State of Emergency

"See, even Rockstar can make bad games."

When I first heard of State of Emergency and that it was a riot simulator. I thought it would be a nice change of pace from Grand Theft Auto 3. Boy, was I ever wrong. State Of Emergency is more or a less a cash-in on GTA 3's enormous success with the mindless masses.

The plot is as stupid as they come. It's the year 2035, the United States government has been destroyed. The country and I guess the world has been through another depression. Now, there's this little resistance movement trying to take down this evil corporation. Comprised of an disgruntled ex-cop, a former lawyer, a geeky hacker, a big fat Mexican charismatic gangster, a big black guy in one of the ugliest prison suits I've seen since... I don't remember when. Question begs: where's the disgruntled postal worker? Plus we have a bunch of people in various locations through out the entire city rioting because of fact that they are sick and tired of the Corporation's oppressive rule. That is what I gather from the plot.

Visually, it's garbage. Bland background textures all around. The mindless masses just running. I thought they were supposed to be rioting. Not running around like random idiots. The characters are, um, hmm, how do I put this without hurting someone's feelings? Trash? Yeah, that works. They try to copy the graphics of GTA 3 and fail miserably. The only fairly good point is that there is no slow down. But I'm guessing VIS Entertainment didn't even consider or think of having people running off with merchandise. A neat little feature that the developers put into this game was a wide screen format. Why do bad games like this get such cool little features that would be better suited for something like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Moving forward. Sound wise. Here's a run down. Repetitive hard rock music. It repeats every 30 seconds or so. There are no voice over work for ANY of the characters. Just mindless grunts. Random screaming from the mindless masses and that's about it. But the absolute best part about this is, you can turn off that horrible music.

Gameplay, this game has the most repetitive, let me repeat that, the most repetitive gameplay missions I've ever seen. It's either kill this guy, protect this group of people as they plant some sort of bomb, beat the life from that guy, etc. The ability to freely roam around isn't even that enjoyable since you're confined to one area of the city. That means no running around performing the same tasks over and over again. VIS Entertainment didn't even try to make any of the missions different. They just made four missions and just copied them from there. But the worst part about this game. The absolute thing I hated most. It was the fact that you were the only, YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE, who did ANYTHING wrong! The second the Military Police saw you with a baseball bat they are on you like white on rice and a paper plate in a snow storm. That's right, the police AI within the game is dumber if not worse then Grand Theft Auto 3. By comparison, the police AI in State of Emergency makes the police AI in Grand Theft Auto 3 look like they are collage scholars. It's pathetic. VIS Entertainment even had the nerve of saying that the police AI was better then GTA 3's.

Replay value wise. Well, how can I put this. There is no replay value. A game like this should be smashed with a hammer, lit on fire, and buried with ET. This game is the Fighting Force of the Playstation 2. That's not good thing. That's a bad thing.

Graphics: 5

Bland city backgrounds, people running around aimlessly, badly made character designs. The list goes on. Only good thing is that you can give this a wide screen format that doesn't have the little letter boxes. How come bad games get cool little features like this?

Sound: 2

Crap. No voice over work for ANY of the characters. Besides the usual grunting, breathing heavily after sprinting a mile, etc. The music repeats about 30 seconds into the game. Thank god you can turn it off. Other then that, the game is pretty weak.

Gameplay: 1

This tries to mimic GTA 3's free roaming do whatever you want gameplay. Too bad it fails miserably. What were the suits at Rockstar thinking when they green lighted the production of this game.

Replay Value: 1

This game has nothing to offer anyone. It's more or less a cash in for Grand Theft Auto 3 that back fires, badly. I wouldn't get this game if they were handing it out for free that's how pathetic this game is.

See, children, even Rockstar can make a bad video game and still get it to sell a million copies. People fell for the hype on this game hook line and sinker. This game doesn't even measure up to or even come close to being as good as GTA 3.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 11/10/02, Updated 11/10/02