State of Emergency

"A good game from Rockstar, but has rubbish Replay Value"

When Grand Theft Auto III made its smash hit debut for the PS2 in 2002, nobody knew what Rockstar would pull off next, or what they were capable of. Rockstar soon came up with State of Emergency, another crime simulator game. Rockstar tried to convince the fans that this was not just another GTA3 clone, but it was a different game altogether. Not much of the fans knew this, so people were expecting a Grand Theft Auto 4, rather than a State of Emergency. Because of this, a lot of people were disappointed with the differences between this and Grand theft Auto III.

As much as I enjoyed this game, I soon found that it was very repetitive. The small amount of levels had almost the same feeling and same objectives, so it soon got very boring. I have to say, that the first week I bought this game, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but now, I think it is quite worthless. Realistically, no game is good without replay value, but I say, if you enjoyed it once, it has to be good in some ways.

Graphics: 7/10
The graphics are good enough o enjoy. I mean, they are nothing special, but Rockstar made this game so it didn't have the same realism and feel of any of the Grand Theft Auto games. You can tell that Rockstar didn't make much of an effort to change the graphics, they just used an average graphic engine. You can't call them crap because they're not, but the 3-D animations could have been so much better. I mean, if you want to pick up a gun, you run over it and press X. Nothing wrong with that, but the gun just disappears. You don't bend over and pick it up, it just magically ends up in your hand... strange?

A bit more effort couldn't have done too much damage to the graphics. I think laziness is the right word for the graphics, but they still work well enough to enjoy the game.

Gameplay: 7/10
A bit too repetitive, but when you first play it it's quite good. The gun animations spoiled the gameplay slightly, but that's nothing to worry about. You can play as one of five characters, all different shapes and sizes. They all basically have the same moves and same guns. The only difference between the characters is their names and looks. But hey, I didn't notice that and nobody else did so I'm sure it's just a small thing.

Shooting and causing chaos is probably the only thing you can do in this game. No driving missions, no stealth, and the hand-to-hand combat is terrible, it's even worse than the GTA combat. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is the different range of missions is really small, and shooting the heads off of innocent people isn't as fun as Grand Theft Auto claims it is.

You have different weapons which is a good thing, really, but all action games like this have guns so I really don't know what to say. You can hold guns from pistols to grenade launchers to pepper spray to mini-guns. A lot of the weapons featured in this game can't be found on other games, and that is a small rare achievement for Rockstar. I mean, 7/10 is quite a high score for the gameplay, because there really isn't anything here that hasn't been done before. But hey, this is Rockstar, they did what's been done before, so you can't accuse them of plagiarism.

Sound: 6/10
The sound in this game is nothing to boast about. I mean, it's poor. Sound effects are average, soundtracks are lame, and voice overs are just horrible. Quite a good mix of average and rubbish marks. So, let's go into detail.....

Guns go bang, glass being smashed goes clash, babies crying go wah, so this makes Rockstar geniuses? Well, I can't say it does but no game has good sound effects. I mean, anyone can get a rubber glove and clench their fist with custard in their hand and pretend it's someone walking in snow. But it's not about that, it's the quality. It's very rare for games to have good sound effects, so this game really doesn't have anything to be ashamed about.

Obviously, the music associated with this game is rap/hip-hop and fast music. Nothing wrong with that, I like rap and most games have it. But, the music is poor, and that's coming from a rap fan. I mean, I can't remember one song that I know. Most games have real music from the charts but this music is made up. Nothing wrong with that either, but the music is still rubbish. Maybe they just couldn't be bothered to buy songs off of rap artists and what not, so they decided to make their own music. One word sums it up: rubbish.

Calling the voice overs for this game ear-ringing is going off lightly, they really are that bad. No real actors, most of the voices are done by a machine. Maybe Rockstar spent all of their money on stuff for the Grand Theft Auto series, they couldn't afford real actors or decent soundtracks, but who knows. All we know is that the voice overs and music is bad...... very bad.

Overall: 6/10
Quite a poor effort from Rockstar, but they sure got their money's worth. Grand Theft Auto sure gave this a boost in their success, but if you look at all the mistakes they made, it could have been so much better. I think Rockstar should take their thoughts off of the GTA games and make their other games better. I am looking forwards to the sequel, and I can't wait to see what Rockstar did to improve their bad patches.

Rent or Buy?
Well, I'm pretty sure that this is the best you'll hear for this game, because I know people who absolutely hate this game to pieces. I think that you'll find this review a little bias towards Rockstar but you can't hate them because of one less than average game, can you? So, I highly recommend renting this game before you consider buying it. That way you will be able to see if you like the different parts of the game before you spend £30 on it.

There, I hope you enjoyed reading this review, and I hope that you will consider trying this game out before dissing it from reviews. Thank you.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/01/04