Publisher: Rockstar Games
Moments after Rockstar Games finished their first draft of State of Emergency the game was on the news – everywhere. Some retard had gotten a hold of a few screen grabs and assumed the game was based on the riots in Seattle. Because Americans are convinced the only riot that has ever happened anywhere was on their soil, the networks ran with it and within the next 32 hours it was on CBS, NBC, and CNN. They would do things like say “Seattle” and show a line of riot cops, and then cut to “the game” with State of Emergency’s version of the same thing. There, they proved it. After the momentum of this scoop was going way too fast to ever slow down the fact-checkers discovered that Rockstar was working on State of Emergency way before the WTO’s disastrous meeting. The detail was treated like irrelevant minutiae at first but eventually served to fizzle out the controversy. Three months later the game is ready to hit the streets.If Grand Theft Auto III is cocaine then State of Emergency is crack. No more 24-hour cities constantly streaming off the disk. This is unadulterated chaos of the most self-indulgent variety. If you lost your retirement fund at Enron this game may be the only way to regain your sanity. The story for State of Emergency fits perfectly with this issue of VICE. It is set in the future. An evil corporation called The Corporation has purchased the government and taken over the city. Instead of police or thieves, you are fighting corporate enforcers. The point is to complete the missions your fellow revolutionaries set out for you and stick it to the man without getting terminated. If you can’t be bothered with that feel free to run all over the city destroying everything and everyone in your path. There are two ways to play the game. The mission mode is called Revolution and the party, kill, maim, destroy mode is called Kaos. During Revolution you are provided with 175 missions that are simple to understand. A floating arrow always makes sure you are going in the right direction. It sounds easy, but when, at any given time, there are 200 screaming lunatics running in every direction, gang members and corporate goons appearing out of nowhere to pound you in the head, and a never- ending series of explosions and fires…well, you need all the help you can get. Kaos is what you think it is: four levels of total annihilation. You start off with a fixed time of three minutes, then a fixed time of five minutes. Assuming you wreck a lot of stuff during those levels, you can move up to “Unlimited” – the Mecca of rioting. In Unlimited you get a seemingly endless supply of weapons and things to destroy with them. It’s hard not to laugh as the death count mounts into the thousands and the property damage becomes Afghan. Whether you are in Revolution mode or Kaos mode, The Corporation will suffer and their henchmen will die. We highly recommend getting a hold of a flamethrower and allowing all the corporate cops to chase you down an alley or something. Once you get a full lineup of these bastards behind you turn around and PKFFFSHHHHH! - they are all burned to a crisp. Other fun pastimes include tearing through a shopping mall with a bazooka and taking out every store you see, allowing a mob of skinheads to surround you before exploding into a ninjistic fury that leaves them all dead and running in circles with an M-16 killing everyone (good and bad) that happens to be nearby. There’s a wide range of characters you can use, depending on how you want the corporation destroyed. Anna Price is a sprightly little lawyer who is fast as hell and has a lot of killing to do since she was disbarred for not selling out. Eddy Raymonds, on the other hand, is a gigantic and powerful ex-athlete who, though not as fast as Anna, can wipe out dozens of bad men with a single blow. We personally like Rob Macneil, the disgruntled ex-cop with a heart of gold and a penchant for shooting evil right in the face. All the characters have a cartoony appeal and are easy to manipulate. The custom graphics engine uses vector units so most of the CPU’s energy (65% to be exact) goes into making your character more realistic. The art design is slick, too, which is crucial when you’re dealing with such a frantically paced game. The sound is riotous. They’ve layered dozens of screams, exclamations, dialogue, explosions, and gunshots into a totally believable backdrop. State of Emergency isn’t just mindless fun. It’s a reflection of the corporate culture we all feel victims of, the video game version of the daydream we all have every time Time Warner Cable charges us for channels we don’t have or Verizon signs us up for a service we don’t want. We may be only a few years from the day State of Emergency becomes a reality. Then you’ll see The Corporation News try to ban games like this and invent news stories and… wait, we’re already there.