State of Emergency

The Good
The concept is gold - all hell is breaking loose. It is the not-too-distant future, in a city controlled on all fronts by a mega-corporation. Government has become obsolete, and the population is 'happy' - actually, they're miserable, but they don't realize it because they've been fed lies and lifestyles for the last 50 years or more.

Increasing dissatisfaction in "freedoms" provided by the company, known simply as The Corporation, results in small, easily defeated pockets of resistance... until a State of Emergency is called in Capitol City, and the rioting begins... and this is where you story begins.

The Bad
As far as simple arcade action goes, this game is great - or would be, if the year was 1995... back then, it would have been a best seller, but today's audiences expect more from even the most basic beat-em-up game. Case in point: Grand Theft Auto III, which I can scarcely believe was made by the same company.

The games controls are frustrating and clumsy. The AI is poor... enemies respawn within moments of being killed, at exactly the same spot, but mostly, you're surrounded by civilians. Very difficult to navigate through missions due to terrible mapping. There is absolutely NO character development at all - you don't care about any of the characters. The music, while good, is repetitive to the point of insanity. If you drop a weapon, it disappears almost immediately.

The Bottom Line
This could have been an absolutely fantastic game. I bought it based entirely on my faith in Rock Star Games alone, but after playing this game, I am sorely disappointed. It's a mildly entertaining game... rent it for the weekend and give it a spin, you may like it, but I somehow doubt this one will be spending a great deal of time in my PS2... instead, it'll probably be on the shelf, collecting dust.

Simply put, this game does not take advantage of the capabilities of the PS2 - it strikes me as a project that was rushed through every stage of development, slapped in a box, and shipped without any real consideration for whether or not or was actually a DECENT game.

The Good
Man, what is there to like? Hmm, well if you like Grand Theft Auto, then you might like this game. It's straightforward killing people and destroying property. It also makes a good beer coaster when you're done playing too!

The Bad
Every single aspect of this game is downright bad, from the clunky controls to the graphics and the storyline and the repetive-ness rounds out the overall tone of the game. It's definitely a console only version, don't know why they port it to the PC, it was not meant to be on the Windows platform. Though the system requirements are pretty high, but the graphics turn out to be jaggies and the game skips alot even on my high end system. The voice acting is horrible, you mix southpark sounds with a terrible soap opera and there you have it...Controls suck too unless you have a gamepad, and replayability is only for people that need to reduce stress levels by mass killing.

The Bottom Line
It's a great bargain gift for the person you don't know or hate, since this is a relatively bad game. It's a console port to Windows and therefore it sucks....if you want a good console port game, just play Grand Theft Auto 3!