Urban Chaos: Riot Response

Urban Chaos: Riot Response

The best way to defeat a city full of arsonists is to shoot them all in the face.
Author: Sam Bishop
Published: June 26, 2006
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About the only part of the game that doesn't work is using the breather, a thermal mask that firefighters use to see in smoke and the dark. Just about anywhere the game uses dark areas means a lot of running around and blindly slamming into walls. It's just way, way to easy to get disoriented, and when the game combines this confusion with a common element of rescuing people from burning buildings, it makes for the least enjoyable parts of the game. It's realistic, yes, but when I can stop incoming rockets with my friggin' riot shield, I'm not really looking for realism.


Arguably the most consistently disappointing part of the game, however is the visuals. It's not that Riot Response is an especially ugly game, nor does it run poorly, it just doesn't seem to have any sort of artistic direction. You'll run through sewers, through downtown, around city hall, out to the docks and more, and it all sort of has the same generic feel to it. It's not ugly it's just... plain. The framerate can take a couple of dips here and there, and it's not terribly smooth to begin with, but the game at least pulls off what it's trying to do visually with mild success.

If you can get past the music in the menus, a weird, slow-build rock tune with a lumbering bassline, the rest of the music is nice, if not distracting stuff. It's even a little dynamic, drawing back during more tense moments and slipping back into a more regular pattern for the rest of the game. There was an effort to give voices (and names) to the civic servants, but they all tend to just sound the same and blend together, thus negating any sort of impact that they may have had when they died (though they did throw in the nice touch of giving mission-critical characters an obit if they die).

Urban Chaos: Riot Response weilds a handful of simple mechanics that helps it rise above the fairly generic concept that it's based on. The riot shield, side objectives, and constant set of unlockables gives the game some progress, even though the storyline (told through a series of live-action FMV mock newscasts) doesn't really make anything more interesting.

It's a shame that the game didn't really have more of a cohesive feel to it (even a game with little to no story can have a strong artistic vibe; see Project: Snowblind for a good example of this), but the additions that were made keep the game interesting, and if nothing else, it ends up a solid but underwhelming experience that's certainly better than the first console Urban Chaos effort. Mucky Foot may be gone, but at least the world they created lives on, and Rocksteady should be commended for keeping it alive.
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The Verdict
8.0

Ignoring the tacked-on 9/11 vibe, Riot Response manages to be a first-person shooter with enough new stuff to make it a worthwhile experience. It may not be a looker, and some of the characters might seem a little cookie cutter, but it's still a blast.

7.0Graphics:

Though the New York-esque urban environments are nice, they aren't all that interesting visually, nor are they varied. The direction in cutscenes is a little better, but overall, this isn't a terribly pretty game.

7.5Sound:

Decent voice acting might be subject to a bit too much fake Noo Yawk-ese in the accents, but at least there's a decent amount of it. That hundreds of gang members can be so organized as to shout the same half-dozen insults... well that says something.

10.0Control:

It's a first-person shooter with solid weapon-switching controls, a quick-to-use riot shield, and stuff like ladders working perfectly. No complaints here.

8.0Gameplay:

Aside from the darker areas of the game, this is just a well-done first-person shooter. The weapons have nice kick to them, the levels are well thought out, and the AI for your friends is smart enough to do what you ask without problems.