State of Emergency

"For those of you expecting the free-form structure of GTA3, or the tight game play of"

How times change...
Flashback to a kinder age, those days of antiquity, 1993 Life and video games were simpler then, 2d was king and nobody had even heard of a polygon outside of geometry class. A little game called ''Mortal Kombat'' brought down the wrath of congress, and the media, and truck loads of out-of-work psychology majors that went after some quick grant money to do research on the effects of violent video games on children etc.
The never ending game of finger pointing used to explain away the prevalence of violence in American behaviors has come and gone, and come back. A cycle much like the seasons, and of life it self.
Slightly left of center of all this, is a little company that 2 years ago nobody had ever heard of, Rockstar Games. In the last 6 months they have published 3 of the titles that are likely to result in a brand new witch hunt, ''Max Payne'', ''Grand Theft Auto 3'' and now ''State of emergency''
The Story goes something like this: The world lives under the threat of the all powerful corporation. All aspects of life are now decided in corporate board rooms. Music, Clothes, SUV's even food additives and boy-bands. Personal freedom is gone and people are left only with monotony and bondage. But there are some that fight against this oppression, Freedom is there name and you just joined..
For those of you expecting the free-form structure of GTA3, or the tight game play of ''Max Payne'' you are about to be disappointed. SOE is neither of these games at all, it plays more similarly to older fighting games like ''Final fight'' or ''streets of rage'' In each level you are placed inside of a closed section of the city, where you run around preforming various tasks given to you by your FREEDOM contacts. Many of these involve escorting a person to some location, or retrieving an item from somewhere. In the mean time, the entire population of the city runs around frantically looting and rioting. Cops and gang members periodically charge you in an attempt to give hand out their own brand of smack down. Armed with various punches, kicks and throws you have to pulverize this corporate lackeys. There are also various weapons that can be grabbed to assist you, everything from batons, park benches and severed heads, to machine guns, flame throwers and missiles.
Graphically, this game is a mixed bag. The individual models and environments are a bit on the simple side, but there is often several dozen people running around on screen, with no noticeable loss of frame rate. (This is something I have always felt is more important than being really pretty). Sound wise you get the normal range of oofs, thunks and ugh! That you would expect in a fighting game. The gunshots and explosions sound especially good.
The controls, like the graphics are simple enough, two of your buttons are for attacking (punch and kick) one is for grabbing items, and the last is for your spin attack that knocks over all nearby enemies. The shoulder buttons are mainly for camera centering but are also used to sprint, and aim weapons depending on if you have a gun, or are running. The Game is broken up into a few sections of city, each of which are isolated from one another, and become available when you reach a certain score plateau (in Chaos mode) or after you complete enough missions (revolution mode) Hidden Characters are opened up in the same fashion Each mode can be played independent of the other.
The problem is, that's all there is too the game. Get task, go to point B, beat some number of nameless goons up, and than go back to your starting point, some times there is a point C, D, or E, but in essence this is all your doing. The Most annoying this, is when you are told to protect someone or something, since the camera follows you so close, its hard to see foes approaching. Many times on one of the endless strings of ''guard this building'' missions, I've had some cop run right past me because I couldn't see him coming . On missions where you have to target a particular foe you have the same problem, most all of the enemies wear black so its hard to tell one goon from the other. This coupled with the fact that they can all run as fast as you do, makes capture missions similarly frustrating. The Chaos mode suffers from much of the same thing, just without the missions. Instead of trying to get to a goal, you are going for points. You score if you kill corporate or gang goons, but loose points for killing innocent civilians (and who is truly innocent anyway?)

After playing GTA3 like the crack fiend that I am, I thought that SOE was going to be a blast. Here's a game that centers it self around what I often did in GTA3, and I said to myself how can that be wrong? There just isn't a lot of fun to be had in this title It grows old quickly and the sloppy play control leads to a frustrating experience.

Game Play: Redundant and sloppy. You get blind sided constantly since you cant zoom out the camera, and you pretty much button mash till the cows come home (after you beat them of course)

Environment: The Personality that was oozing in excess from GTA3 is completely absent, nobody has a name, a face or a voice, even your choices of fighters are generic. The foes are forgettable and so your tasks never take on a sense of importance

Aesthetics: Simple, but impressive considering the amount of on screen motion. I like the look. Sound is a mixed bag but for the most part good with a satisfying shotgun, and the sound of slapping meat together for the punches

Replay: In a sense, the whole game is a replay of itself, so im not sure I could find a reason to play through more that once

Do you Want it: Rent it, but don't drive across town and pay off excessive late fees so that you can rent the last copy.

OVERALL RATING..........................................5.4(fair)

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/15/02, Updated 02/15/02