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Extremely disappointed...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 22 / 27
Date: February 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

If you're expecting this game to be like Grand Theft Auto 3, you will be very disappointed. I pre-ordered the game and once I started playing it, it got boring fast.

No doubt it will entertain many gamers, but for a seasoned gamer it's a waste of time. The games graphics are great, the music isn't bad, the story line is pretty good, but over-all game play and replay stinks. Basically, all you do is go around different areas beating up people (not as good as GTA3) picking up weapons that don't last long and like GTA3 you have missions to complete. You can break glass, store fronts, etc. but you can't steal cars or drive around or anything (as far as I have gotten, maybe it changes). It's more of an action arcade/fighting game and it isn't impressive. You can however pick up items, like tables, and things that have been looted from the stores, but all you can do is throw it at people.

Don't believe the hype, it is NOT as great as people who haven't even played it make it seem. It's violent, but nothing you wouldn't see on television daily.

There isn't a lot of depth to this game, and I may be biased, but I expected so much more from the makers of Grand Theft Auto 3!

Could have been a lot better

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 20 / 24
Date: March 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game thinking it would be GTA3 minus the cars. Wrong. The game is about taking the role of one of five freedom fighters to fight the corporation that has taken over the country by having security keep all citizens in line. The citizens are looting/running everywhere in protest. The game is similar to GTA in that you do "jobs" for different freedom fighters. But that's where it ends. The missions are to protect freedom's members and escort them to safety/steal plans and to eliminate corporation members using your fists or the wide variety of weapons available. The 4 levels include mall, China town, East side and corporation headquarters. End the levels by blowing up key buildings to topple the corporations plans and liberate the city. The corporation forces are made up of low level mall cops to military and super soldiers as you progress through the game. Windows can be smashed with items such as trash cans, signs,benches and certain weapons. The weapons include uzis, flamethrowers, hatchets, M16's and rocket launchers. You can only carry 1 weapon at a time. If it is a weapon that needs ammo, once you run out it will dissappear and you will have to get another one lying on the ground or off of an enemy. The game is very violent and has over the top cartoon imagery(beheadings, exploding bodies). There is a chaos mode that is about scoring points by smashing windows, blowing up cars, and killing gang members/ corporation members.

Now for my complaints about the game. The graphics are ok, but are cartoony and make the game look silly with all the violence. There are many civilians/looters on the screen, hundreds, but they are all running non stop and if hit will not fight back. Every level is made up of you and the crowd running all around you at all times as you carry out your missions. At least in GTA citizens would fight back most of the time. Even the prostitutes! One of the big deals about this game was supposed to be all the gang members you could interact with. You can have a large gang after you but once they are taken out, you can walk past members of the same gang later and they will not even come after you unless you attack them. In GTA once on the gang members turf such as Diablos/Triads, any one of them would come right after you if you were spotted. Here it's like they never saw you before. Also,your character cannot jump and there is no lock on feature using any of the weapons. So all attacks must be aimed manually. With all the enemies coming at you at once it makes it difficult to target them. Another big complaint is that you are stuck in each level for the whole time that you are doing missions until they are completed. You cannot run freely from town to town like in GTA. I would have liked to at least have rode a subway to the connecting towns. When you are not on a mission there is not really any fun in exploring a town, because there is nothing to do but smash windows,pick up objects and attack people. There is also no time change. It is always light, never night time, which could have allowed for some interesting things with all the different gang turfs in the game. Another complaint is that even if you shoot hundreds of people in the game your wanted level will not go up at all. So only whatever security happens to be in the area you are near will come running for you, no backup is sent out. The more trouble you get in, the more higher level security should be coming after you to stop you! There are no bosses to fight except for the Mallrats leader. With all those weapons it would have made for some great boss battles. There is also no cinematic dialogue at any time, which makes your missions very boring and just has you looking at a screen full of words all the time when the missions are given. As for the replay value of the game, the missions are so repetitive and frustrating that it isn't fun going through them again. Chaos mode allows for random mayhem with a variety of weapons with just destroying things in a certain amount of time which allows for stress relieving no-thinking fun. So, in all it looks like the makers used the weapons,violence factor and on foot missions of GTA but forgot to add all the things that made that game so fun.

