Crime City

"This weapon is lethal! HAR!"

”Welcome to Crime City! No, wait, come back!”

With a name like Crime City, I bet tourism sucks. People aren’t going to want to come to a town that goes hand-in-hand with criminal activity. Nobody’s going to load the kids in a minivan to drive down to a place that immediately brings to mind shootings, stabbings, muggings, whatever. Of course, had the city been specifically tailored to certain types of crime, the desirability would no doubt be increased: imagine the lines of cars going into Prostitution City, Gambling City, or Drug City. They could always go to Vegas and get all three, but it’s my review.

Because there seems to be absolutely no stigma with copyright infringement and the blatant stealing of characters over in Japan, your protagonists come straight from Lethal Weapon. You can call them Mel Gibson and Danny Glover (Mel sporting tight jeans and a satin baseball jacket like the film, Danny with his dignified suit), but the game would like you to kindly refer to them as TONY Gibson and Raymond Broady. With the sudden introduction of “Prison Breakers” into an otherwise peaceful city (assuming you disregard all of that crime the kids are always talking about), Ray calls up Tony and says, “Well, let’s go for a kill time.” Oh, and they were so close in convincing me that this game was as American as bad cinema. Expect quite a bit more broken English after that point, including liberal use of the phrase “catch hold of.”

”Big man, you, Hangedman, for fun making of Tony and Raymond!”

Perhaps they’re not the most objective cops in the world, but you try speaking in correct English and giving criminals the benefit of the doubt when you’re walking a beat called “Crime City” for god’s sake. With this short introduction, which of course wouldn’t complete with a suggestive shot of Tony getting out of bed, it’s time for the cops to go out on the streets and get the bad guys.

Immediately, Crime City bears a strong gameplay similarity to Rolling Thunder, although in reality it’s a fancy way to say it’s a side-scrolling shooter where you can only fire straight ahead. Like Rolling Thunder, the bulk of the gameplay (and difficulty) lies within ducking behind several obstacles and returning fire with the assortment of criminals attempting to make the city live up to its name. Dropping certain enemies will randomly yield a better killing implement, be it an M16, Shotgun, Desert Eagle, or a grenade. Most of the time, you’ll be using your standard issue pistol. Don’t let its commonplace nature fool you, most enemies can stomach only one shot, and those that take multiple hits to dispatch are large targets.

Like Rolling Thunder, Crime City shares the same wacky lifebar. Many were angered by Final Fight’s tendency to shave off a third of your life from one attack, but Rolling Thunder and Crime City have the ability to kill you outright at full health from the smallest of bullets. The life bar is only a gauge by which to measure your tolerance of physical attacks, like when enemies carelessly run into you to sap your life, but their bullets are unequivocally fatal. Fortunately, you can refill your life completely by picking up the surly cop’s beverage of choice: Whiskey!

No more Rolling Thunder references from here on in, I promise.

Unique to Crime City is the roll, executed by jumping again in midair or attempting to jump while crouched, which might not be what you expect it. You see, me being a patron of several John Woo movies, my mind immediately equates “roll” with “dodge swarms of bullets.” That having been said, I tried to roll through a bullet and instead of passing harmlessly through it, I ate pavement. The roll is actually an offensive endeavor; you use it to attack people, although I’ve only put it to good use on the people directly below me in rare situations. It’s personally more satisfying to me to plug a criminal in the gut rather than lamely rolling into him unless I absolutely have to.

In a bold and unexpected move for this sort of game, the levels are topped off with a boss character. Most bosses work pretty well in the context of the game. The first level boss is the proverbial “how to” of boss fighting: the only effort required of you is to press down when you hear him shoot to come out unscathed. The second level boss is somewhat more complex, requiring you to use a desk as cover from his shotgun. It’s nothing ground shattering in the 2d history book, but it’s fun and functional without being too hard.

”Yes officer, it happened again.”

Crime City’s got some interesting locations, many of which are a nifty facsimile to the locales found in your favorite cop films. Level one revolves around a seedy looking town that ends with a shootout in the docks, for example. Level 2 starts off with a car chase (not what you’d think: you need to leap from car to car rather than following the criminals to the subsequent parking garage in the safety of your own automobile), and then to the local bank in the process of being robbed. If you ask me, any Bank that opens in a place called ****ing “Crime City” DESERVES to be robbed blind.

While it makes things better looking in the graphical department, I’ve always considered large characters to be often at the detriment of gameplay in this genre. Crime City’s characters (friend and foe alike) are large and cumbersome. Crime City is not about careful dodging, intense shootouts, or crowd management. Rather, the largest aspect of Crime City’s gameplay is to make sure that your villains don’t surround you and shoot you, as you lack the ability to outmaneuver them.

Crime City is relatively short, sporting what would seem to be a meager six levels, but because the game throws every surprise it has at you by the end of level three; the ending is welcome considering the lack of depth. Had it been any longer, one’s tolerance to the game’s lack of depth might have been in considerably shorter supply. Thankfully, the simplicity helps the game more than it does hurt, especially considering that beating the game on one quarter, or even a single life, is well within the realm of possibility assuming you know the scripted events and patterns of each level.

Though Crime City is a pretty basic game, it’s fun, playable, and is extremely fair with your money. Whether going for a kill time or unhealthily acting out your fantasies of becoming Mel Gibson, there are far worse ways to spend 20 minutes and a few quarters.

OVERALL: 7 / 10
Catch hold of Arcade Game!

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From The Dead Kennedys’ MTV get off the air: “I wear a satin baseball jacket everywhere I go!”

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/28/02, Updated 07/28/02