Maiden Cops – PS5 Review

Maiden Cops is a proper old-school scrolling beat ’em up and it comes to us from indie developers Pippin Games.  And while this two-man studio are Brazilian, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were absolutely Japanese when playing this game.

Set in Maiden City, a place where everyone is female and some sort of human/animal hybrid, trouble is afoot.  A gang calling themselves The Liberators have set their sights on controlling the whole city using violence and intimidation and when the Maiden Cops HQ is attacked, it’s down to just three cops to fight back in true Streets of Rage style.  You’ve got the fast, weak one Nina Usagi, a small rabbit lady who is the group’s defacto leader (that is when the Captain, who dresses like a stripper, isn’t around), Meiga Holstaur (the slow but strong hyper-sexualised cow-woman) and Priscila Salamander (the game can’t quite make up how many Ls there are in Priscilla but she’s got a bit of speed, a bit of strength and a remedial IQ).

Once you’ve sat through some standard anime-girl plot silliness and picked your character, it’s then up to you to walk through each stage, punching, kicking, jumping and using weapons to take out the horde of Liberators that stand in your way.  If you’ve ever played Double Dragon, Streets of Rage or any of Capcom’s Final Fight-style games, you’ll know exactly what to expect.  All the tropes are there.  Yes, there will be an elevator fight.  Yes, there will be a bit on a train.

You’ve got your standard move-set (with a handy on-screen guide available to refresh your memory of it) and so you’ll be able to use standard attacks, grabs, specials and weapon attacks.  But, of course, the enemy will do everything they can to surround you and attack from anywhere they can.  And, of course, each stage ends with a tough boss battle too.

And, yes, this could describe any of a number of beat ’em ups on PSN these days.  A once popular genre that’s still seeing indie releases and decent remakes such as the recent TMNT releases and Streets of Rage 4).  In fact, it wasn’t even the only beat ’em up released by publisher eastasiasoft in the last month.  And while the anime tropes and general squeaky/squealy nonsense from the characters could be annoying, there’s something that Maiden Cops has going for it.

You see, we review a lot of retro-styled games here at PlayStation Country and a lot of the time we ask ‘would this game have made any kind of impact if it game out in the ’80s or ’90s.  And while the coin-ops were absolutely flooded with this sort of thing (mainly by Capcom but everyone else got in on it) the answer is probably yes.  Maiden Cops is just very playable.  The combat is enjoyable and fairer than the usual arcade credit-munchers (sure, we like Final Fight but an official port on the Xbox 360 had an achievement for beating it within 18 credits which tells you a lot about the game’s balance) and, crucially, it doesn’t recycle horrible bosses at you.  Take away the neat graphics and music of the Streets of Rage games but their constant re-use of bosses makes the game pretty miserable to play.

Combine that with the reasonably exciting and authentic retro soundtrack and the well-drawn and animated colourful graphics and you get a game here that actually seems to put fun at the top of the list of priorities rather than sadistic difficulty or syphoning away the pocket money of children.  And so, while the overall theme of it might not be for us, Maiden Cops is a pretty solid attempt at the genre.  And with a load of unlockable content to discover, including some very handy cheats, we reckon you can’t go too far wrong with this one.  £11.99 is maybe a tad high for a random indie beat ’em up released into a sea of PSN indie slop but this is a good game and one that fans of the genre should enjoy.  But newbies will be able to enjoy it too.