A superb game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 20
Date: February 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is a superb game. Simply put. One of Rockstar's best efforts. When I bought this February 15th, ...I had great expectations for this game. But now, it has been confirmed. There are some things that could have been better, but the good stuff outweighs the bad by alot.

This game has it all! There are at least 200 people on screen at the same time, TONS and TONS of enemies of various toughness, you can pick up almost anything and smash people and windows with them, and the entire time, there is one mammoth riot going on. It is absolute chaos. People everywhere.

There are weapons varying from your basic chair seats, signs, and bats to rifles, gernades, molotav cocktails, uzis, and tear gas throwers. Even pepper spray too. Get ahold of an M-16 rifle, and you can cause total mayhem.

The enemies have been made well. The AI is very good and the enemies are of variation. For instance, you have your average Coporation Guard who is easy to kill, and then you have the more advance enemies that take forever to kill. Some enemies carry guns that could easily kill you, and some don't. Try taking on 10 Corporation guards while 5 guys on the outside are trying to kill you with guns at the same time. Also, if you want to cause trouble, smash a few windows or hurt pedestrians and they will come looking for you.

The missions are well done. Though not as extensive as GTA3, with the cinematics, the missions are tough anyway. I'm not going to go in depth about them. But for example, in a few of the missions I did, you either had to hunt someone down, or protect someone, or kill someone for information. The tough part about it is you have all of these guards coming at you at once, and that can make it tough to protect someone. It is challenging that way. While you are taking care of some guards, some others may sneak up and start beating on the guy you are protecting. Or trying to anyway.

The Kaos mode is GREAT! I can't put it into words, because it is so great. You'll find out when you get it.

The controls are good. You have your punches, kicks, combos, and a special 360 attack. That is very helpful when tons of enemies surround you. It won't kill them, but will knock them away to let you catch a breath. It only damages the enemies minorly, however.

There is only a few tiny downsides to this game, as I have seen so far. The map, like in GTA3, is gone. Well, sort of. You have to bring it up every time you want a look around. Good thing is you have an arrow pointing you where you need to go. Another thing is the size of the areas. The mall is big, but not as big as a city like in GTA3. This is not a bad thing per say. It just took a little while to get used to. But the amount of people, design, structure, colors, AI, and types of stores more than make up for it. I haven't seen the other two areas, but I am sure they are superb. The other tiny thing is there is not auto targeting with the guns like in GTA3. When you look at it though, maybe that is a good thing. The camera may be a bit of a challenge too. Like in looking behind you or when turning around. But it is only a tiny problem and doesn't matter much.

All in all, this game is great. It can be violent at times, and deserves the M rating. This is not a game for little kids. I'd say that you'd have to be in your mid teens and up to play this, like the rating means already. It can be gorey, though there is an option to turn it off. But if you are old enough, you SHOULD get this game! It is well worth the $50, because it will hold your interest for a long time.

Mindless fun for older gamers

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 19
Date: March 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

State of Emergency comes from Rockstar, makers of GTA3 and Vice City. It's no surprise that the game involves a lot of violence, bloodshed and mayhem.

The world you're in is run by a corporation, which is harsh and controlling. You are a male or female vigilante, and you have four maps on which you can work: a suburban mall, Chinatown, a suburb, and a corporate building.

Each map is full-roam - you can go whereever you want in it. Each map is rather large too, complete with cars, glass windows to shatter, trashcans to pick up, and up to 250 running civilians, each with his or her own personality. While the graphics aren't glisteningly crisp like in Kingdom Hearts or FFX, they're still rather good. You can read the store signs in Chinatown and see the flower design on your character's Hawaiian shirt.

