Undercover Cops

Undercover Cops is a beat em up developed by an Irem studio, who later went on to form Nazca and create Metal Slug. It really shows. In Undercover Cops, the music is loud and intrusive, the characters and backgrounds are gorgeously detailed, and the fighting is rough and tough.

As the story goes, three cops, Rosa, Zan, and Matt, fight crime in the future New York city. Matt is an ex football champion who joined the “sweepers” after being falsely accused of murder. Rosa’s fiancé was murdered, turning her to a life of vigilantism, also joining the “sweepers”. Zan, the last of the three, is a former karate champion, banned from official tournaments after killing a man in self defense. For different reasons, all three of them have ended up in the same situation.

With that digestible but tasty setup, the game begins. In the first stage, regardless of who you pick, the game starts out like a standard beat em up. You press the attack button to wail on guys, and they fall down defeated. The first hint that the game becomes something more is when you approach a pillar, and to your surprise, you can pull it right out of the ground and smash guys across the face. The game turns what would ordinarily be decorative items into weapons, and it’s way too fun. The level of detail when an enemy is burned, hit, knocked down, or otherwise attacked by anything, is astounding. It’s easy to see how the team went to Metal Slug from here.

The game environments look absolutely stunning in their detail, and paint a post-apocalyptic city right in front of you. It would have been good enough if the game were just an ordinary beat em up with above average visuals, but that’s just not how Undercover Cops rolls.

The first stage, while average, ends with a great boss fight against a terminator-like machine, whom you can destroy by tossing into a giant garbage crusher. Pretty cool. From them on, the game adopts a more challenging style of gameplay. In stage 2, you’re confronted with an elevator arena, and a lot of open pits to fight beside. The addition of flying enemies in the same stage, and swifter ground foes, keeps things interesting. The game can be a bit tough starting here, but if you manage to storm through, there’s a lot of good ahead.

Every stage introduces some new type of challenge, and by the end of said stage, you’re bound to have mastered it. It feels tight, solid, and undeniably entertaining. The bosses, too, only get more challenging and entertaining, until the final stage builds itself into an equally difficult and satisfying climax. As a beat em up, Undercover Cops may not be what most people expect from the genre, but as a game in general, it’s nothing less than fantastic in every way.