Reviewed by Addie Panveno
I’ll admit it: I liked the first State of Emergency. Many gamers found it to be a let down after the rampant success of Grand Theft Auto III, and critics questioned if the riot-based video game even needed to be released after the WTO riots in Seattle. But, like most Rockstar titles, I found this one to be very tongue-in-cheek, and found the mindless civil disobedience to be somewhat therapeutic. I especially liked the fact that you could beat someone with their own body parts.
When I first read that they were making a sequel, I knew it was going to be a game I would want to play. Despite what the critics said, Rockstar always comes out with very playable games.
Unfortunately, this was not a Rockstar game.
The original developer, VIS Interactive, filed for bankruptcy shortly after announcing the title was in the works, as did the next two production companies that came into contact with the game. I should have taken this as a bad sign, but I was completely hell-bent on finding that out for myself. Maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment.
My first disappointment was the fact that the gameplay had been completely changed. If it wasn’t for Spanky, the chubby gangster on the cover, you would never even know the games were related.
Now a generic third-person shooter, SOE2 tries to suck its players in with a newly expanded plot, however ridiculous and poorly written it may be. The crazy melee combat that I loved in the first game is totally gone, replaced with “bigger, badder weapons”, though it’s hard to tell the difference between them when you are actually playing the game. It seemed like the only difference between the shotgun and the pistol were shooting speed and reloading times. When I pull out that shotgun, I want some bang for my buck!
Thankfully, the controls weren’t as bad as other games I’ve played of this type, but I certainly wouldn’t call them smooth. Even if shooters aren’t your thing, you can usually deal with most of your enemies simply by button mashing and spraying bullets. However idiot-proof it that may be, it is almost an insult to hardcore gamers, who would see this as requiring little to no skill.
The ambient sounds and music are fairly standard for this type of game, but the voice-over work is downright cheesy. It’s reminiscent of the game spoofs you’d see on YouTube.
The game is further bogged down by redundance with its trial-and-error style missions, which become increasingly frustrating. Hours can be spent playing one scenario alone, and more than once I felt my blood pressure rise to the point I wanted to put my foot through the screen. Specific aspects of the game, such a stealthy wall scaling and switching between characters (which seemed to be thrown in to change things up) are no more than blatant rip offs from other games that do it better. I can see where they wanted to take this game, but I think with all the shuffling between development houses, the original idea just became more and more watered down.
Normally, I would say that if you are a fan of the original, this one might be for you too. But with all of the new and hardly improved changes, I can’t see anyone being anything but irritated with this State of Emergency 2. For me, it was downright painful.