COP BASTARD is a fast-paced 90s style VHS shooter which fails at least as often as it succeeds.
COP Bastard has a couple things that will be hard lines for people, so we’re looking at them up front.
Content Warning
Per the game’s Steam page:
“The game may contain blood, gore and strong language.” A bit of an understatement, but nothing beyond what you’d probably expect from the name and genre.
The game also has a really stunningly bad voice performance – every character speaks in an over the top “Engrish” accent. Based on posts by the dev, targim, I believe that this is intended to be tongue in cheek. I don’t think it landed at all, to the point that it makes the gameplay experience worse because it’s so consistently distracting.
As you play, you build up a Spite Meter which can be used to dodge, enter slow mo, or to spit on enemies to recover health. The game relishes in violence but does not present your player character as a good guy in any way. The enemies certainly aren’t either. Kind of interesting that I don’t mind mowing down hundreds of enemies in an orgy of violence but thought about drawing a line at spitting on some of them.
With regard to the title and the spitting mechanic I thought “OK, I can deal with that.” I did ask for the review key, and at that point I am going to see it through. The voice acting was so objectionable to me that I think I probably would have refunded the game on Steam if I had purchased it and did not feel an obligation to complete the review. But I did enjoy playing the game in the end. I think the voice direction was a really poor decision which was not intended to be mean-spirited. You can determine where your line is.
The dev cites Hard Boiled and Violent Cop as inspirations. There’s a pretty good approximation of the frenetic pace of Hard Boiled, paired with the complete pitch-black cynicism of Violent Cop. The story is mostly just there, though there are a couple of slightly interesting bits. There are some funny, some not funny, recurring gags where you sneak up on enemies and hear them monologue if you wait. The enemies also have resting Max Payne face, which definitely tracks as well. Though I do have to say that I didn’t overly care for the slowmo or dodge in COP BASTARD.
Dodge burns a ton of meter that felt better used on healing. I used slowmo early on, but found I generally preferred to just keep forward momentum into the next room fast. Instead of being a really integral part of my playstyle, slowmo felt like the training wheels that helped me get comfortable with the gunplay in the first couple of levels. The retro VHS look of the game adds a lot of style to the menus and gameplay segments, though the manga style story panels are somewhat at odds with this presentation.
Once you get a good feel for how and why to use the different weapons, it feels great to blast through the levels. The default Beretta is great and has you feeling powerful right from the start. The decision to give it infinite ammo helps take some of the early game pressure off as well, plus it’s just a fun and powerful weapon to use. The shotguns, especially the double barrel, are powerful but can cause a huge shower of debris if you miss a shot.
It looks cool, but it’s hard to see around. Managing the mess became another element of challenge to manage, which was a neat touch. I think the uzi was probably my favorite weapon overall. Moving from the unlimited ammo of the Beretta to the limited ammo weapons felt daunting at first, but if you use the right tool for the various sections you never really have to worry about ammo management too much. The enemies do the ragdoll dance if you hit them with lots of little shots, and it is pretty satisfying within the context of a shooter which feeds you swarms of enemies.
The encounter design is not great in the sense that I’ve played every level once or twice and couldn’t really recall more than maybe one or two specific set pieces. They’re all fun, but they do feel kind of samey at a certain point. I also couldn’t really figure out what the pace of a level was supposed to be. There were a couple of times where the regular soundtrack would give way to something more orchestral or deliberate, but then that segment of the level would end and it would just go back to normal. It didn’t really seem to build or crescendo in any specific way.
There are no boss enemies, which is fine, but I’d usually find myself thinking “oh, ok” when I hit the end of the level as a surprise. I do think the tuning of the Hard difficulty mode is nice. The game is pretty quick (but I don’t think it needs more levels), so having the ability to run through it again with some more challenge was good. There is a kamikaze enemy type that I completely hate.
They’re a bit annoying to deal with if they spawn in a crowded area, so the best way to deal with them is to just backpedal into a hall and take them out as they approach. But they have a really annoying battle cry that stacks on top of itself if there are more than one of them spawned in. I kind of get the idea of giving you a risk/reward proposition of handling them safely or aggressively, but they’re so annoying I just don’t want to deal with them.
The Endless mode was sort of fun, sort of not. The weapons start worse than normal and get permanent level ups to reach their original power as you get Endless mode kills, as far as I can tell. These level ups are permanent across Endless runs. The balance on them was pretty dialed in in the base game, so having them weakened in the Endless mode felt pretty bad.
Endless adds currency and a shop between levels. Imagine my surprise when I had a really good run start and saved enough to buy a magnum only to find that the usual 6 shot capacity was down to 3 and it was much weaker. I understand the desire to give the game more content, but the Endless mode feels antithetical to the run and gun, no upgrades, no level ups, no puzzles ethos of COP BASTARD.
It’s kind of funny that there is a global death leaderboard that tracks how many times you’ve died in the game across all levels and modes. Each stage has a global leaderboard that tracks your score. Originally I thought it was strange that it tracked score instead of time, but now I feel it’s probably fine either way since successfully going faster will mean you score higher since you’ll get more aggressive combos. You also see a little diagram showing how many times you shot various body parts in a level, though it can’t seem to differentiate between left arm/leg and right arm/leg.
Accessibility
The closest thing to an accessibility feature is the option to turn on score popup when you kill an enemy. Knowing exactly when an enemy died made ammo management a little easier and helped me process what was going on during visually busy scenes (those with a lot of gore splatter, strobe lights, and/or flying papers and sparks).
Verdict: Cop Bastard
Again – I’m not attempting to make a moral judgment on the dev. But the voice acting was just an awful experience for me throughout. I think if you are willing to try to look beyond that, it’s a pretty fun package. The unflinching cynicism of the narrative makes it a little easier, but I’m not sure if it’s enough. It’s a bit like an exploitation film, but not as well done and not on purpose. Which is a shame.
I think targim nailed a few really key things in this game and has potential as a developer, but I can’t unreservedly recommend COP BASTARD. There is a demo if you’d like to try it out.
Reviewed on Steam. Also available on GOG.
Developer: targim
Publisher: Retrovibe
Release date: Out now
Pros
- Feels great when everything clicks
- The loading screens have fun little quotes
- Great gunplay and satisfying enemy deaths
- Having a death count leaderboard and showing where you hit enemies at the end of a level are fun little touches
Cons
- Uneven level design
- The voice acting is an active and constant detriment to the experience
- The rebalanced weapons in Endless Mode means it is a real grind to get most of the armory to a good spot where it feels fun again
A Steam key was provided for this review
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Okay
