Urban Chaos: Riot Response

"Less is more, I guess?"

As I write this, the PS2 is nearing the end of its life cycle, so perhaps I can give a tad more accurate of a review, figuring this is a game in a genre that has really proven to be a weak point (… or perhaps a strong point, depending on how you look at it) of the PS2's very massive library. There really isn't many first person shooters, and though that's not to say that there is none, but there certainly isn't many, especially ones that are worth noting. So we have Urban Chaos: Riot Response - the next Halo, or destined to battle it out with Chicago Enforcer for the PS2/Xbox/GCN generation's cream of the crap? Well… umm… neither. But for what it's worth, the game isn't too bad.

And that's all that truly needs to be said about this game. Honestly. This is gaming simplicity at its finest. You will not find a game any simpler than Urban Chaos, or at least one that works as well as it does. The little depth the game actually has might throw some off, but what little it actually has, it does so well that you really can't damn the game for giving its users what they want from purchasing a game such as this – blood, guns, swearing, more blood, heads exploding, headshots, guns, blood, blood, more swearing (@%$#!!!). The game is gritty. Violent. Not made with children in mind. And definitely not made for anyone who takes their video games seriously.

Come to think of it, that's part of the charm. Actually… that's pretty much the only real quality of Urban Chaos that it does ever so perfectly – it is an honest game. It knows what you want, why you would stoop to buying such a game that almost screams “budget trash” from the title, and the ever cheesy box art. You don't want an epic campaign. You want to kill stuff. Come on… admit it. Why are you reading this review right now? Perhaps because you want to know what makes killing stuff any different in Urban Chaos, than, say Killzone? Why spend money on this budget trash when you can get production values for a couple dollars more?

I'll tell you why. Breaking down the game shouldn't prove to be difficult. You play as a cop… or, something akin to one… kind of right in between being a soldier and the SWAT team breaking into your house right now (no worries: innocent until proven guilty, so I'm sure you'll be back to read the rest of this soon). You've been assigned to stop a terrorist threat, by a group of foul mouthed, masked Manhunt-ish “d00ds” calling themselves the “Burners”. These guys are freakin' everywhere, let me tell ya. Packed with everything from shotguns to assault rifles to chainsaws, you can guarantee they aren't going down without a fight. So they've sent a group of experimental law enforcement called T-Zero, one that is specially trained to handle such a situation (how convenient, yeah?) to go in and clean up this mess, as well as helping boost the mayor's fading popularity…. I guess? I don't know. Basically, “you are on T-Zero's side... shoot the unlucky bastards that aren't”.

Riot Response's novelty, truly its only bit of originality, is the riot shield. By pressing L1, your character will thrust up a shield that will protect you from all danger in front of you, allowing you to get closer to your target, without the mess of bullet wounds that might ensue. A great idea, and while one could fear that this would make the game far too easy, it was actually handled very well so that it does have its weaknesses. You can only guard what's in front of you, leaving you completely vulnerable to whatever is at your side or coming from behind. Not to mention as you go through the game, the enemies get more abundant, and even better equipped.

Now, the way I make it sound, it's as if that's the only thing that separates the game from the rest. It's not. There will also be scenarios such as “Hostage Situations” where a foe is holding a hostage (duh), where your job is to creep slowly towards him whilst him unloading on to your riot shield, and the taking him out while he reloads. Of course, this triggers an execution scene where the terrorist scum will fly back in slow motion into some conveniently located hazard and suffer a very gruesome death for your enjoyment. Take that! Go America!

I'm scratching my head, in regards to describing the gameplay. Other than the two novelties listed, everything is pretty standard. There really is no control issues, since there isn't much other than “press R1 to shoot the guy in your crosshair dead, yeehaw!”. The analog sensitivity is very intuitive, and flows wonderfully. No real questionable button placement, and everything feels responsive and does what it should.

