State of Emergency

"You're in for a ride if you like senseless fun."

I can't say I'm unbiased, I've been waiting on this game. In some areas, I'm disappointed, but on the whole I'm not. In this review, I'll probably make references to many of the reviews that give this game a poor rating in order to clarify things (basically, why they didn't like the game). Anyway, on to the review!

GRAPHICS: 8/10
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The graphics are just simplistic enough to give it a cartoonish feel without making it look dumb. The lack of detail makes it possible to display up to 200 people on screen at one time, rioting in any one of four locales, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and the explosions are great fun.

SOUND/MUSIC: 9/10
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The music is incredibly well done, as in all games published by rockstar that I've had the pleasure of playing. It's mainly a mix of Drum and Bass music and Rock (I think it's rock), which is good because of the kind of pumped up feeling the game gives you to want to go break stuff ^_^

The sounds are also great, people scream, explosions are loud, and corporation forces yell at you to ''FREEZE! YOU'RE UNDER ARREST!'', all at the same time, and this is on my dinky mono tv. If someone hooks it up to surround sound, I think they'll be pleased, as there's an option to enable surround sound in the audio options.

CONTROLS: 10/10
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The controls are easy to learn and aren't hard to use. at all. 'nuff said.

GAMEPLAY: 4/10, 10/10
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This is the real part of the review: is the game fun? is it any good? will it spend more than 20 minutes in my ps2 before I take it back to the EB? here are my answers, they may not be yours.
Now you may be wondering why I gave it two scores, a 4 and a 10. well, there are two modes of play in State of Emergency: Revolution and Chaos.
Revolution is the ''story'' mode, while Chaos is the ''arcade mode'' of sorts. The missions given in revolution are plentiful, but monotonous and are all either fetch quests or guard people quests anyway.
Chaos, however, is where the real fun is. its main mode, ''kaos'', is a bit like crazy taxi in the fact that you have a limited amount of time to cause as much damage as possible, but you can get more time. This is caused by KO'ing corporation forces and gang members (i.e. anyone who isn't a civilian). during the time you're playing in this mode, the announcer (who I find incredibly funny) tells you of different things that net you bonuses. for example, blowing up a building will net you twice as many points as normal, etc. there are also penalties that can come into place, like the civilian penalty, which makes you lose a thousand points every time you kill a civilian. when coupled with an accidental molotov tossing, this can be bad, but it's not too hard to recover, so long as you don't go on civilian sprees when you get civilian penalty on.

PLAYER'S CURVE:10/10
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I'm more than a little biased, I've been waiting for this game for a while now, and it's finally in my hands. But while Revolution mode is lacking, I don't think Chaos mode will go old for a long time to come.

OVERALL: 8/10
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The graphics are well done, the music is superb, the controls are tight, and the Chaos mode is awesome. So what keeps this game from a ten? The revolution mode is horrible. All the bad reviews (note what I said at the top about talking about other reviews) seem to concentrate on the Revolution mode, talking about the horrible scenario design, and I agree with them. But they seem to have missed out on the real meat of the game. If you buy/rent this game, be sure to try chaos mode before making any quick decisions.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/16/02, Updated 02/16/02