Franky
Ludwig van
...in der PS2 US NG hat es ein 'IGN-Insider' netterwerweise gepostet:
TEIL1:
State of Emergency
Rockstar's newest game is a pure riot; a wildly sensational but ultimately
shallow beat-'em-up that'll have your parents screaming.
February 15, 2002 - There's this old saying Grace Slick once said about rock
'n roll, and it goes something like this --"Rock 'n Roll should make your
parents' skin crawl, make them want to wretch. That's what it's all about."
I can see very clearly that the fun-loving, envelope-pushing creators at
Rockstar had exactly this in mind when they brainstormed their new
beat-'em-up, State of Emergency. The crossover between rock 'n roll and
videogames shouldn't strike too many folks as weird or odd, because game
makers have been pushing to break old molds for years. Now, with new,
powerful systems that enable designers to do more, to explore, push, and
expand game genres, the ideas behind games are beginning to flourish.
Rockstar, fresh off its stunning hit Grand Theft Auto III, knows this more
than most.
But don't make the mistake that State of Emergency is anything like GTA3.
It's not. It's not the same developer, not the same engine, not the broad,
sweeping tour-de-force that GTA3 is. SOE on its very own, however, is a
marvel of technical prowess -- with more than 250 characters on screen at
once -- and it's certainly a concept that's never been pushed to this
extent.
Gameplay
What began as an idea more than three years ago has finally come to
fruition. It's the beat-'em-up that ate Tokyo; huge, violent, and wildly
entertaining. State of Emergency should stun your parents and make you an
instant addict. The concept is simple, but it's so accessible and easy to
play that it almost seems dangerous. Like, why on earth is this so easy and
fun to play? Well, hey! It's a game, it's supposed to be fun (dummy). And
this certainly is.
But let's also be clear about something else: State of Emergency is
certainly going to ruffle some conservative feathers. Oh yes. It's got an M
rating for a reason. You take on the role of an angry, pent-up civilian, joi
n a freedom movement, and then smash everything you see into bits, killing
anyone who gets in the way, too. The goal of course is to stop the
oppressive regime from taking away your God-given rights, and so you mean to
aim the violence at the bad guys, but it just so happens that if you're not
aiming the mini-gun or the flamethrower in the right direction, a handful of
innocent victims are mistakenly killed. You are penalized for that, too (Bad
gamer, bad!), because the goal of the game is not to kill civilians.
SOE takes a classic videogame genre, the beat-'em-up, once dominant in the
arcades with Final Fight, Streets of Rage, and Double Dragon, and has
stretched, widened, and infused it with a modern theme and more than 250
characters in screen at once. In short, it's a riot game. You riot. Yo
u
break windows, blow up cars, shoot people, and break as much as possible,
and it's an enormous release, a smashing good time, and hell-bent, non-stop
action.
Split into two parts, Revolution and Chaos, State of Emergency enables
gamers to vent frustrations, challenge friends for high scores, and presents
itself as a great party game for two or more people. It's not a two-player
game, but it becomes a social glue of sorts that's hard to resist. You sit
around, pass the controller, and have fun. Remember, this is a game.
Revolution follows a story, and places you in missions -- as many as 185
missions, starting out in the Capitol City Mall. As you progress, new
locales open, including Chinatown, Eastside, and Corporation Central. You
meet new people and they offer new objectives, ranging from straight
attacks, chase and attack missions, to defend, escort and defend, and a few
more. Players get to select two characters to begin, either MacNeil or
Libra. As you progress, becoming skilled, you open up new characters,
including Spanky, Bull, and Freak.
Revolution is fun, but only for a while. It's designed to provide gamers
with a huge amount of missions, and it does indeed offer a lot of playtime.
The thing is that the missions eventually become repetitive and brainless.
It's not like I would buy State of Emergency to stimulate the most
intellectual neurons in my brain, but hey, after 50 defend, escort, and
chase missions, I'm not only a little numbed with repetition, but I'm
anxiously hoping the story, or something else, will entice me to continue.
