DCOP

DCOP is one of the most interesting light gun games ever made, a live action shooter that is intense and fun to play. I can’t think of a better light gun to review this game than the Blamcon Autocop, inspired by the Robocop Auto 9, complete with slide recoil and 3 round burst.

DCOP is a full motion video on rails shooter. Since light gun games are generally on rails it really lends itself to this format. My hat is off to the cinematography in this game, it’s very clean, professionally filmed, and has very smooth camera movements making aiming and shooting easy. It actually reminds me a lot of the movie Hardcore Henry, one of my favorite indie films of all time. The actors really sell it too, you can really tell this was a passion project.

You play as a rookie police officer on his first mission ambushed on a raid and have to fight your your way through the bad guys on your own. The game is dark and with a lot of jump scares. You have just enough time to see and engage each enemy, making it challenging but fair.You have 3 lives shown at the top along with a rank of how well you’re doing in the game, if you get hit you have to start the current section again. If you lose all 3 lives it’s game over and you have to start the game from the beginning. I love the old school challenge of this, but it did get me in the bit where you have to cut yourself loose. I was convinced you had to click once per cut and I died over and over. My daughter tried and just spam clicked and got through it in like 2 seconds, duh.

 If you shoot an enemy multiple times it replays the start of the hit animation each time, which can make it a bit jumpy, but I find it’s a lot more reliable to fire a few rounds at each enemy to make sure you have the timing right, or switch to trusty 3 round burst mode. Your ammo is shown at the bottom, you have a lot of opportunities to reload so make sure you take them.  There’s a lot of sincerity in this game and it’s really easy to get immersed, the sound effects are great and little details like the echos of your shots being appropriate for the environment you’re in, the blood spatters when you shoot enemies or the ways they fall backwards when hit, here, enjoy a minute of gameplay with no commentary and just try and feel the intensity.

In a way, it reminds me of the old American Laser Games FMV shooters, but just way more intense. It’s creative, fun, and immersive. But where it does fall down is in its length and replayability, it’s obviously the same experience each time and all in I beat the game in around 12 minutes. But what a 12 minutes it was.