Future Cop: LAPD | Review | PS1 perfection!
Developer: Visceral (EA Redwood Shores)
Publisher: EA
Platform: PS1
At a certain point, sensationally bad video game publisher EA decided they were no longer interested in creating art and so dropped the pretence, simply going by EA instead of Electronic Arts. There was a time though when the company proudly displayed their name and after forming a new development studio, EA Redwood Shores in 1998, they would have a lot to be proud of in the coming years. You see, EA Redwood Shores would later change its name to Visceral, the team behind the beautifully scary Dead Space. They created possibly the best sports game of all time in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 and one of the best racing games on the PS1 with NASCAR Rumble. But even before that, with their very first game, they absolutely nailed it with what is undoubtedly my favourite PS1 game and that game is Future Cop: LAPD.
Set in a futuristic, gang-war-ridden LA, you play as the pilot of X1 Alpha, a police mech similar in aesthetic to Robocop's iconic Ed 209. In a city where the crime gangs are all packing their own firepower, including everything from laser rifles to tanks and bomber planes, X1 Alpha was designed to outmanoeuvre the enemy, picking them off with its own arsenal of versatile weaponry. Each of the games levels pit you against increasingly notorious (and increasingly crazy) LA crime bosses that all have different tricks up their sleeves. First and foremost, Myles Mysterio has turned the Griffith observatory into a giant space laser…. Don't worry, it gets even campier.
X1 Alpha is a blast to control. Utilising the classic combination of tank controls with L2 and R2 to strafe, dodging bullets while firing off your own with the face buttons is easy and satisfying. Before each mission, you can assign square, cross and circle to your choice of light, heavy and special weapons, each tailored for specific circumstances. The flamethrower deals lasting damage at close range while the electric gun is capable of hitting multiple enemies in a chain. The mortar is a basic but effective long range bomb and the hyper velocity rockets can lock on and track mid-range targets with extreme precision. New weapons are usually unlocked with each mission completed but the earlier weapons are still effective enough that you can mix it up now and then. There are also a few secret unlockable weapons to play with once you've completed the campaign.
The level design of Future Cop can be quite complex, especially when the player is introduced to levels with a lot of water and other hazards. Luckily, X1 Alpha is an all-terrain vehicle. By pressing L1 and R1 at the same time, you can transform from bipedal mech to hovercraft. Not only does this allow you to breeze over mines without a care, but you can also now travel across water. Extreme care must be taken on hard difficulty as entering water in the wrong form means instant death and game over. There's plenty of platform jumping to be done in bipedal mode which can be quite fiddly with the tank controls but really tricky jumps only ever come about once per later level. You can also hold L1 to carefully walk in the really fiddly bits.
This does not take anything away from the gorgeously crafted levels themselves which are artistically distinct from many PlayStation games of the time. This vision of LA is a crowded, claustrophobic dystopia with snaking pipes and humming reactors, presumably providing this overpopulated city with electricity. Places like LAX are veritable fortresses, gun emplacements and wall-mounted turrets are everywhere. Even the statues at Griffith park will shoot laser beams at you.
As mentioned, enemies come in all shapes and sizes. Humanoids are in abundance and can overwhelm you if ignored for too long. Later on you can find these with slightly tougher armour as well as jetpacks and a variety of weapons, but they always go down quickly. Vehicles can throw surprises your way such as mortar wielding ones or some that are small and highly manoeuvrable can run rings around an unfocused player. Where Future Cop really shines though are the bosses which usually take the form of some high tech firepower piloted by the mob bosses who are greedily protecting their turf. These can be really close contests as each of you fire barrages of bullets and missiles towards each other. Each boss has an interesting gimmick too, such as one that dives in and out of the water.
Future Cop: LAPD’s music is once again another standout ps1 era electro-industrial banger. There's a militaristic marching theme that threads through most of the tracks and this is overlaid by punchy, chaotic saw synth arpeggios.
Once you've eradicated all the scum from the underbelly of LA, there's even more fun to be had with the game which some might even class as the real Future Cop experience. A second mode: 'Precinct Assault' allows you to take on a series of MOBA style battles against an enemy called Sky Captain. These are symmetrical maps with capturable turrets placed throughout, each kill or capture nets you points which can be spent on jets to defend your base or tanks to go out and attack the enemy base. Sky Captain can do everything you can do, but he's in a fighter jet and the later stages can get extremely challenging.
Precinct Assault is one of the earliest examples of the MOBA genre which today has exploded in popularity and indeed, you can play this mode multiplayer too, with player 2 using another X1 Alpha in the place of Sky Captain. Earlier examples of this type of game can be traced all the way back to 1989's Herzog Zwei on the SEGA Mega Drive but the release of the pc version of Future Cop cemented Precinct Assault as the first true MOBA. I personally have never been into these kinds of symmetrical competitive multiplayer games but Precinct Assault is something I return to regularly and I would even go so far as to say that, if this mode had a level editor and made a resurgence in the PC gaming space, I would play this every day. It's just that damn fun!
Well, I hope this review has got across how Future Cop is an essential game for any PS1 enthusiast and also how it remains relevant to today's gaming sphere with its excellent take on MOBA, before that term was even coined. If there were ever to be a spiritual successor to this game I would snap it up instantly but it's a shame that EA will probably never again acknowledge the era in which they were at the very top of their game.
Pros:
Extremely tight 3rd person shooting action.
Well executed futuristic tone and atmosphere.
Lengthy campaign followed by even more content.
Cons:
Fiddly platform jumps.
Touching water can mean instant death.