The weapon list is quite extensive, including a sword, pistol, Uzi, AK 47
Kalashnikov, shotgun, M16 Assault Rifle, mini-Gun, grenade launcher, rocket
launcher, tear gas launcher, flame-thrower, grenades, Molotov Cocktails,
tazer, pepper spray, and street "furniture." The furniture set is relatively
vast and mostly consists of junk (but very, very useful junk!) such as
crates, garbage cans, benches, etc., Furniture also includes, I guess, the
heads of dead people. Yes, if you slice somebody with a sword, you can pick
up his or her head and smash someone else with it. Though not subtle, it's
still a nice detail that is consistent with the game's philosophy. In
Revolution, you start with small weapons and as you progress larger ones
become available, but only until later are a wide variety of weapons around.
Even though Chaos mode isn't terribly deep either, it's the very core of the
game. It's where I could literally sit and play from morning 'til dawn. Set
up into three initial parts, Chaos gives players un-timed free range play, a
three-minute clock, and a five-minute clock. The main goal is to score as
many points as possible, and the hyper-happy narrator provides sub-goals for
you to hit certain areas at a specific time. For instance, he'll say, "blow
up cars for extra points," or "smash windows for multipliers." By performing
these acts at the required time, you will indeed earn as many as 5X
multipliers. Some goals are warnings, i
ncluding penalties for killing
civilians, points that are deducted from your total score.
The brilliant idea in Chaos, which I mentioned earlier, is in my mind the
raison d'etre is to reign terror in the midst of a full and complete riot.
Weapons can be picked up around in various locations (the regenerate
randomly as different weapons afterward), and you can simply go to town,
smashing and killing as much as you can within a certain time. The idea
being to score as high as possible. When you score 500,000 and open the next
locale, or when you see those multiplier scores spinning, the surge of
adrenaline is unmistakably fine. There is also Last Clone Standing, another
mode, which is exactly what it sounds like, and it's also very worthy of
your time. That mode opens up after you've succeeded in scoring big points.
But ultimately, the single carrot in State of Emergency is the desire to
smash things. And then smash them again. SOE succeeds wildly in its narrow,
focused goal, but don't expect to find the depth of Grand Theft Auto III in
it. You won't find it. This game is about arcade-action -- fast, violent,
large-scale arcade-action.
Graphics
Using a propriety core engine and renderer custom build around the
PlayStation 2's innards, State of Emergency is a technical feat that other
Koei has come close to with Dynasty Warriors and Kessen series. But even in
those cases, the characters weren't on screen all the time, like in State of
Emergency. Here, players have the opportunity to feel like they are truly
part of a huge, frenetic riot, and the feeling is truly intense. The 250
characters, comprising what seems like to be about a dozen different body
types, all follow different AI paths, and they all react to the actions
occurring around them in realtime. It's pretty amazing to see more than a
dozen characters react in fear, ducking, crouching, shivering, and/or
screaming while you shoot off a rocket into a nearby building. Heck, it's
damn impressive.
Visually, the game takes on a rather humorous appearance, and it looks like
the artists a comic book look for at least two reasons: One, because of the
subject matter itself, and two, because of the inordinate level of activity
happening all at once. Buildings, vehicles, storefronts, fire hydrants,
water fountains, and other things are built well, but textured simply, with
minimal lines and design. Characters are caricatures, falling into
categories, those with giant bellies, stocky legs, and ruddy faces; others
with medium-sized builds; and the skinny variety, you know, super-thin,
gawky, long-legged and strangely still big-footed.
Ultimately, State of Emergency won't blow you away with its graphic textures
or amazingly imaginatively drawn cities. Rather, it's meant to show off a
comic nature, a goofy caricature of the real world. There should be no
mistaking that. And for what it is, the graphics do their thing. I should
mention that the sheer volume of characters is really quite astounding,
making for a wide variety of characters, and
some very likeable ones, too.
