the sake of full disclosure, I’m not normally a fan of traditional FPS titles. I’ve played around with the Halo franchise, I love the Bioshock games, and the new iterations of Doom are fun enough, but most FPS protagonists and settings don’t interest me. Fashion Police Squad takes a campy, pacifistic approach to the FPS genre, wrapping it up in things like drag culture, LGBT themes, and a whole lot of color and charm.

You play as Sergeant Desmond, a member of the titular Fashion Police Squad in the city of Trendopolis. Your job is to stomp out fashion crimes like ill-fitting suits, socks with sandals, garish neon monstrosities, and more. Your time with Sergeant Desmond and his partner Officer Haley starts out simple enough, but as you progress through the missions you’ll uncover a sinister plot to turn Trendopolis into a dull, grey, bland city of broken dreams.

Fashion Police Squad’s gameplay seems like a simple enough affair. You have a variety of weapons at your disposal, each suited for taking on a different type of fashion crime. As such, you won’t be able to favor one or two weapons throughout the whole game. You’ll have to consistently switch between all your weapons so that you can solve fashion crimes throughout the city.

Desmond can jump as well as grapple with his Belt of Justice which also stuns enemies. Each of his weapons also has a secondary fire that can be used for various functions. Sometimes new enemies will pop up and require creative solutions, like using the secondary fire of your first weapon to tone down the color of a criminal’s neon top.

As you explore, you find scissors that help you get past velvet ropes, mocktails to restore health, and swag to give you armor. Additionally, you can find secret areas that have special collectibles. As you progress, you’ll also unlock costume items that can give you various benefits if you equip them before a mission.

There are a variety of difficulty options available in Fashion Police Squad, and you can choose from a variety of accessibility options too. Things like non-stylized fonts are great for people with dyslexia, and there are other options like remappable controls which are great for those with different mobility restrictions. As a Nintendo Switch game, Fashion Police Squad plays very well, and the visual style is perfect for the hardware.

I didn’t have any issues with lag, crashes, or framerate problems. In fact, I was consistently impressed by how gorgeous the pixel art style was. The art style, combined with the campy dialogue and wonderfully inclusive premise is enough to make me want to recommend Fashion Police Squad wholeheartedly, though it does have two issues you should be aware of.

Using Desmond’s belt to grapple is somewhat unwieldy. If you get the timing down correctly it isn’t much of a problem, but it does take some getting used to. Additionally, switching between weapons is somewhat frantic at times, even though the controls to do so are simple. Having to switch weapons for different enemies adds a great puzzle-esque flair to the combat, but it does have moments where in the chaos of battle you might struggle to hit the right buttons at the right time.

Overall, I love Fashion Police Squad to death. I think it has a lot of charm, and the game is so unique that I hope we see more games like it. I’d recommend Fashion Police Squad for all ages too, since other than “cartoon violence” there’s no mature theming involved here.

A Nintendo Switch Review Copy of Fashion Police Squad was provided by No More Robots for this review.

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Fashion Police Squad

$19.99 USD

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Great Pixel-Visuals
• Campy, Fun Storyline
• Inclusive, Diverse message
• Fun Gameplay
• Lots of Accessibility Options

Cons

• Swapping Weapons in chaotic fights is rough
• Swinging/Grappling is a little clunky