Emergency Mayhem E3 2004 Impressions

During our time at Acclaim's E3 2004 booth, we got the chance to take a look at a brief video presentation for Emergency Mayhem, a driving game that also happens to feature more than 70 different types of minigames. In Emergency Mayhem you'll be in control of three different emergency response units: police, fire, and medical. You will be challenged by constant crises, and in order to solve them, you will play one of the game's assorted minigames.

Very little in the way of gameplay was shown in the video, but what we did see seemed interesting. The actual driving portions of the game looked very similar to Sega's Crazy Taxi in terms of look and feel. You'll have an arrow that will point you in the direction of your next crisis, and once there, a large, gold section of light will indicate where you need to stop your vehicle to start the current minigame. Only one minigame was actually shown, and it involved the fire department trying to bounce a number of people jumping out of a burning building onto a trampoline and off to safety.

Emergency Mayhem will be primarily a tongue-in-cheek game, featuring a cast of zany characters. Additionally, you will be able to play Emergency Mayhem's assorted minigames in one of several party modes for some multiplayer action.

Emergency Mayhem will be released on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in early 2005. We will have more on the game in the coming months.