Developer: Blazing Badger
Publisher: mamor games
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4
Tested on: PC
AIPD – Artificial Intelligence Police Department – Review
Artificial Intelligence Police Department is the latest love child of Blazing Badger. It features one arena and a whole lot of enemies to kill as you battle between the waves. Play with up to four friends or get frustrated on your own and conquer the global leaderboards, it’s totally up to you what you want to do, because you can do a lot.
Story
When looking at story, there’s nothing really to be found in AIPD, but it isn’t bothersome at all since nobody probably expects a story in an indie twin stick shooter anyway. You just start the game and shoot away at all of the enemies that the game throws at you. It would have been highly unlikely to find any sort of story in this game, and it would’ve made no sense anyway, so it’s better off without one.
Graphics
The graphics in AIPD are surprisingly good, partially thanks to the glorious use of Unreal Engine 4. Everything looks very futuristic, clean and colorful, which makes for a beautiful futuristic finish to the overall game. The effects when things explode also look very cool and aren’t very intrusive at all, the particles that appear behind you when moving also look extremely cool.
AIPD also runs very smoothly and shouldn’t be a problem to run on any low-ish build as it isn’t demanding at all. It’s a small game with great graphics, but since they’re futuristic and minimalistic it doesn’t really give any problems.
Sound
While the graphics are really great, a big part of the sound isn’t great at all: the music. When playing, it seems like the music really doesn’t fit with the game at all. It’s good music, but it doesn’t really go together with the very busy gameplay filled with action at times. Sometimes the game is transforming into more of a bullet hell, and having really upbeat music usually enhances the gaming experience whenever that happens, but since AIPD doesn’t have that kind of music it seems very lacking. On the other hand, the sound effects do sound pretty good and aren’t annoying to listen to at all.
Gameplay
AIPD is a pure twin stick shooter by heart, and it executes it very well. The controls are rather simple and of course a twin stick shooter is best enjoyed with a controller, which AIPD fully supports.
The game is played in an arena which spawns waves of enemies, in total there are 15 waves and the goal of the game is to survive all of them, also killing the boss in the 15th wave. Of course, the waves will get progressively harder as you go, introducing new enemies and mechanics with every few waves, up to some very hectic last couple of waves which will test your agility, skill and patience.
To make the game even more challenging, between every wave the game gets an extra difficulty boost. After each wave you’ll go to a little intermission screen where you have to choose between two “challenging” elements you want the game to adapt to. More difficult elements will give you a bigger multiplier when used, so you can always go for the hardest one if you want to go for score or go for the easy ones if you’re trying to get the hang of the game. These challenges can be some very interesting things like some enemies dropping a bomb after they’re killed, other ones being faster or there’s even one that makes enemies drop a bomb from time to time and if you don’t pick it up bad things will happen.
In order to help you survive the game, AIPD has a good couple of items at your disposal. You can use both pickups and super weapons, which is as awesome as it sounds. The pickups are mostly utility and give you a temporary shield, slow down time and more cool things. Super weapons drop from time to time and can be unleashed on your enemies when you’re having a hard time. There’s plenty of super weapons to go around, like a shotgun that fires a wide volley of shots or even a huge bomb that will clear your entire screen.
You don’t only have special weapons to your disposal, but you can also switch out modifications and weapons. You can unlock new weapons and modifications by acquiring more score during your playtime, giving you a little push to perform even better. The weapons are very versatile and they’re pretty much to choose at your liking, you have normal guns like a gatling machine gun to a crazy howitzer that shoots bombs. Modifications are also very diverse and they usually serve a utility goal, giving you more shields, faster speed and more.
AIPD has five game modes in total, each with a big difference from one another. There’s the standard game mode, the tough transporters which fully upgrades the transporters that drop super weapons, hostile space which adds environmental dangers, high-tech armada which fully upgrades all enemies and last but not least design. Design is a very special game mode which you can customize any way you want. Here you can choose which challenges the game starts with, you can even activate every challenge in the game in order to make it extra hard.
If you’re competitive, there’s also a place for you because AIPD features a fully functioning leaderboard system. You can also play local co-op with up to four friends if you have enough controllers at your disposal.
Conclusion
All in all, AIPD is a very fun game to play alone or with friends. It has a lot of different enemies and challenges it throws as you, as well as weapons and modifications. You can customize the difficulty of the game completely to your liking while playing and get good rewards if you make it harder and harder on yourself. The only downside is that we didn’t really think the music fit with the game at times, but your likings can be totally different of course.
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