Future Cop: LAPD (1998)

Beat on the hardest difficulty. The first 3 levels were awesome, and I had blast mowing down enemies and blowing shit up. The first thing I did was change the control scheme to L1 and R1 for strafe, with use and change target on the analog stick. There were a few times where the auto aim refused to target the closest enemy who was out of line of sight behind a corner, though I never felt the need to use the target switch button. The controls and gameplay were excellent, though strafing could result in moving too far and the hover car was difficult to not bounce off of every wall. This changed in level 4 onwards because of the greater focus on instant death platforming, which was far from this game's strong point. Jumping in the mech was awkward at best, and navigating narrow pathways was not much better. I died over a dozen times in level 4 from falling in water, and most of my deaths in later levels were from falling or environmental hazards rather than combat. In fact the only boss that I failed to kill on the first try was the prison dropships, and that was only because I ran out of ammo. The final 3 levels were annoying with platforming and gimmicky nonsense that seen me refer to a walkthrough multiple times. A technical issue I noticed was that audio cues did not always play at the appropriate trigger. Sometimes the entire backlog played after I looked at the map. After beating the campaign I beat each map in precinct assault once. I focused on claiming as many turrets as I could along the right side, then killing stuff to farm points. Spent those points on choppers for defense, then focused on attack. I won using either the dreadnought or spamming little tanks, and escorting them. It was actually easy to wipe out enemies and turrets. The hard part was keeping them down as they respawned. I did not try the sky fortress. This was a fun little mode that I could see playing again on occasion.

The weapons in this game were very satisfying to use. The sounds, the handling, and the enemy death animations made them feel powerful. I loved the mini gun, gatling laser, and electricity gun. I did not like the flamethrower and did not get the riot shield; I can't see wanting to use it because I like my guns long range. My preferred heavy weapon was the concussion beam because it combined high damage per shot with near instaneous hits. The rockets were good too, and the fusion torpedo did the most damage while being very slow. I did get the K9 rockets, which were incredibly slow but efficient because each shot could take out multiple enemies; it was more like a summoned minion than ordinance, but that made it less fun to use. The best special weapon was the plasma flare, which was a more powerful version of the mortar. I loved being able to shoot enemies over cover, thus the bouncy mine was crap. I went back for the grenade launcher and did not find it better than the flare because it seemed to have less of an arc trajectory. I would have enjoyed this game more if it was structured more like the Strike games with more open maps and more emphasis on strategy. The levels were a little confusing to navigate, especially when the camera went in too close or too far away. Despite the excellent combat, the platforming does not make me want to replay any time soon.

8.0/10