It only takes about 10 seconds to see Spanky run to know what I mean, and to
know which character you're really going to latch on to.
.....
TEIL1:
State of Emergency
Rockstar's newest game is a pure riot; a wildly sensational but ultimately
shallow beat-'em-up that'll have your parents screaming.
February 15, 2002 - There's this old saying Grace Slick once said about rock
'n roll, and it goes something like this --"Rock 'n Roll should make your
parents' skin crawl, make them want to wretch. That's what it's all about."
I can see very clearly that the fun-loving, envelope-pushing creators at
Rockstar had exactly this in mind when they brainstormed their new
beat-'em-up, State of Emergency. The crossover between rock 'n roll and
videogames shouldn't strike too many folks as weird or odd, because game
makers have been pushing to break old molds for years. Now, with new,
powerful systems that enable designers to do more, to explore, push, and
expand game genres, the ideas behind games are beginning to flourish.
Rockstar, fresh off its stunning hit Grand Theft Auto III, knows this more
than most.
But don't make the mistake that State of Emergency is anything like GTA3.
It's not. It's not the same developer, not the same engine, not the broad,
sweeping tour-de-force that GTA3 is. SOE on its very own, however, is a
marvel of technical prowess -- with more than 250 characters on screen at
once -- and it's certainly a concept that's never been pushed to this
extent.
Gameplay
What began as an idea more than three years ago has finally come to
fruition. It's the beat-'em-up that ate Tokyo; huge, violent, and wildly
entertaining. State of Emergency should stun your parents and make you an
instant addict. The concept is simple, but it's so accessible and easy to
play that it almost seems dangerous. Like, why on earth is this so easy and
fun to play? Well, hey! It's a game, it's supposed to be fun (dummy). And
this certainly is.
But let's also be clear about something else: State of Emergency is
certainly going to ruffle some conservative feathers. Oh yes. It's got an M
rating for a reason. You take on the role of an angry, pent-up civilian, joi
n a freedom movement, and then smash everything you see into bits, killing
anyone who gets in the way, too. The goal of course is to stop the
oppressive regime from taking away your God-given rights, and so you mean to
aim the violence at the bad guys, but it just so happens that if you're not
aiming the mini-gun or the flamethrower in the right direction, a handful of
innocent victims are mistakenly killed. You are penalized for that, too (Bad
gamer, bad!), because the goal of the game is not to kill civilians.
SOE takes a classic videogame genre, the beat-'em-up, once dominant in the
arcades with Final Fight, Streets of Rage, and Double Dragon, and has
stretched, widened, and infused it with a modern theme and more than 250
characters in screen at once. In short, it's a riot game. You riot. Yo
u
break windows, blow up cars, shoot people, and break as much as possible,
and it's an enormous release, a smashing good time, and hell-bent, non-stop
action.
Split into two parts, Revolution and Chaos, State of Emergency enables
gamers to vent frustrations, challenge friends for high scores, and presents
itself as a great party game for two or more people. It's not a two-player
game, but it becomes a social glue of sorts that's hard to resist. You sit
around, pass the controller, and have fun. Remember, this is a game.
Revolution follows a story, and places you in missions -- as many as 185
missions, starting out in the Capitol City Mall. As you progress, new
locales open, including Chinatown, Eastside, and Corporation Central. You
meet new people and they offer new objectives, ranging from straight
attacks, chase and attack missions, to defend, escort and defend, and a few
more. Players get to select two characters to begin, either MacNeil or
Libra. As you progress, becoming skilled, you open up new characters,
including Spanky, Bull, and Freak.
Revolution is fun, but only for a while. It's designed to provide gamers
with a huge amount of missions, and it does indeed offer a lot of playtime.
The thing is that the missions eventually become repetitive and brainless.
It's not like I would buy State of Emergency to stimulate the most
intellectual neurons in my brain, but hey, after 50 defend, escort, and
chase missions, I'm not only a little numbed with repetition, but I'm
anxiously hoping the story, or something else, will entice me to continue.