There are different modes of game play, all single player only. You can just roam around in a map killing the bad security guards and gaining points from short-term goals such as "blow up all enforcer cars". You can do a timed mode where you have to work through a series of objectives, gaining time bonusses as you go to keep time on your clock. Finally you can take on the almost 200-mission main sequence, where you are given specific tasks to do in order and report back at the end of each one.

On one hand, you can say that the game is very repetitive. While each level has different graphics, the tasks in each one are the same - avoid hurting civilians, kill the target enemy, gather up health. The splashes of red blood are continuous (although you can turn gore off).

But on the other hand, it's an arcade game, not requiring much thought. It's mindless fun, giving quick results and easy progress. There are selections of weapons, from billy clubs to swords to flamethrowers and miniguns. After a hard day, there is great satisfaction in the smash of a plate glass window.

Not for the young, with its constant attack mentality in city streets. But for anyone old enough for Vice City and Halflife, this is a fun, casual way to blast through a few hours of fun.

Not as good as the hype...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 19 / 27
Date: February 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

First of all, let me say I can't believe that there are 20+ reviews on this game and most of them are saying "it should be good". Wait until you own the game before you write a review on it would you. It just adds to the hype that will undoubtedly push this game to the top of the sales chart.

This game is not as good as expected. The control stinks as do the missions. The graphics are great but where is the gameplay. It was fun for about a hour but if you need a copy you can find it at EB in St. louis because that is where I'm returnin mine. BTW, I've never played GTA3 so my judgement is not based on partiality to that game.

Rent it first..

Fun for about ten minutes.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: November 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When I first heard about this game in late 2001/early 2002, I was pretty stoked. I mean, it was from Rockstar Games (the people who brought us the almighty GTA series), and it was about RIOTING. I figured, it would be like GTA3 (Vice City wasn't out at the time, remember?), and I could riot and cause all kinds of damage to a town! SWEET!

Well, I bought the game, and for the first ten minutes, I loved it. Then, it got a little boring. The next day, I started actually doing missions in Revolution Mode. Boy, talk about repetitive. No spoken dialogue, no real variety, etc. Hell, some of them weren't even that fun. And some were just plain flat-out IMPOSSIBLE. Take one mission (please note that this one happens pretty early in the game): it is your duty to protect some guy while he goes into a jewelry store (something about a bomb, I don't remember). Sounds easy, right? Heh heh. WRONG!!!!!!! About 30 different guys start swarming the entrance, and if even ONE gets in, MISSION FAILED. :-( My Dualshock 2 controller is now slightly dinged thanks to that mission.

The Chaos Mode was a little better, though, and keeps me from giving this game the dreaded lone-star review. In this one, you could just go completely crazy and destroy stuff. But even this mode has its faults. For instance, 3/4 of the time, you get a significant amount of points taken off if you kill ANY civilian. HUH?!? And even without it, the game gets quite boring.

I ended up selling this game to [a video game store] for a lousy $2 store credit card that got ruined because I left it in my pants pocket and it went through the wash and I had to throw it away. (No big loss.) I really wanted to like this game, but it's just not that good. Save your money and just stick with the GTA series if it's violence you're after.

Or, of course, you could just give me a billion "Not Helpful" votes.

RIOT!!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: March 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

You will never have so much fun [ticking] off your parents as when playing this game.

Chaos mode is SoE's cream of the crop - no definite goals or objectives, you just run around blowing up cars and throwing grenades into buildings. Throwing a molotov cocktail into a building and watching it explode while people scream and run in all directions is definitely alot of fun. Chaos mode sometimes gives you little goals, like a short time period where breaking windows is worth double points, or a time limit on blowing up all the cop cars in the level, but mostly you are free to do what you want. The weapons are awesome, fun to use, and each has its place and function. Rocket and Grenade Launchers are good for some vehicular destruction, and when the cops come after you, there is a good assortment of machine guns, shotguns, flame throwers, and even pepper spray. These shoot-outs with the law are great - cops and soldiers swarm you, and you must retreat to a safe distance and then mow 'em all down (and usually a few civilians, too, cause they can't help but get in the way). This inforces a style of play in which you run frantically from corner to corner, causing as much destruction as you can with whatever you can get your hands on. Each area has local gangs, too, and if you attack them accidentally or on purpose, you will envoke their wrath and they'll be after you. Chaos mode also has a "Last Clone Standing" varient, in which the only people out are bad guys, and you must empty the streets of them. This is fun, as the bodies so start to pile up...

