Pursuit Force
So this is what it feels like to play a portable action movie.
Published: April 30, 2006
One of the key reasons for the game feeling like one of the first true PSP-oriented games is the simple fact that it looks so damn good. The framerate for the most part is great, the sense of speed is wonderful, and the game controls well with both the d-pad and analog nub (though some vehicles control better than others). The levels are all very obviously stuck on rails, but the corridor-based design meant that plenty of detail could go into the environment -- particularly in some of the later levels.
Not only this, but the game has that same Outrun-style ever-changing scenery. It's not uncommon in some missions to start out in the suburbs, move into a warehouse head out through the industrial parts of the city and finish in the open country, and through it all little details like white picket fences, cities thick with skyscrapers, wooden bridges and dirt paths and refineries and power plants spewing clouds of smoke into the air are all present.
And the game sounds great as well -- with or without headphones (with them on, the audio's almost overpowering, in fact). The squeal of tires, the three-round burp form your Robocop-style semi-auto handgun, the klaxons that sound when you fill your Justice Bar, it's all engineered to be high-energy. This extends to the music, which is almost always a driving, tense series of marching notes. It's not especially moving, nor is it terribly memorable, but the music absolutely fits.
Pursuit Force knows what it does well and milks that for all its worth. It might be milked a little too much, but that doesn't mean that the overall impact of jumping from car to car (or bus to car, or boat to truck, or chopper to car) gets any less fun. The action is broken up enough from mission to mission to keep any one vehicle or gameplay type from getting too old, though the entire experience will start to drag towards the end if you're playing the game in a handful of sittings.
The balancing act that's struck between capturing vehicles, avoiding civilian traffic, watching your health and cashing in the Justice Bar at the right time to either slo-mo dive bomb another car or refill your health is an expertly planned one, and even when the difficulty spikes to stupid levels on some missions, it's still fun. And really, that should be the defining mark of a game; not the graphics, not the sound, but how much fun it is, and Pursuit Force embodies everything -- both the fun and the vapidity -- of a Hollywood action movie. Don't go into it expecting an epic, and you'll be very, very satisfied indeed.
