Wolfenstein – KissTheGames

In all the years I’ve played Wolfenstein 3D, and Doom I never considered that this would be a game. Sure those games were reskinned by modders, and one was sold as Super 3D Noah’s Ark, which was officially licensed by id Software too. Fashion Police Squad in some ways is a successor to games like id Software’s original first person shooters. It’s a blast that feels like it’s from the past.

Fashion Police Squad is a retro first person shooter comedy. You play as Sergeant Des and you target crimes against fashion. Your targets range from grey dull suits, to socks with sandals, and even baggy jeans. To deal with these targets you use your arsenal of weapons dependent on the crime like shooting colour at dull suits, to shooting gnomes at socks with sandals, and using a whip on baggy jeans. Weapons will only work against the right crime, so you will be switching on the fly. A lot of the comedy is in the form of corny dad jokes. It’s humorous at the end of a firefight when each enemy has turned fashionable and there are words above them like “SEXY”. There are thirteen missions and each will take around fifteen to twenty minutes.

The first level is hilarious as you jump into a fresh feeling retro game with a comedy gimmick. This goes away quickly for the next few missions as the level design feels bland and repetitive. The early missions look the same, and you are just learning new enemy types. These missions act like a lengthy tutorial. Once you get halfway through the game every level is well designed and looks dramatically different from the rest, the story grabs you and you feel compelled to do the next mission. The second half of the game is so much fun it’s as if they had gone back to the first level and padded the beginning to extend the playtime. The bosses are innovative and spoof other popular games. The whip is the saving grace for this game feeling different and exciting. You use the whip as a grapple hook and traverse sections like that. This could be the difficulty spike that makes it harder for some players, but there are difficulty settings you can change to lower it.

There is nothing groundbreaking about Fashion Police Squad. I liked it. The best thing about the game is how much it feels like an old school first person shooter. If you like the retro pixel art aesthetic from the game and FPS’s you should like this game. The main annoyance of the game comes to certain sections where you are forced to swap your weapons constantly to defeat waves of enemies. By the end of the game I would be interested to see the developers make a sequel that plays with the following generation of game technology. Prices are all over the place with games these days on the PlayStation Network, however this one gets it’s price point right.

Available now on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Robert Ring

The early nineties were this place of exceptional and experimental games. There was this new type of immersion taking place where the games industry were trying to make games feel 3D and from your point of view. This was the future of gaming for kids like me and our minds were blown. Before Wolfenstein 3D (1992), we were playing the terrible Prince of Persia (1989) or games I fondly remember like Commander Keen (1990). To get the games running required a basic understanding of programming. But when Wolfenstein 3D booted up for the first time it felt like you were this character. Like you were shooting and being shot at. It was the first time I can recall having some form of gaming adrenaline. The drawbacks of Wolfenstein 3D were not even understood until Doom (1993) came out and gave us a fluid shooter in a complex and realized world.

Doom was the game that became a showcase for how cool gaming could be. It was shared among everyone. At the time businesses were transitioning to computers in the workspace and Doom became popular in this space too. So Doom was getting a lot of attention. With that came a lot of bad press all throughout the news, which only gave it more popularity. It was a weird time when parents were trying to navigate whether or not the game was detrimental to their child’s health. For me, I was allowed to play it. It was always over at a friends place I played it and loved it. I can still remember playing on those big clunky keyboards, back before you played with a mouse. And the smell of the old CRT monitor with its eventual yellow glow.

Doom is being talked about again for a few reasons. Firstly, the reboot in 2016 proved to be a massive success and its sequel is releasing later on in the year. Sure the reboot was good, yet I’m still not quite into it like I was the original. Luckily for me, the original Doom, Doom II, and even Doom 3 became available for purchase on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One. After playing Doom (1993) again on the PlayStation 4, I find it still immerses me back into the Hellscape I came to love. The narrative finds you by the amazing world-building along with the classic enemy archetypes in this groundbreaking first-person shooter.

The story of how Doom came to be is rather interesting and I highly recommend the book Masters of Doom by David Kushner. Not only is it an interesting look behind video games it’s a fantastic drama between the two men who shaped the video game industry. The book is currently being adapted into a television show, so more on that as it happens.

For now, forget Pong and play Doom.

Robert Ring