Urban Chaos : Riot Response
The game play is fairly good with the standard dual analog control scheme. It's easy to aim your weapons so you can pop some fool between the eyes for a quick kill. You use the X, Y, and B buttons to cycle through your various weapons which are sorted into guns, grenades/explosives and for some reason meat cleavers are thrown in there as well, and your unlimited ammo weapons such as a chain saw and taser. One of the more unique elements of the game is your riot shield which you can use to block any attack. And I do mean any attack. By hitting the left trigger to use you shield for protection you can stop physical blows, bullets, explosives, and even rockets and you can bash enemies with it. The developers did a good job of making the shield a useful and integral part of the game without making things too easy. But how can an invincible shield not make the game to easy you ask. First off you have to lower it attack unless you have explosives to lob over the shield. Secondly the Burner's attack you in large groups often from many different angles so you can't always block everything. And finally the shield often has blood smears and bullet and burn marks making it hard to see sometimes.
In many of the missions you will come across police officers, paramedics, and firemen who either need your help or will assist you. When one of them joins you, you can issue them commands using the directional pad. Police men can provide cover fire, firemen can put out fires or destroy objects blocking your path including locked doors, and paramedics can heal you (paramedics can only heal you three times). You can also issue orders for them to take cover (they don't always choose the greatest areas for cover) or follow you which you must issue carefully because if one of them dies, your mission is deemed a failure. For the most part the enemies focus on you instead of your comrades except for a few times here and there. Honestly I accidently blew them away more often than the enemies actually got them.
You can't talk about a shooter without mentioning weapons, so let's do that. At the start of the game you get a T-Zero pistol and a taser. The pistol is easily your most valuable weapon throughout the game, especially once you get it upgraded. You can also earn the T-Zero shotgun and assault rifle by completing bonus missions. Once you earn a T-Zero weapon you have it in your possession for the rest of the game. As you progress through the game you can earn medals and after each X number of medals you earn upgrades for your weapons, armor, shield, etc. You also eventually gain T-Zero riot and smoke grenades. There are plenty of weapons you can pick up off of the Burners you pop along the way but unlike the T-Zero weaponry you loose these at the end of the current mission. The Burner's weaponry includes, meat cleavers, chain-saws, Molotov cocktails, nail bombs, sawn-off shotguns, machine pistols, assault rifles, magnums, and grenade launchers. The assault rifle, magnums, grenade launchers, and nail bombs were very useful, the other Burner weapons in my opinion are more for fun as your T-Zero weaponry is much better.
The game consists of seventeen missions spread out among various city locals from the subway system to the dockyards to the Angel Heights housing projects. Eleven of the seventeen missions are the core game and the other six are known as emergency situations. The emergency missions are basically bonus missions to unlock weapons. The core missions are all similar in format, get from point A to point B without getting you or any of your team massacred by the legions of hockey mask wearing psychos that are running amok. While various new objectives are added throughout each stage you only receive a new one once you have completed your current one so the missions are about as linear as you can get. The shooting is broken up occasionally by switch finding or having the fireman smashing or opening something so you can continue. None of these puzzles (I use that term loosely for this game) take much brain power at all so those of you who hate games with tough puzzles are in luck. Another way they developers break up the violence is by having you help firemen rescue people from burning buildings.
The emergency missions I mentioned earlier are a little different. In these you are given a limited amount of time to find a city official that has been kidnapped by the Burners and get them to the evac point. These can be difficult if you are not an efficient killer mainly because of the time limit. But once you fail a few times and get the layout of the stage down and you learn to dispatch enemies quickly the difficulty plummets. Another added challenge is you go into these missions solo, there are no medics to heal your wounds.
There is only one type of enemy in this game, psychos in hockey masks. They vary in clothing and what weapon they carry, that's it. For the most part they are easy to take down too, a head shot or two to three shots to the chest and there's one more body to step over. They make up for the for that by the numbers you face. There are no boss battles. The closest thing to a boss battle are the hostage situations that are scattered throughout the game. But these are very easy as all you have to do is use your shield until the enemy goes to reload and then shoot him without hitting his human shield. The other thing that makes the game easy is that fact that the enemies are completely scripted, save a few areas where they are unlimited. So if you die all the enemies will be in the exact same places. Makes it easy when you know where everyone is doesn't it?
To add some replay and reason to be a skilled player, you earn medals for accomplishing certain bonus objectives. Each mission has four bonus objectives which totals to 12 medals (three sets of four) spanned across the three difficulty settings (veteran, elite, and terror). The medals are non-lethal enforcer, sharp shooter, survivor, and detective. Non-lethal enforcer is earned by arresting the specified number of enemies. Sharp shooter is earned by getting the specified number of head shots. Survivor goes to those who complete the mission without using a checkpoint. And detective is earned by finding the five hockey masks hidden throughout the mission. By earning medals you get upgrades for your weapons and other equipment. So if you get stuck on a mission try earning medals on previous ones to get upgrades. It really makes your life easier, especially the fully upgraded pistol that kills anyone with one bullet unless you hit them in the hand or foot.
The music and sounds are nothing special. Actually there isn't much music at all. The enemies toss as many insults and one liners at you as they do bullets. This would be fine except there is only two or three different voices for the enemies and the lines are limited. An insult gets old after you here it fifty times.
Other than the few downsides I've mentioned earlier the only other one is the challenge. For video game vets this game will be a breeze even on terror mode. Even average gamers will get through most of it easily, save a few areas. Even the medals are fairly easy to earn. In contrast to the downsides there are a few items that I really feel worth mentioning. First off when you kill an enemy the body goes limp and acts much like you would expect in real life. They don't follow some preset death sequence, it all depends on how and where you kill them. Shoot them while they are on stairs and they will tumble down like a rag doll. Shoot them near a ledge and their limbs will hang over the edge instead of stiffly sticking out in mid-air (they will also slide off if enough weight is hanging over the edge). In addition to that when you kill some enemies the game will go slow-mo and you can watch them crumple, sail, or tumble to the ground with a sick sense of satisfaction. I really think that was a nice touch. And most importantly, as simple and easy as the game is, it is a lot of fun and very addictive. Definitely worth at least a rental if not a couple bucks for a used copy.