As far as mission structure goes, there's quite a bit for you to do. Well, at least, there's a lot of missions that you can… aww, forget it. The main game divides itself up into two different types of modes, per se – the “emergency situations” and the main story missions. The main story missions work as you would expect. You run through missions shooting everything that walks, excluding the occasional friend that you might be escorting or is unfortunate enough to witness the amount of gory awesome you're unleashing onto your even more unfortunate foes. About as varied as it gets is occasionally you'll have to escort either a medic or a firefighter to help save wounded civilians, and put out fires blocking your path, respectively. Though your NPCs are appallingly stupid, they don't get too much in the way, and these segments are thankfully short before reverting back to the bloodshed.

Emergency Situations can be obtained by tasering a Gang Leader in one of said story missions (he's nice enough to give you directions to where his cronies are holding politicians hostage, but then again, most people are pretty nice after a little convincing from a trusty taser). There's one Gang Leader in each level that you don't have to arrest via non-lethal means, but it would be in your best interest to put your trigger happy self in containment for just a second to help unlock more missions outside of the main quest. These Emergency Situations are timed missions, where you'll be going throw a building, or city streets full of baddies, trying to find the person being held up. These range from pitifully easy, to fairly difficult, and are fairly fun as well, since there's a lot of enemies to plow through to reach your simple objective.

Roughly about 17 or so decent sized missions (including side missions), the game doesn't feel short, nor does it feel any longer than it should be. But, it does have to come to an end, and now you are wondering “what now?”. Urban Chaos also offers unlockables system called “medals” of which you must complete certain missions the way the developers want you to, in order to unlock them. There's only so much to do, though, because the medals only include beating the mission without using one of the many check points (read: don't die), performing a set amount of headshots that increases as you advance through the campaign, a set amount of arrests (taking down baddies with the aforementioned taser), and arresting the gang leader in the stage. Unfortunately, there's no mission-specific medals to be found, but there is two difficulties to play the campaign on. Meaning, once you've headshot'ed your set amount of terrorists on normal mode, well, try it again on hard mode! That's what I call variety! But in seriousness, the medals system might have been an interesting, replay value-saving feature, but is taken down a notch by the sheer lack of things to do to achieve them. Shucks.

There's over 200 some medals in all to collect, if not exactly 200, that will unlock you more toys and upgrades to torture your foes with. However, you'll run out of steam probably well before you reach the big prize for collecting all of them. There's simply not a lot to do in this game, outside of shooting things, shooting more things, and then shooting them again in a different difficulty mode. Once you've seen a foe thrust back in a slow motion Matrix-like fashion after a super-sweet headshot, for the 10th time… yeah… the game starts to age before your eyes.

Speaking of eyes, what about the graphics? Horrendous. Very little to be loved here. Your eyes certainly won't bleed, but even considering PS2 was the weakest link in the hardware department for its generation, this honestly looks well below what the PS2 is capable of producing. Very few moments stand out, in my mind, and though the environments themselves are quite varied, or at least enough to keep you interested, none were particularly note worthy.

Sound wise – swearing. Lots of it. @$#@! The voice overs are terrible and cheesy, the one liners get old, especially considering the amount of just over the top swearing, and the guns sound like the guns in every other shooter ever made. What's to love? I suppose it accompanies the very, shall I say, goofy atmosphere of the game to hear all of your terrorists screaming the most unnecessary amount of vulgarities that they do. However, for what its worth, I didn't have to ever press the mute button, so I suppose that's a positive.

Though it sounds as if I made fun of the game, I just have to say that the game is not meant to be taken seriously. It couldn't possibly be, with this amount of 80's action B-movie level cheese, and just gratuitous… everything. When it boils down to it, a confession late in the review, is that there's not a lot to expect from a game like this, because there's not a lot to it in general. I only broke it down as much as I did to fulfill the review requirements, because in reality, it can be pretty much summed up with “just fun”. It's simple. It's incredibly stupid. It's one of the most unoriginal games I've played in the last couple years. And you know what? It's damn proud of this, as well. You really got to commend a game with that much guts (possibly a literal sense, as well). So leave your brain at the door, perhaps we'll take your coat if we can figure out how unzip it, and get your R1 finger ready for an exercise. Seriously… It's as simple as that.

You want serious, epic campaigns? Go play Final Fantasy XII, and leave us with our dumb FPS.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/04/08

Game Release: Urban Chaos: Riot Response (US, 06/13/06)