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State of Emergency Review - Xbox

Ever had a bad day at work and felt like destroying anything and everything in sight? Ever wanted to join a protest but didn't wanna look like an ass on TV? Then State of Emergency may be the game for you. After the organised style of crime with Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar have gone for a more unorganised style with State of Emergency, kind of a juxtaposition. However, the question at hand is, is State of Emergency a full scale riot or is it anarchy all gone wrong?

Gameplay

State of Emergency sure has a lot going on. Civilians, looters, security and police are running around wilder than a person at a rave drinking copious amounts of red bull. There's not much of a storyline however it goes with an 'evil' corporation with several members of society not satisfied with them who decide to start a vigilante group named the Freedom Force. You start of with a choice of 2 characters with more to be unlocked. Missions vary with objectives being ones such as killing the cowardly executive, blowing up the drug store (a 'good' drug store) or killing 200 clones of security guards in a time limit. The main problem in SOA is that all the killing is mindless and after a while it seems rather pointless. Environments are packed with lots of people but again, it's more cosmetic as they just run around like headless chooks. Kind of like the fans at an Avril in store signing. Having a storyline and some cut scenes would help have made SOA a more gripping style of game. Instead you kill the executive and it's just straight to the next objective. So instead of an intelligent, violent style of protest (is there such a thing however?) it's more like a bunch of schoolkids protesting about Pauline Hanson just to get the day of school.
Unfortunately there are only 4 different levels, Capital City Mall, Chinatown , East Side and Corporation Central. None of the shops or businesses are real but would you really expect Mcdonalds and co. to display their so called community helping image in a game like SOA? A create a mission would be perfect for SOA. Where you could play the role of a disgruntled clerk, sick of annoying customers or act as an frustrated customer who's getting jacked around by their insurance company and reply by blow ing the place up. That'll teach em for increasing the premiums. Or perhaps you could be a university student protesting about the increase in HECS and show your anger by blowing up the local bar, but then there'd be no beer to drink. There's tons of possibilities in SOA, oh well, maybe if their is a sequel.

Graphics

State of Emergency as mentioned in the previous paragraphs has a lot going on. It possess a cartoon style of look hopefully conveying to gamers that it's just a game. One of the neat features abouts SOA is that almost anything can be picked up and thrown from rubbish bins and chairs to weapons ... (continued next page)