Urban Chaos: Riot Response doesn’t try to make any revolutionary moves in terms of FPS, but it does allow for some fun game play, however brief it may be. In Urban Chaos, you are Nick Mason, part of the Riot Response team T-Zero as is in Zero Tolerance, clever ah? The game begins with a news briefing about a gang of thugs, called the Burners compelte with Jason Vorhees masks, who are terrorizing your city. And by your city I mean any American city, as later on the game reveals its jingoistic side, but we'll get into that. So you’re Mason and you’re called in to quash this 'terrorist' uprising. You start off in one locale and move onto the next, clearing out the Burners as you go. There are about 15 levels and mostly you’re tasked with saving hostages, capturing gang leaders or escorting other emergency personnel such as firefighters and medics. You are strapped with a bevy of weapons including pistol, machine gun, shotgun, chainsaw, taser and grenades. You are also armed with a body shield, easy used with the L trigger, for defense. Health is handled by a medic that will be in a certain location, usually the beginning of each level, with three packs available and that’s it. There are a few small things that set it apart, but don’t offer that much value. During most levels you will be faced with a hostage situation. This boils down to holding your shield up until the baddie has unloaded a clip then plugging him. Sometime it takes a few shots, but you just have to follow him around until he reloads again. The load times are handled nicely with News briefs rattling of tales of your previous exploits and then setting you up for the next crisis. One of the terrible things about this though is that originally you are just fighting a gang of thugs trying to lay siege to the city, but eventually you find out its a band of Muslim Extremists. I strongly believe that they should have left this info out; it doesn’t add anything to the game, and can only serve to show our hatred of Islam.
Now for the technical appraisal: The graphics are good, the environments look good, the characters are well rendered (except on cut scenes) and the weapons look great. One grievance I do have is with the blood spatter. All the blood just comes out in big bursts that look unrealistic, but the decision was made, maybe to get a better rating. The controls are intuitive, not unlike other shooters out there, and easy to master. One drawback is that since you have the shield on left trigger, accessing grenades and smokes are not as easy as it could have been. The voice acting is forgettable, except it is great to hear the Burners shout that they brothers have gone and gotten their heads shot off. Saving is via checkpoints which can be frustrating if you make it with little health left.
Back again to the added things. All levels set you with 5 tasks, which if completed you are awarded with medals which unlock new weapons, upgrades and levels. The five are, Head Shots, Non-Lethal Captures (via the taser), Detective (Finding 5 masks), No Deaths and capturing the Gang Leader alive. Capturing the gang leader will always unlock a hostage level where you have to rescue a certain important ‘official’ in a set time. To unlock even more medals complete the tasks on the highest difficulty.
Urban Chaos is a fun game to play, though it only last about 10 hours on medium difficulty, but it doesn’t do anything to set it apart from the multitude of other first-person shooters out there.
Other Helpful Reviews for Urban Chaos: Riot Response
By damned_beast | Review Date: Aug 18, 2006 | XBOX
Urban Chaos is a great way to look at FPS, and how different it can be. This game does what only arcade games have done, and this game does it amazing, and it has passed what I thought it was going to be like! The gam... Read Full Review
By Brad_the_one | Review Date: Jun 02, 2006 | XBOX
Let me set the scene, riots have broken out in the city, innocent people are being killed and the emergency services are under extreme pressure because of the threat posed by the rioters. That’s where you come in; you pl... Read Full Review
