App Army Assemble: Super Cops: Justice Keepers - "How arresting is this top-down shooter?"

Super Cops: Justice Keeper is a top-down shooter from indie developer Clashflash. It tasks you with taking down the villainous Mr Thorne while defending your base from waves and waves of enemies. Our App Army group is well-versed in catching villains, so we decided to hand the game over to them to see how they fared.

Here's what they said:

Brian Wigington

I admit from the start that I am a bit torn on what I think of this game. On one hand, I am a big fan of smaller indie games but on the other hand, I feel like the game could have been a bit more fleshed out in some areas like controls and graphics. Super Cops is essentially a top-down shooter with an auto-lock on targeting system mixed with a survival horror game of sorts. You are a cop tasked with various missions straight out of a late 1980's/early 1990s action movie ala Lethal Weapon or Die Hard. Kidnappings, plenty of bad guys, and zombies are all in the mix. The top-down perspective is fine and all but the whole game looks very flat and some of the character models look a bit too alike to differentiate good versus bad guys. I do realize that the game is 2D through and through, but I felt that the overall look reminded me of an old flash game.

I understand that amazing graphics do not make an amazing game, but I felt the look of the game to feel a bit plain for an action game. The sounds were simply OK in my opinion with serviceable voice work. The controls felt a bit imprecise for a twin-stick shooter style of game but this was aided by the auto-target system I suppose. I would prefer a controller but I admit I did not check for compatibility. I made it through into the zombie portion of the game but did not make it much further due to the time constraints of my work week and family life. I do think I will give it a little longer on my tablet and see if updates come through to improve the experience but I simply feel like the game's pacing and gameplay types just may not be for me and that's OK. I can see players getting some fun out of this and the asking price of $2 or so is reasonable.

Chad Jones

Super Cops starts out as a top-down action shoot-em-up and then ends up being part horror survival/tower defense/base-building action game. The story is kind of bonkers and funny at moments, and I appreciate the flash-style graphics that go well with the 90s theme they're going with. The controls were ok, the tap controls were useless and the virtual controls worked most of the time although I wished the directional controls were movable and not in one spot. I didn't try hooking up a controller this may have helped.

The game gets repetitive in spots because you pretty much start each day by either repairing your base, upgrading your base, or managing resources, then you have to fight to keep your base from being destroyed, then you have to do a mission then when you get back to your base you have to fight your way back inside your base. I had to quit around day 16 because I would go outside my base and get utterly destroyed by mechs and restart after the fourth time I gave up. I appreciate what the devs are going for but the game needs a bit more polish. Better controls and balance the difficulty.

Max Williams

I struggled with this game to be honest. I tried both control schemes and never really felt like either of them gelled. Although the game said it auto-targeted enemies, I never felt like I knew whether I needed to aim at them, and I died a lot without really knowing what was happening. Perhaps this is one for people playing with a controller. I got a few missions in, and then next time, when the game restarted, I'd lost all of my progress and I just quit in despair at that point.

Jason Rosner

I’m really enjoying my time with Super Cops (reviewed on an iPhone 13PM). The graphics have a nice clean 16-bit SNES feel to them, and both options for controls feel really good to me. I’m loving the whole aesthetic where it feels like I’m an action star in a ’90s cop movie. The missions play out fast and have various objectives such as clearing out the bad guys or rescuing a hostage. The gameplay is really fun with some pretty cool gun fights, and the story kept my interest throughout wanting to know how it all ends. The bad guys made it personal and I’m going full Liam Neeson! I highly recommend Super Cops to anyone looking for some old-school fun. Also, I like how the dev put both basic (free) and premium versions on the App Store so you can try it out first.

Mark Abukoff

The description in the App Store says “Inspired by Diablo”. I don’t know just how well that carries over into the game. But it’s a simple and decent top-down shooter. The graphics are basic but sufficient. The voice acting bothered me enough that I turned the sound off quickly. Some dialogue is read out, and some are just grunts. I guess that’s not unheard of but it annoyed me so I turned the sound off. The controls are good (there are two control schemes. I went with “Gamer” which essentially makes it a twin-stick shooter) though once or twice it seemed to stick, leaving me in a horde of zombies that I had to shoot my way out of, or backed into a corner. This problem was rare, and generally, controls are fine.

The story is pretty simple and most of us have seen it before. The base gets wiped out and you have to help rebuild it while killing bad guys and running missions on various islands. The missions themselves are generally simple and satisfying if repetitive. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Go somewhere, kill monsters or bad guys, gather keys and stuff, and return to base. And the missions are pretty quick, ideal for a quick go. To be fair, Diablo’s missions are pretty much the same (just longer and on a much grander scale), and I like that. If you like wiping out hordes of zombies and upgrading your base and fighting skills in a top-down shooter, you’ll probably enjoy this. You can try it for free and the full game is just $1.99. Worth checking out.

Martin Cabral

I wanted to like it, I really did. But between the mismatch of the colour of your character in the menu compared to the image during play, the loose controls. It feels much more like a student's final project rather than a ready-for-market game. I played the part of the storyline but will be deleting the game after this post.

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