Urban Chaos: Riot Response

"Oh dear. Oh dear Oh dear."

I remember a fair while ago, when the original Playstation was still the leading format, that the original "Urban Chaos" was a truly awesome game. I remember playing a demo of it over a friend's, and then getting it as soon as I could afford to. The original was a brilliant, third person, action game which did the whole 3D free-roaming thing better than Driver, and before GTA3 made the jump from two dimensions. Packed full of secrets and replayability, it was one of my favorite games on the PSone.

This, unfortuently, is not really a sequal at all. This game is a first person shoot 'em up, which really doesn't deserve to bear the name Urban Chaos at all, and I'm convinced that I would have given it perhaps one mark more overall if it went under an original name. As it turns out, I bought this game expecting far more than I really should have expected.

The story is about a gang known as "the Burners", who for some reason decide to wreak havoc in the city. I didn't really pay much attention to the story, although the way it progressed is pretty cool; pretend news bullitins between each level, with cheesiness almost matching that of the original Resident Evil live-action cut-scene everyone loves. Anyway, some guy with a matcho name (something Wolf) decides that he's going to recruit ex marines, and turn them into a zero tolerance super police force, aptly named T-Zero. Well done, mister Wolf.

Typically, the storyline could be straight from a Jean Claude Van Damme movie, loads of macho crap, none of it at all realistic. It is the perfect excuse for shooting lots of bad guys, however. Which is good. Because that's exactly what this game provides, lots of baddys to shoot, bash, cut up, electric shock, burn, or otherwise. I originally tried out a demo of this game and was pretty impressed, on account of the main gimmick in this game being a riot shield you can use to protect yourself with. To be fair, even on normal the game is pretty much impossible to complete with all the availiable medals without using this shield, so at least it is well utilised. The only problem is this gimmick is the only new thing the game adds to the shoot 'em up genre, and even this wears thin after a couple of levels.

The gamplay is solid enough, though. It's easy to get used to the controls, especially compared to other console shooters I've played on my PS2, like "Return To Castle Wolfenstein". It's easy to shoot your foes where you want, which will probably be right in their face, after a bit of practice. It's all just a bit generic though- solid gameplay is all well and good, but not adding anything genuinely exciting to the game makes the concept wear thin in a matter of levels. No free-roaming at all like the original game, it's all very very linear, with the odd obvious hiding spot for the masks you can collect for extra rewards should you be inclined to do so.

The only other thing the game adds to the mix is having the odd NPC join you for a while throughout a level. More often than not these are people you simply have to protect from the Burners, which is as boring as it sounds. Sometimes you might get a policeman on your side, which is just irritating on account they just shoot bad guys for you, making it difficult to complete your head-shot quota for shooting the gang members in the head, for extra rewards. You also get firemen help you, and this is just boring as half the time you are just waiting for them to put out a fire/ bash down a door/ bash down some other thing which happens to be in your way. And they don't even have the brains to do it automatically, you have to tell them to do something. I mean, if you were a fireman, and it was your job to put out fires and save people, would you really wait for some know-it-all ex marine who isn't even a real cop to tell you to do it? Oh sometimes you get a medic follow you for a little while, or have to protect her. Good to see this game is breaking the gender barrier, with it's all female paramedics and nice, manly police and firemen. She can give you a medipack sort of thing to heal yourself, which can come in handy to be fair.

Graphics are fairly average; again, like the rest of the game, solid enough, but hardly outstanding. There's just something about them which doesn't feel quite right. The effects are nice enough though; the thermal goggles are what you expect, making it easy to see where people are, at the expense of not knowing if they're on your side or not. You have a torch you can use in conjunction of a couple of weapons like your pistol (which, to the end, is the best weapon in the game, strangely enough), and this torch does add atmosphere to the game in the many dark areas. Still, it just doesn't feel as tense as it's trying to be. If you had a couple of guys with meat cleavers and a man with a chainsaw running at you, the feeling should be "oh, S***!", but instead its "Oh, more annoying, stupid bad guys, running at me in a slightly zig zag fashion. I'll just waster him, run forward, turn around and shoot the other two guys". The bad guys wear masks, for crying out loud! This should guarantee thrills, spills, and scares! But back to the graphics; colourful enough, good and solid overall.

Which is more than can be said for the aforementioned AI. You get some bad guys use cover, but it's so predictable where they are going to pop out next you can just aim your target to wear you know their head is going to be and blow their brains out. Those that don't use cover, like the guys with chainsaws and cleavers, just run at you. On the other hand, they don't seem to become confused it you lob a smoke grenade to try and conceal themselves, still they keep on shooting AT you, no matter where you try and hide. Also, your stupid allies who occasionally join you often block doorways, and you have to wait a few moments for them to move, which is frustrating. You can't shoot them out of the way, or it's game over.

The sound is fairly average. Lots of gunshots, a bit of talk on your police radio, and boring, generic American rock on the menu screens. Nothing to listen to here, really.

Re-playabilty is pretty good, if you can forgive this games many shortcomings. You gain medals for each different tier of difficulty from normal mode up, enabling you to unlock a bunch of secret weapons, or upgrades, until you finally earn the mini-gun. Shame that throughout the whole game I found myself using the basic handgun more than anything else. For me personally, completing it once on normal mode was enough. But I can see myself getting curious and completing it on hard mode for a larf in future, if I don't end up deleting the save data. But I can see others getting more out of this than I did. Just a shame about the bonus 'emergency' levels you get for capturing gang leaders in the main story missions- the emergency missions are basically against-the-clock runs to save someone and take them to an extraction point. Utterly boring, a major waste of time, they should have just made a couple of proper missions instead, or made a single player mode where you can just have a death match against computer controlled bots, which would make the game last a bit longer.

I've been pretty scathing so far, but like I said, I was expecting so much more. Even today the original Urban Chaos probably still stands up pretty well, it had atmosphere, attitude, and most importantly of all, sheer fun. This game manages to capture some of the fun you'd expect, but compared to many other FPS, even just on the PS2, this is merely slightly above average. I would recommend Black for your FPS thrills on the PS2, then the Timesplitters series, then this.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/28/08

Game Release: Urban Chaos: Riot Response (EU, 05/19/06)