| State of Emergency |
| It's no Grand Theft Auto III...and no doubt you're going to buy it |
| State of Emergency is one of those titles where the developers think that just because they wowed us with Grand Theft Auto III, they can wow us with anything. It works, but only for a couple of hours. Sure, the coolness of the game is paramount at first, but after a few hours you will find yourself bored to death, and then you pop in GTA3. There are many, many flaws within this game. They aren't glitches, like GTA3's only faults, and they're not graphical, they revolve around the game's Revolution mode. Think of Revolution mode as a Story mode, where you have to do missions. It's the same setup as GTA3, where you freely run around to find people who can give you some missions to do. The problem is, no real rewards are given for beating a mission, as GTA3 gave money for every mission you completed, and the missions are way too difficult. This game is really, really difficult. Think of the hardest mission you can think of in GTA3 and you have an average mission in State of Emergency. I would like some kind of reward--anything--but all you get is peace of mind, I guess. You basically play and play for more hard missions, more frustration, and a whopping 4 levels (sarcasm intended). The levels all suck too! They're really, really small. Sure, GTA3 only had 3 islands, but they were incredibly huge! This is a huge disappointment. Another minor complaint is that there are so many buildings with doors open...but you can't go inside any of them! This is especially annoying in the Mall level where all those shops have doors open and you walk up to it, push forward and....nothing happens! What a wasted use of the PS2's power! Actually, this game uses the PS2's power very well at times. One example of this is the fact that 250 people can be on the screen at once, and the framerate maintains a constant 60 FPS. The Mall level is streaming with lots of people, and it feels great. This is a rare thing to see at the present. The missions suck my ass. Whoever the hell thought of these horrid missions should be burned in hell, just like everyone involved in making this chunk of crap game! The hacker mission is easy the most frustrating. You have to protect a hacker while he's uh...hacking I guess, although he's really just standing there. You have to battle at least eighty cops...and if just one of them walks into the building, it's mission failed. It may seem easy, but due to the fact that everyone in the game wants to butt-rape you and get all over you, and there's just too many people to see what the hell your character is doing, what weapon he has, etc. It also doesn't help that there's no target lock-on, it's just mindless shooting and hoping you hit someone with the three bullets you get in your gun. The game is very violent as well. Lots of blood, gore, guts, dismemberment, and limb losses are all present, and it feels great. The graphics are once again GTA3-inspired, with a cartoonish sort of feel to them. It's really pleasing to fire a machine gun into a crowd of people and look at all the flying guts, limbs, and lots and lots of blood. That's the best part about this game. This game sucks, that's all there is to it. The missions are so damn unfun, repetitive, and boring, and the gameplay is definately lacking due to the same thing: mindless button mashing. I can't help but feel cheated. |
| Graphics: 6 Sound: 3 Gameplay: 5 Replay Value: 0 Reviewer's Tilt: 1 Overall: 3.7 |