Double Jump Gaming News

Early Access: Psycho Patrol R

Article by: Victor Anderson

This month's early access review will be for Psycho Patrol R, a mecha and tactical first-person shooter developed by Finnish multimedia artist Ville Kallio. Psycho Patrol seems like an ordinary mindless shooter at first but things get weirder the deeper you look. You are a recruit for the Psycho Patrol, a police division that tracks people who spread 'psychohazards,' anything from general misinformation to antigovernment propaganda. You can question people undercover and on foot, bribe them with cocaine, or just run them over in a customizable Evangelion-style mech suit. Also Wilhelm Reich's orgone theory was real all along and you are romantically stalking your boss. The game is full of satirical references to brainrot, macho culture, and even Kallio's own past works.

Box art for Psycho Patrol R, showing the player beside their V-stalker mecha.

As a dabbler in different forms of art, Kallio is no stranger to the odd. They've made everything from text-to-spoken-word poetry to CGI short films, some of which have been displayed in museums. Cruelty Squad, their previous video game and self-dubbed 'punishment simulator' on the official Steam page, was little different. The player controls a traumatized hitman tasked with killing anyone from anticapitalist politicians to the cult funding them. When the showers of gore clear and the story goes off the rails, it becomes a brutally poignant critique of unmonopolized violence and loss of meaning, reminiscent of other mixed media works like Vewn's animation Catopolis.

Venmo Combat, one of Kallio's physical art installation at SIC, Helsinki

The gameplay of Psycho Patrol stylistically is as surreal as the rest of their work, comparable to Rainbow Six after a heroic dose of acid. With a soundtrack like Mario 64 put through three layers of distortion, low-res textures, and watercolor graphics that have somehow been made clashing and grotesque, this monstrosity of a FPS tested the player's limitation for sensory overload as well as their coordination skills. On the flipside, the mechanics are quite hardcore, creating even more dissonance with the colorful visuals and general air of absurdness. You don't have very much health so dying is frequent and players must often rely on stealth, which makes challenging sections all the more rewarding when you finally clear them. Even the controls are abnormal on purpose: instead of pressing 'r' to reload like in classic shooters, the player must drag the mouse down to simulate changing the cartridge, an annoying but accurate detail. While this extreme immersion may be offputting to new players with concrete ideas of how shooters should work, the adjustment period is not that bad. The game is still playable, and with all of it put together, quite enjoyable.

The view from inside the V-stalker, ready to shoot up a money laundering front.

The only things I found myself upset with were meaningless fall damage deaths from the poor ladder physics, and the awful map. While the shading during the day is shockingly high quality, the streets become a pain to navigate when it gets dark. This is helped by neither the player's pathetic flashlight nor the expensive nightvision unit on their V-stalker mecha, and the map being in monochrome makes it worse. There isn't even an icon for the player themselves, just the location of their V-stalker and any essential NPCs they might be tracking. I'm usually all for 'getting lost' during open ended quests, but the first few areas of Psycho Patrol had me begging for a quest marker of any sort.

All in all, Psycho Patrol is one of the better early access games among the multitudes on steam. Though development is sporadic, the second chapter-length mission was released this may, so players can still expect updates of both quality of life fixes and entire new areas. It is fun, difficult, and a brilliant catastrophe that redefines the standards for the modern FPS.