The weapon list is quite extensive, including a sword, pistol, Uzi, AK 47
Kalashnikov, shotgun, M16 Assault Rifle, mini-Gun, grenade launcher, rocket
launcher, tear gas launcher, flame-thrower, grenades, Molotov Cocktails,
tazer, pepper spray, and street "furniture." The furniture set is relatively
vast and mostly consists of junk (but very, very useful junk!) such as
crates, garbage cans, benches, etc., Furniture also includes, I guess, the
heads of dead people. Yes, if you slice somebody with a sword, you can pick
up his or her head and smash someone else with it. Though not subtle, it's
still a nice detail that is consistent with the game's philosophy. In
Revolution, you start with small weapons and as you progress larger ones
become available, but only until later are a wide variety of weapons around.
Even though Chaos mode isn't terribly deep either, it's the very core of the
game. It's where I could literally sit and play from morning 'til dawn. Set
up into three initial parts, Chaos gives players un-timed free range play, a
three-minute clock, and a five-minute clock. The main goal is to score as
many points as possible, and the hyper-happy narrator provides sub-goals for
you to hit certain areas at a specific time. For instance, he'll say, "blow
up cars for extra points," or "smash windows for multipliers." By performing
these acts at the required time, you will indeed earn as many as 5X
multipliers. Some goals are warnings, i
ncluding penalties for killing
civilians, points that are deducted from your total score.
The brilliant idea in Chaos, which I mentioned earlier, is in my mind the
raison d'etre is to reign terror in the midst of a full and complete riot.
Weapons can be picked up around in various locations (the regenerate
randomly as different weapons afterward), and you can simply go to town,
smashing and killing as much as you can within a certain time. The idea
being to score as high as possible. When you score 500,000 and open the next
locale, or when you see those multiplier scores spinning, the surge of
adrenaline is unmistakably fine. There is also Last Clone Standing, another
mode, which is exactly what it sounds like, and it's also very worthy of
your time. That mode opens up after you've succeeded in scoring big points.
But ultimately, the single carrot in State of Emergency is the desire to
smash things. And then smash them again. SOE succeeds wildly in its narrow,
focused goal, but don't expect to find the depth of Grand Theft Auto III in
it. You won't find it. This game is about arcade-action -- fast, violent,
large-scale arcade-action.
Graphics
Using a propriety core engine and renderer custom build around the
PlayStation 2's innards, State of Emergency is a technical feat that other
Koei has come close to with Dynasty Warriors and Kessen series. But even in
those cases, the characters weren't on screen all the time, like in State of
Emergency. Here, players have the opportunity to feel like they are truly
part of a huge, frenetic riot, and the feeling is truly intense. The 250
characters, comprising what seems like to be about a dozen different body
types, all follow different AI paths, and they all react to the actions
occurring around them in realtime. It's pretty amazing to see more than a
dozen characters react in fear, ducking, crouching, shivering, and/or
screaming while you shoot off a rocket into a nearby building. Heck, it's
damn impressive.
Visually, the game takes on a rather humorous appearance, and it looks like
the artists a comic book look for at least two reasons: One, because of the
subject matter itself, and two, because of the inordinate level of activity
happening all at once. Buildings, vehicles, storefronts, fire hydrants,
water fountains, and other things are built well, but textured simply, with
minimal lines and design. Characters are caricatures, falling into
categories, those with giant bellies, stocky legs, and ruddy faces; others
with medium-sized builds; and the skinny variety, you know, super-thin,
gawky, long-legged and strangely still big-footed.
Ultimately, State of Emergency won't blow you away with its graphic textures
or amazingly imaginatively drawn cities. Rather, it's meant to show off a
comic nature, a goofy caricature of the real world. There should be no
mistaking that. And for what it is, the graphics do their thing. I should
mention that the sheer volume of characters is really quite astounding,
making for a wide variety of characters, and
some very likeable ones, too.
It only takes about 10 seconds to see Spanky run to know what I mean, and to
know which character you're really going to latch on to.
.....