Mega City Police

Review

Criminality has sharply increased in Mega City, and the Mega Corporation seems to be behind this massive surge. The mayor has commanded the captain of the Mega City Police station to stop the Corporation and re-establish order in the city. What a baptism of fire for a rookie! You were handed your badge only yesterday, assigned to this specific police station, and now Bob’s-your-uncle . . . you’re off to fight the worst criminals in the city! Thank goodness, there are some old fellas in the police force, and they’ll show you how it was done in the old days. Welcome to Mega City Police.

Mega City Police is a Retrowave Skill-Based Action Roguelike game developed by Undreamed Games and published by Ravenage Games on the 28^th of July 2023 on the Steam Platform.

The game consists of five levels, each with three stages to clear, including a boss fight. Before you start your playthrough, you must choose one of the three available agents (there are eight in total, but the next five need to be unlocked), and on which difficulty level you’d like to test your skills. You can choose to play the Casual or the Normal difficulty (with two additional levels of difficulty waiting to be unlocked). The difference between the two levels are that in the Casual, any money or items dropped by fallen enemies, such as ammunition and medic kits, will remain on the level indefinitely until you pick them up, and when you die, you’ll start the game from the last stage, no matter what level you are currently playing.  On the Normal difficulty level, items will disappear after several seconds, and if you die, you’ll restart the game from the beginning. I always start games on the Normal level of difficulty, but I can safely suggest that you might want to try your first couple of attempts on the Casual level, especially if you are new to this genre, as it is quite a challenging game.

The Five levels are Suburb, Construction Site, Ruins, Japantown, and Megacorp.  Each will have its own types of enemy, a mixture of opponents with melee and ranged weapons, which is a lot of fun. There are about 30+ enemies in this game. For the first two stages of each level you will only have minions coming after you, but in the third stage, you will be fighting the minions as well as one, two or three bosses. Most of the stages are fairly small, which increases the challenge. There are blocks of walls in each stage, where you can take cover from projectiles, but beware of the minions with melee weapons as some are really fast, and in the Japantown level, one is even invisible until it gets really closes to you. All fallen enemies will drop money and sometimes ammunition or a medic pack once killed. Make sure to check the area before moving on to the next one, as there are wooden crates along the wall that might contain ammunition, medic packs or even a weapon. You can’t afford not to open the large containers (mostly yellow in colour in the first three levels and grey in the last two) as they all have weapons. As the stages change slightly in each playthrough, you never know where these containers or crates of goodies will be found. In fact, on some occasions, there are none whatsoever.  When you complete a level, you’ll unlock a new character which you can select when you are back at the police station.

There’s a total of eight characters in this game, and they differ slightly in the main three attributes, which are Health, Speed and Strength. Some have more health than others, for example. What is very different with each character is that they have their own two perks and specific weapon, which will change the gameplay dramatically. I am a big fan of the Cyborg, Enforcer and the Rookie at the moment, as I managed to finish the game on the Normal level of difficulty using two of them and subsequently unlock one of the two other difficulty levels.

Regarding the arsenal, each character has a specific weapon at the start of the game. Most of the characters, with the exception of the Cyborg, can carry two weapons at any given time. As you open more and more containers, you’ll collect new weapons. There are 100+ weapons in this game, and I haven’t unlocked them all yet. It is fun to have different types of ammunition for particle and electric weapons.  While newfound weapons may not be any better than what you’re currently carrying, it’s helpful to compare them. The weapons are labelled as Common, Uncommon, Rare and Legendary (give me a Legendary rocket launcher or shotgun, please!).   

The gameplay is sharp and fluid.  I enjoyed having to adapt the way I played according to the characters and the weapons that I picked up along the way. I also liked the fact that some enemies disengaged from the fight and then came back for more. Their pattern changed slightly when they returned to the fight, adding more interest to the gameplay. There are plenty of music tapes to pick up as collectables, but these tapes will appear only when you defeat bosses. On top of that, you can purchase skills or ammunition with the money you collected throughout the levels before starting the next one. And there is a very good gamepedia.

Beautiful pixel graphics and a stack of tracks to collect to complete the extensive soundtrack. The controls are good with a gamepad, but I always prefer to play this type of game with my mouse and keyboard. The only issue I’ve encountered so far is that bosses occasionally get caught on walls. Apart from that, the game is well-balanced, fun and addictive. It has been translated into 13 languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Chinese and Russian.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com  

Mega City Police Steam Store Page