Future Cop LAPD

Serve. Protect. Survive.

A Third-Person Shooter released in 1998, Future Cop: LAPD is a spinoff of sorts from the Desert Strike family, following you, the pilot of the Transforming Mecha X-1 Alpha and your coordinator. Your mission is simple: restore law and order to the hellhole that is the future-LA of 2098.

Sounds easy, right?

Think again, buddy.

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Tropes used in Future Cop LAPD include:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: One of the toughest missions has you putting down a rogue AI that has started turning people into an army of cyborgs. Sky Captain, the opponent in the versus/strategy mode, is an AI as well.
• The Alcatraz: Hell's Gate Prison. It's a literal fortress.
• Announcer Chatter: For Precinct Assault mode. Helps keep you informed of goings-on, especially if you're playing against Sky Captain.

Announcer: "Blue base turret destroyed."
Announcer: "Enemy within Red base perimeter."

• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: One level has a miniboss that is a gigantic mutant bodyguard goon approximately twice the height of the X-1 (if not more), which is already around two to three times taller than your average human.
• Awesome Yet Impractical: The Flying Fortress. Costs 50 requisition (a non-trivial amount!) and does little more than buzz around the center of the map looking really menacing.
• Awesome Yet Practical: Most - if not all - of the weapons are well-balanced, and each is useful in its own way.
• Big No: Sky Captain has one when shot down. Hear more of his quotes here.
• Chain Lightning: The Lightning Gun's schtick when you get the Primary Weapon Power-Up.
• Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: One of Sky Captain's favourite sayings.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Sky Captain, as his name suggests, uses a flying craft rather than an X-1 Alpha. This gives him a pretty significant mobility advantage in the cluttered battlegrounds. In more accurate terms, he also gets stronger, faster and smarter each time you kill him, and as the overall difficulty increases.
  • He can also call in reinforcements remotely and even buy up bases the same way, both things the player can't do.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: Fully cooperative, with two X-1 Alpha Pilots... who share their health bars. Oh boy.
• Crapsack World: LA is barely habitable by the looks of things, heavily flooded, filled with mutants, ganglords, and lord knows what else. Best not to think about the rest of the planet.
• Crowning Moment of Funny: Whilst most of the end-level cutscenes are serious, a couple of them have gags in, like the X-1 not paying attention to where it's going and falling off a walkway.

Coordinator: "...I hope nobody saw that."

• Dancing Mook Credits: With the X-1 being subjected to all sorts of horrors alongside dancing.
• Deflector Shields: The riot shield will destroy incoming psychical projectiles and cause huge damage to anything in its radius.
• Energy Ball: The Fusion Torpedo fires one, and they're a common form of enemy attack.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: the flame-thrower, which while it has a shorter range that other weapons can still take down low flying aircraft.
• Hollywood Cyborg: The rogue AI is putting together an army of them.
• Hover Tank: The X-1's Hover mode, and the standard ground/attack unit in Versus mode.
• Kill It with Fire: Flamethrowers are good for clearing out angry mobs, right?
• Life Meter: Of course it has a life meter!
• Mercy Kill: One of the scientists working on the rogue AI was... put up as an "example" to interlopers. You have to put him out of his misery to proceed.
• More Dakka: The starter primary weapon is a gatling cannon.
• One-Hit Polykill: An ability of the Concussion Beam, since it is only stopped by the terrain. Helps conserve ammo!
• Platform Game: Jumping puzzles are present in several levels. No, really. Precise jumping can get you to weapon power ups too.
• Player Versus Player: Precinct Assault - two players go head-to-head in a sort of very lightweight strategy game. You can also play it against the AI, which plays as Sky Captain.
• Police Brutality: Nobody ever comes peacefully. Cue X-1 solving everything with absolutely ludicrous amounts of violence and a triple-figure body count.
  • The X-1 is only called in when the situation escalates beyond the control of the normal police units. When it's called in, police use "Code X", meaning the situation is extremely hostile and requires lethal force to regain control. Which in this case means a transforming mecha armed with more firepower than some small nations. What are you expecting? It's Los Angeles.
• Power-Up: Numerous 'reloaders' that can restore health or ammo to one of your weapons, some of them containing special superpowered ammo. It doesn't even try to hide the fact and just flat out calls them Power Ups.
• Prison Break: You have to foil one of these in the fifth or sixth mission, as a disturbingly well-armed terrorist group is rescuing their leader from the cells there, along with many of their brothers. Finishes with a Showdown At High Noon-esque shootout for the end-level cutscene.
• Ray Gun: The Gatling Laser.
• Recursive Ammo: Mortar + Upgraded Ammo = Cluster Munitions.
• Shock and Awe: The Lightning Gun.
• Super Drowning Skills: Avoided. Touching water in the walker mode forces an instant transformation into hovercar mode.
• Tank Goodness: The Dreadnought Hovertank. Still absolutely helpless due to dumb AI, as otherwise it charges blindly ahead and gets itself killed.
• Transforming Mecha: The X-1 has both walker and hovercar modes. The former is more agile and better suited to urban combat, whilst the latter is faster and ideal for covering a lot of ground quickly. All of your weapons are accessible in both modes, however.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: The coordinator is basically there to keep you up to date on things and be the Exposition Fairy.
• Weaponized Landmark: The very first mission sees you smashing your way through Griffith Park to destroy an observatory that has been converted into a gigantic cannon, and is being used to take potshots at passing airliners and other commercial aircraft. Later on, you must destroy a flying UFO-esque restaurant that has been turned into a giant weapons platform.
• What Could Have Been: Originally the game was going to be a sequel to Nuclear Strike, with the previous game having several allusions to the mecha that would be used in Future Strike. It would instead be remodeled and remade into this game.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: In Precinct Assault, the points/requisition needed to purchase tanks/dreadnoughts (offense) and gunships/flying fortresses (defense) or outposts (forward bases) are earned by capturing neutral turrets, destroying enemy units/turrets, and destroying the enemy player/Sky Captain.