Future Cop: LAPD is a third-person shooter published and developed by Electronic Arts and released first for the PlayStation, then Mac OS and Windows. It was originally supposed to be a sequel to the popular Strike series of games. The final cut-scene of Nuclear Strike includes a trailer for the next game in the series, Future Strike, including shots of a mech robot called 'Warrior'. Future Strike was never released, but that development of the game evolved into Future Cop: L.A.P.D., which features gameplay similar to the previous Strike games and a mech robot like the one seen in the Future Strike trailer.
In the game, players assume the role of a pilot for the X1-Alpha, a robot designed to fight in the "Crime War" in Los Angeles in the year 2098. The X1-Alpha is a police vehicle that can transform between a fast, hovering pursuit vehicle, and a slower, fully-fledged combat mecha.
Modes[ | ]
There are two modes of play in the game, Crime War and Precinct Assault (both modes can be played either as single player or two player).
Story mode[ | ]
Crime War is a story mode, following a day in the life of an LAPD X1-Alpha pilot. The story events range from rogue lunatics arming observatories with weapons, to a malfunctioning supercomputer. Players begin in a futuristic Griffith Park, but as they advance through the game they may unlock areas such as Venice Beach, LAX and Long Beach. Crime War also supports a second player in cooperative play. Cooperative play features the unique feature that the life bars of the two players are intertwined; if either player is destroyed, it counts as a failure for both players.
Free-combat mode[ | ]
Precinct Assault is a free-combat mode in which each player starts with a single base and can capture automated Turrets or Outposts across the level. The objective is to defeat opponents by purchasing and deploying Hovertanks to invade their bases. The game ends when one player's base is breached by either a standard or super-sized "Dreadnought" Hovertank. Players may also deploy defensive Helicopters or the "Flying Fortress" Superplane to assist in securing their perimeter, shooting down enemy tanks that enter the base. Single-player mode consists of fighting a computer opponent named "Sky Captain", whose in-game avatar is a Superplane, more powerful and advanced than the X1-Alpha. Two player mode is a competitive battle between two X1-Alpha robots. There are five different precinct assault areas with 10 difficulty settings (for single player). There is also a bonus area, known as 'Bug Hunt', which is the same as the 'Proving Ground' level, except all objects have been made into insects like caterpillars and butterflies, instead of Hovertanks and Helicopters. The Flying Fortress is now a bat, and the Dreadnought is a large, ugly worm. The level features an up-beat music track in comparison to the game's normal dark military music.
The game failed to sell as expected. The members of the production team have since split up and moved
Recently, the game has been made available on PlayStation Store, for a small fee on both PS3 and PSP.
Precinct Assault is a stategic gameplay mode similar to Herzog Zwei (1989),[1][2] and is the mode that inspired the StarCraft mod Aeon of Strife, which in turn inspired the MOBA genre.
Weapons[ | ]
Future Cop boasts a wide arsenal of unlockable weapons; from the Gattling Laser to the Plasma Flare and everything in between. Each weapon having its own pros and cons.
Behind the scenes[ | ]
Lead level designer Chris Crowell revealed various behind the scenes information in youtube comments[3]
Nice job combining all the videos! I was lead level designer on this game, was incredibly fun to work on. Inspiring to see the positive comments, I will pass the gist of them along to the team members I am still in contact with. We were very pleased with the game, sad that EA didn't know what to do with it. Next one should be a Kickstarter, done using Unity. Future Cop: NYPD?
Note that most of the team went on to create the NASCAR:Rumble and Rumble Racing games. We were a tiny team that was generally left alone to make cool stuff, things have changed in the games industry, not likely to happen like that anywhere anymore.
I have pondered making a sequel to the Precinct Assault, but it was the brainchild of a few other teammates, and I would feel like I was stealing their baby. My work was on the main storyline levels. Interesting trivia, Precinct Assault was entirely created on the side while the main game was in Alpha. What a talented team I worked with. But yeah, would be great to have either mode of the game.
Ali the split screen gameplay came about because I wanted to be able to play a coop game with my very young son. I called it "Father Son Mode", and it had some particular design choices so a strong player can support a weaker one.
FYI Most of the same team made NASCAR Rumble and Rumble Racing. Check those out.
the gameplay was intended to be 'thinking action game'. Everyone on our small team contributed ideas, and each level designer was tasked to take inspiration from all the ideas to make levels full of mixed combat and puzzles that played out in a silly but sensible narrative. My job as lead was to push them to maximum creativity, and help figure out how to turn their ideas into scripted game levels. And ensure that the result was really fun, because the game is a party we are throwing for the players, not for us. It's all worth it when we see people having a blast with the games. :)
VR is a crazy good idea! I could imagine it right away. Like playing from the view of a Transformer, think of going from 'drive' mode, then raising up to be fifteen feet up in Walker mode? Would make the nav puzzles more challenging too. Really fun idea.
thanks for the kind words. Just booted up the game again two nights ago after a long time, had similar thoughts regarding how a sequel could be really fun. We were just shooting for maximum fun and learning from our mistakes, would be interesting to revisit the concept with the skills and experience gained from twenty years of doing game dev and the amazing tech available now. Our engineers wrote the engine for this, feels like we did many new things for a first gen play station game.
We worked right next to the Strike team , Future Cop was originally supposed to be Future Strike, but for some spreadsheet logic reason Strike was discontinued. I had a few really fun nights playing poker at the Manleys house, John was the producer/creative for Strike. Strike action strategy gameplay would be another prime candidate for a Kickstarter project.
I believe Don Veca was the composer and musician for all the games our team created, I think he can be googled? I know he and I were super pleased with the music for Rumble Racing, we burned a bunch of CDs as gifts for the team and marketing. I still have one, I guess I should probably upload the tracks someplace. Where would one put those?
Creative respect needs to be directed to Erik Holden who created the concept and all art for X1-Alpha, and to Bob Rossman who conceived, wrote, and directed all the dialog and cutscenes. Both of them really were the architects of the vision for the game. Honestly, everyone on the team was a damn genius at their job, I just tried not to hold up my part of things and not be a drag on them. The game was a team effort, and everyone had blood and sweat equity in its success.
it's a fluke that I happened across this video, but am happy to discuss things with fans of the game. I seem to recall that Nuclear Strike didn't get as high a profit to cost ratio as EA wanted. Perhaps the franchise numbers were in decline? That happens as a natural part of brands, note how many Mario games come out these days. The company could not help but compare the numbers from HUGE hits like Madden (sports games defy that aging brand rule) vs what they made on Strike games. It's a wonder they let us continue to change up our game and turn it into Future Cop. I remember we demoed the mech transforming and shooting missiles, and based on that cool factor we were given a green light to keep going. We were basically an Indy dev team inside the giant corporation, no doubt we had angels above us like Lucy Bradshaw who defended our projects.
in games and often in real life, ‘OUR TEAM’ is always going to be The Good Guys. For game development reasons, the Red vs Blue was needed for 1 player, it would have been wasteful to come up with a third color so no one was playing Red Team in 2 player mode. Plus, a lot of people like Red, or being the bad guys, ...or both. :)