And yet all this fun is about as deep as an arcade game. At it's heart, State of Emergency is a simple beat-em-up, kinda like the old Double Dragon, except taken to a grand scale. The crowds are neat and give a real sense of a riot going on, but there is very little you can actually DO with those people. The camera is very difficult to work, especially since enemies tend to collect in your blind spots. The story mode ("Revolution") is pretty boring, with endless missions that never seem to end. Lastly, the game only has 4 levels, and of these, I only liked 2 of the levels. Not much there. These levels aren't anything like the cities in GTA3 - there is no "breathing city" theme - not much is going on, and after a while you'll feel like you've "been there, done that".

Maybe rent this game first, see what you think.

Keep things straight...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: February 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is not anything like Grand Theft Auto 3. The comparisons end at the amorality and violence; the gameplay is completely different.

It is fast, action packed, and insane. Think old school arcade style shooters like Smash TV or Robotron, crossed with brawlers like Final Fight, crossed again with games like Crazy Taxi, and throw it in a third person 3D view to finish it off.

If you have GTA3 Part 2 in your mind, forget all that. Approach this game with an open mind or you are bound for dissapointment.

If you are into fast, old school arcade style action, you won't be dissapointed. It is a lot of fun and the action NEVER lets up (especially in Kaos mode)

If that is not your thing, look elsewhere.

(oh, and keep the kids away. Although this is more cartoony than GTA3, I would keep this game away from anyone who isn't mature enough to understand and handle the content like a responsible adult)

Extremely Repetitive

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: May 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

State of Emergency was released the spring after Grand Theft Auto III became a national obsession. Published by the same company (Rockstar - but developed by now out-of-business developer VIS) the game successfully cashed-in on Grand Theft Auto's success. Featuring similar ultra-violent, mission based gameplay, State of Emergency actually plays nothing like GTA.
The game takes place during massive riots, (the game's claim to fame being the more than one hundred characters on screen at once), and you play as one of a number of characters rebelling against The Corporation. There are three levels each featuring about fifty missions to complete amidst the chaos. Trouble is, the missions are all mindless and repetitive, and are virtually all just a slight variation on a basic formula: you'll either be sent to kill a target, sent to protect a target and/or escort him or her somewhere else, or you'll be sent to destroy a building, car, or area. The missions are fun for a short while, but once you realize you're just performing the same task over and over again, it quickly grows tired.
Some of the minigames are fun, however, and rather than being mission based, they are generally based on time and points - you'll kill people or destroy property while collecting extra time from downed enemies while racing against the clock, and you'll keep coming back for more trying to beat your best score.
The gameplay, however, is still simple and boring; just a 3-D beat-em-up, with a few attack buttons and a handful of weapons to wield (though the ability to pick up some smaller objects floating around each level, like benches, is a welcome feature). And yes, it is an ultraviolent game, despite the cartoonish visuals. Blood sprays realistically as you fire in to crowds, taking down innocent civilians; pink blobs (guts) pop out when people are shot, limbs and heads come off (you can wield them as weapons, in fact)... it's all mindless and gimmicky.
Sure, it's really cheap these days, and if you're really interetsed I'd say go for it, but it really isn't even worth a rental.

A game good to have

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: February 20, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I just bought the game and played it. I was waiting it for a month. I think it is a good game if you really like the killing part in GTA3. However, don't expect too much on this game. I think probably a player like me would spend a night to finish it. I suggest players use wild screen mode while they play specially for those players can't stand the first person shooting game. It will be fun if you play it with wild screen mode since you will not feel dizzy. I think they can improve the game a lot. Hope rockstar will continue. They already did a good job. Enjoy~

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