Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice

"Super extreme justice maxed nitro fuel"

If "Speed" were ever turned into a game, given a hundred times the explosions and guns, and filled with cheesy dialog and villains, this is probably the game you would be taking home. The original Pursuit Force aimed to be one of the biggest, baddest, octane fueled arcade racers brought to a pocket near you. While most of its design was pretty tight and loaded with car hopping thrills, its difficulty curb was not welcoming to beginners and the number of somewhat repetitive missions began to drag on after a time. Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice seems to have aimed to fix these problems, but it only fixes so many.

So what is Extreme Justice? It's super extra badass cool. It's justice without limits. It is EXTREME justice. You got that? EXTREME. As part of the Pursuit Force, it's your job you to do things like chase a bunch of inbred hicks and British bank robbers as they steal nuclear weapons and scientists from around Capital City. Hicks doing too much damage to your car? No problem for the Pursuit Force. Just jump out the window onto their car, cap em through the windshield, steal their car, and begin the chase again! Justice has never been served so eloquently... or so extremely. This game is so fuel injected that my eyeballs are now situated somewhere in my lower mundula oblongata.

The game's story begins with our hero, the Commander, and his lovely helicopter visual chase aid getting married. Things turn sour as enemies from the past make a return under mysterious circumstances and begin trashing the wedding (that poor cake!). A rival pursuit team is introduced soon after (they are jerks of course), and suddenly we are pulled into a story that involves strange kidnappings, nuclear arms heists, love, and characters who refuse to take their uniforms off for any event. They probably even shower in them. Extreme Justice doesn't make any prolific advances as far as videogame stories go. Thankfully that's not the driving force of the game and what little plot is there remains cheesy enough to be funny, slim enough to be unobtrusive, and detailed enough to lend SOME reasoning behind to your extreme tactics.

Where Extreme Justice may fail in its mostly smart car, carbon-based narrative, it certainly picks up where the gameplay is concerned. Extreme Justice has several game modes including a story mode, a challenge mode, and multi-player. The first two of which share the same levels, only Challenge mode adds extra objectives that, once completed, allow you to unlock a large number of additional game content. That's a good thing too, because the story mode is finished as quickly as a quarter-mile race. Story and Challenge mode take place as a combination of driving, turret based, sniper based, or on-foot missions. These four game types make up the bulk of Extreme Justice and are thankfully as varied as gas prices.

The driving portions of the game are the most solid of the bunch, and probably the most fun. Sorry, I meant the most EXTREME. To compare them to a racing game is unfair, since that's obviously not the focus and there really is no racing to speak of. Instead, driving missions usually involve many things. Things like attempting to kill a certain number of escaping foes before a checkpoint, or trying to tail a suspect from a specific distance so as not to be spotted. There are even times where you are the target and must flee from all sorts of weaponry and hijackers. Where Pursuit Force makes it's name though is vehicle hopping of a more extreme Frogger variety. If your vehicle takes too much damage during your pursuits, you simply need to drive up to the nearest enemy manned vehicle, press Circle, and your player will leap perfectly from his current ride to theirs. Once on-board, you've got to deal out some lead justice by shooting the bad dudes occupying the vehicle. Now behind a new set of wheels, justice and its sweet uniform are on the road again. Sometimes you'll even encounter bosses, but most of these fights come down to simply pressing square to dodge an attack and then popping up at the right time to shoot the boss. The situations are really cool, it's just that bosses themselves usually are not.

On-foot and sniping missions are new to Extreme Justice, and sadly they're the weakest part of the package. Thankfully these levels are and far between and usually involve driving at some point. Sniping plays akin to Silent Scope, but without the smooth control. The on-foot missions are worse. Imagine trying to play an FPS with ONLY the mouse. That's what these sections feel like. Crouching is practically useless. There is an aiming button that allows you to strafe and aim while standing still, but there is no mobility in this mode except moving left and right. When you get close to an enemy a button sequence begins ala God of War. Complete it and you'll hand-cuff the nefarious evil person, only to once again fumble your way through what I can only describe as a most extreme snail race. Where did the justice go? My only guess it never took that "30km only" turn off on highway. Damn you and your parking lot speed limits Capital City!

And speaking of justice, your character has a special Justice meter that slowly fills up as you rack up body counts and vehicle explosions. You can exchange this tasty Justice fuel for either more health or special maneuvers such as firing rockets and jumping between cars in slow motion so you can cap off your enemies from the air. It's a nifty reserve that has saved my butt multiple times.

As far as presentation goes, the graphics are on their own set of nitrous. The title has a very strong visual flair, and the areas you'll be pursuing your enemies through are thankfully varied. From city, to swamp, to the sky, there's plenty of visual gas to keep this game running. The framerate never stutters for a moment. The soundtrack is heavily oxidizing, taking an already extreme experience to the super max. And did I mention loading times are fantastically small? Talk about firing on all twelve cylinders.

At the end of this long chase, Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice manages to out juice the previous title. It strongly nails the arcade gameplay with some great mission variety and a decent game length. Still, the game is not without a number of deflated tires. It's difficulty has been toned to down to appeal to more players, but I imagine many people will find that a welcome change over a harmful one. The new on-foot missions don't do anything to enhance the series, but they are far from unbearable. At the least they offer a much needed breather between so much vehicle swapping. And during turret sequences the reticle moves around the screen like a drug afflicted rabbit until you learn how to compensate. Not to mention the story and dialog can also reach molasses speed lows at times.

For all of that, Extreme Justice makes "Speed" look like "Walk". Even better, it does this with all the flair and fun of a top notch PSP game, without that top notch PSP game price. Great presentation, great gameplay, and a tasty looking wedding cake make this a PSP title I strongly recommend. And that especially goes for anyone with a pick-up and play mentality. Did I mention it's also extreme? Oh wait, yes I did. Now excuse me while I go pick my fingernails out of the systems plastic...

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/12/08

Game Release: Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice (US, 01/29/08)