State of Emergency

"State of Emergency certainly is a cause for alarm."

State of Emergency certainly is a cause for alarm.

If you're pondering whether or not you should invest $50 in State of Emergency for your PS2 read on. This will be a review for the gamer who wishes to be well informed.
State of Emergency is your classic beat-em-up in many ways. You have your plethora of weapons, limited arsenal of hand to hand combat moves, limited selection of playable characters, just a few throws and of course, loads of enemies. Sounds good right? Hold your horses, let's not jump to conclusions. State of Emergency isn't your classic beat-em-up in many ways as well. There's literally hundreds of characters on the screen at once, all of which, you can kill. To some, that may be a good thing. Also, depending on the mode you pick, it's either mission based(completing mission after mission until you finish the game), or it's an all out timed rampage. So now that you've got the general idea of the game, let's get into some more detail.
You, the gamer, should take into consideration several things when you buy this game:
1) It's extremely violent. At first glance it won't appear so, but once it gets to the point where you're bludgeoning someone to death with a severed head or leg, you'll understand.
2) It can, and will be VERY repetitive. Although every game out there can be looked at from this point of view, there's no other way to look at this game.
3) Excluding Chaos mode, this game will not have a high replay value for most. And for some, even Chaos mode will loose it's replay value.

With that aside, let's jump into the game. Once the game loads, and trust me, you WILL notice the loading time, you're forced to watch a rather unimpressive CG intro. Chances are you won't ever watch the intro again. Then you're thrown into the menu screen. You have the choices of selection ''Revolution'', ''Chaos'', ''High Scores'', ''Options''. So next is the breakdown of the 2 different modes:
Revolution) This is the mission based mode. The only way to advance to the next level is by completing 100% of the missions available in that level. Levels are the Mall, China Town, East Side, and Corporation HQ. The missions themselves do not vary greatly. Missions usually consist of escorting, assassinations and delivery. Although the mission types don't vary greatly, they do provide a good challenge.
Chaos) In this mode you simply run around the different levels and accumulate as many points as you can. To do this, you need to keep your eyes and ears open for what the announcer is telling you to do. Either kill someone, or break objects, blow up cars, etc. And since this mode is entirely separate from Revolution mode, you'll have to unlock all the levels over again. To do this, all you've got to do is simply get a whole lot of points. This mode to some will appeal more than the Revolution mode does. To others, it'll be the other way around.

So now that you have all the background information you're saying to yourself ''That didn't help me one bit in helping me make my decision''. Well get ready for the analysis of each important aspect of the game.

Graphics 6/10
Decent. There's not a better word for the game's graphics than simply ''decent''. There are no jaw dropping effects, no real eye candy, nothing that makes you say ''Whoa, that almost looks real. These game graphics are getting so good these days, it's getting harder and harder to tell them apart from the real thing.'' As a matter of fact, the CG that is played for you in the beginning of the game is the best graphics you'll ever see from this game.

Sound 6/10
Decent. Again, there's simply not a better word that could describe the game's sound. It's simply decent. This game will not take full advantage of your surround sound system, it won't make you want to plug your PS2 audio cable into a stereo, as matter of fact, most of the time you won't even be paying attention to the sound. It's best described as 'background noise'.

Music 2/10
Horrible. Yes, this is a rather low score for any game's music but it truly deserves this score. The bad music you hear in certain games, at least it's so bad that you cringe whenever you think about it. This game, you won't ever think about the music. And if you do, it'll only be for a millisecond because you won't be able to remember what the music sounded like. In my humble opinion, music in this game could've brought the game up another notch, after all, music is extremely important in a game. This game however, fails to even strike a chord.

Control 8/10
Great. This is probably the best aspect of the game. The control is nearly rock solid. As with most 3-D games you have the ability to swing the camera around to any position you want, but since the graphics are so ordinary you won't be exercising that ability very often. Movement is achieved with the analog control, which I may add is quite smooth. Although at time you'll feel like you can only move in 4 directions instead of 8, or preferably an infinite amount of different directions. The D-Pad, or I should say the up button on the D-Pad is used to toggle the onscreen map on/off. I used this feature less than 10 times during the whole game. It simply isn't needed. There also seems to be the hint of an auto-aim present. Usually when you attack or shoot it'll automatically align you with your opponent as long as you swing your character around in your opponent's general direction. Unfortunately there isn't a lock-on feature, but it's understandable.

Gameplay ?/10
The score I would give Gameplay is a 3, but this topic is really yours to decide for yourself.Basically once you read everything up to this part, you can make your own assessment of what you think the gameplay scores. In my opinion it scores nothing higher than a 7/10. Simply because the game tries to revive the Final Fight style of game play, which it is fairly successful in doing, but, Final Fight was only fun until you beat it. That's the problem, which leads me to my next and most important topic, replay value.

Replay Value 5/10
This is what I consider to be the greatest flaw of the game. When I buy a PS2 game I absolutely refuse to pay $50 for the impressive graphics, special effects, bells and whistles. I only spend $50 on a game when I know that there's a high replay value. $50 is simply too much money to spend on a game that you'll beat once and then throw in your closet. You'll play through Revolution Mode once. I guarantee it. You'll play Chaos mode quite a few times, maybe even several times. But the replay value of the game depreciates at an incredibly rapid pace. After you play the game for the first day, you've seen everything that it has to offer. The story isn't compelling. There are no 'rewards' for playing a long time, it simply doesn't get any better. So in my opinion, the most important deciding factor when buying a game, dictates that you do NOT purchase the game. Rather, rent it. It's an amazing rental. Not an amazing purchase.

Closing Words
This game belongs in an arcade. If you want fast and furious arcade style action, RENT the game. You won't play it longer than the # of days you've had it rented for any ways. But if you played Final Fight, or X-Men, or Fighting Force as much as you played FFX or Tekken or Street Fighter, then go for it.

Those are my two cents, and you can have 'em for free

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/25/02, Updated 02/25/02