Urban Chaos: Riot Response

I picked this up today along with the X Men 3 game.

I haven't played too much of this yet, I'm focusing on X Men first, but from the one level I did play, this is pretty sweet.

You play a member of an elite police unit after a gang known as 'the burners' launch an all out attack on NY, and have the city under seige and in chaos. It's up to you to take it back.

The cut scenes set the mood very nicely, in the shape of a news broadcast (from someone who I have read is an actual ex-newsreader), and very well done. The weapons and combat is satisfying, especially slamming a thug with your riot shield so hard it leaves bloodstains. And particularly good shots and deaths get slow-mo replays (one particularly impressive death involved me getting a perfect headshot,only for the thug to fall back into a fiery inferno...if the bullet didn't finish him, that sure did).

There are some pretty unique things to this game, gameplay wise... getting help from other members of the emergency forces is pretty cool. Other cops will help you occassionally in gun battles, firefighters can put out certain fires (dur) and open locked doors with axes, and medics can heal you up to three times. You can also unlock some cool stuff, but instead of concept art and movies and things, this is more gameplay related, ie automatic shotguns and other experimental weaponary.


As a side note, I found it amusing that the manual that comes with the game says that 'non leathal force is the *****es way out'