Should you join the riot or head for the hills?

Originally exclusive to the Plasystation 2, Rockstar Games released State of Emergency shortly after the release of Grand Theft Auto III in a ploy to attract the millions of crazed GTA fans. Mirroring the look of GTA’s on-foot missions, State of Emergency was anything but GTA with its complete focus on frantic riot gameplay. A year after its release on the PS2, Rockstar brought the game to the Xbox with the addition of a multiplayer mode and a small $20 price tag. Should Xbox owners care? Read on to find out.

Features

A violent free-for-all where you can smash everything and everyone

Four expansive, destructible districts

At least 30 missions per district

Play as 1 of 5 different Resistance agents

Xbox exclusive multiplayer mode

Gameplay
The story behind State of Emergency is that in the near future an oppressive Corporation has declared a State of Emergency upon the breakout of riots throughout the city by an organized resistance. You take on the roll as a member of the resistance and do everything you can to smash everyone and everything in your path in order to destabilize and bring down the Corporation.

Placing you in the center of a massive riot and letting you go on a destructive free-for-all is the main objective of the game. As you battle your way through the solo gameplay modes you will receive various objectives for each location. Objectives are essentially all the same, having you destroy buildings, eliminate a set number of people in a set amount of time, escort someone, or take a specific person out. In order to accomplish your objectives players are given a variety of fighting moves including punches, kicks, dash attacks, and any combination of them. On top of that players will find a large variety of weapons from guns and knives to flame throwers and rocket launchers. What sets State of Emergency’s weapon system apart from other games is that players are not limited to traditional weapons but can also pick up other objects such as park benches, trash cans, bottles, and even dismembered body limbs and use them to inflict damage. The combat and weapon systems are strong in the game and provide players with a larger then usual amount of ways to fight.

The riots take place in large wide-open districts of the city; four in all. Each riot is filled with an incredibly impressive number of rioting people, props, and other objects. The engine Vis created for State of Emergency is truly impressive for this reason and they should be commended for their effort. Unfortunately the wide-openness of these environments ultimately hurts the overall experience because the player is often left wonder what exactly they should be doing, where they should be going, and if they are actually having fun at all. The only thing more troublesome then the environments themselves is the incredibly shoddy and unintelligent. Civilians run around in all directions with no realism to their intelligence at all. Worse then the civilians, the armed Corporation soldiers AI has then essentially acting the same but never using any sort of strategy to bring you down. Instead they just run towards you, stand, and attack. This is really a rather sad fact as a more refined AI system could have led to some real strategy and greater realism. With the swarms of innocents and Corporation solders it is your mission to separate the innocent civilians from the soldiers and gang members, trying not to kill too many citizens. If you do you loose points, but they are easy to get back. This sort of play mixed with the mission types mentioned earlier in this review quickly become stale and repetitive.

The Xbox exclusive multiplayer modes add greatly to the overall experience.
Exclusive to the Xbox, the new multiplayer modes do add some much needed fun to State of Emergency. Offering both cooperative and competitive versions of the single player missions allows you and your friends to play together or against each other to earn the most points. Playing these modes actually is more fun then the single player experience, but still rather shallow. The multiplayer mode shines the most with the Deathmatch mode. In this mode you and your other friends will be placed in any of the four environments where your only objective is to take out the other human controlled characters. If left like this it would be a rather dull experience and fortunately Vis realized this and allows you to recruit other riots into your own gang. Once in your gang these AI controlled characters will follow you around the environments and attack your rival human gang leaders and their AI controlled members with you. This adds a great deal of enjoyment to the mode and makes the overall State of Emergency package more worth while.

Graphics
Graphically State of Emergency is a mixed bag. While the engine Vis has created is able to push out an incredibly high amount of characters, objects, effects inside of large yet confined environments, their overall look is bland and cartoonish. Environments and objects are basic in design and covered with bright colors and flat textures. While it is not ugly to look at, it could have benefited from a more realistic approach in the vein of Grand Theft Auto. Character models are also low on the polygon count, but they get the job done and again the game is displaying a large number of them so their look is understandable. Despite all of the on screen chaos and number of animated characters on screen it is also impressive how smooth and fast the action remains without causing a hit to the framerate.

Sound
Overall the sound package is decent. You will hear all of the screams, smashes, explosions, gun shots, sirens, and more that you would expect from a real riot. All of the sound effects are clear and fitting to the chaos. The voice work of the announcer does get on your nerves after awhile, but it is easy to tune him out due to the great Xbox addition of customizable soundtracks. Players will be able to replace the rather basic and generic music provided with the game with their own music they have ripped to the Xbox. This is a huge addition to the game over its PS2 counterpart and must be experienced to really grasp the difference it makes.

Closing
At $20 and with the addition of a surprisingly good multiplayer mode and customizable soundtracks, State of Emergency is worth picking up by anyone looking for some incredibly mindless violent fun. If you are expecting a spin-off of Grand Theft Auto then you should likely pass on the game or you will be in for some real disappointment. Despite its overly basic and repetitive gameplay, there is some fun to be had here especially if you can get some friends together. Hopefully Vis will have greatly improved upon what they have done with State of Emergency when its sequel ships later this year.