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Dom Robinson reviews
Eidos Interactive
Urban Chaos:Since the closing months of the last millennium, the streets of Union Cityhave witnessed a crime wave that was unprecedented in the precinct’s longhistory.
Nobody was more aware of this than Officer D’arci Stern, a front-line cop withthe Union City Police Department.
Suicides were up, vandalism and joyriding were reaching epidemic proportionsand, with shootings and stabbings an almost nightly activity in some buildings,murder had never enjoyed such a boom in popularity.
Hence, Urban Chaos is what the town is turning into and you, asD’arci, are there to take out the trash. Take your orders, arrest people orbeat them up, drive stolen cars back to the pound and so it goes on…
Graphics, Sound and Playability
Oh dear. Here’s where we hit our first stumbling block. We’re meant to believe,from the hype I read a while back, that D’arci is the new Lara Croft and willgo on to have the same sort of fame.
However, I don’t see much evidence of that here. The graphics are jerkyand you appear to materialise through items when walking into them. Everythinglooks hazy as if I’m drunk while playing it (and I wasn’t! 🙂 andthe only reason the graphics don’t get just a single star is for its attemptat a 3D effect.
There are also training levels (driving, fighting, assault course), but thelatter looks like a rip-off of the one from Tomb Raider IIand the graphics look like they were created a whole two years before thefirst Lara Croft outing, which shows how dated they feel.
Things don’t improve in the sound department either. For example, the soundof skidding along the floor, to stop a mugger for example, sounds like you’rebeing buzzed by a stun-gun! Also, I thought I’d accidentally selected the”mono” setting as it sounded muted, but no, it was still on stereo (!)
The playability of this game is dreadful. For example, when you jump ontothings, such as a fence to climb up, you expect to start off at the pointwhere you landed on it, so jumping initially starts you off higher, but oh no,more often than not it forces you to start right at the bottom. Why?
The game has more of a simplistic approach that would appeal to young children.However, the violent nature of the game, including blood-letting as you pummelyour victim, puts it right out of this category.
The manual makes it sound like a challenge to arrest someone too, but youjust have to press “Action” and I found it as easy as pie.
Overall
This is NOT one of Eidos’ finest hours. There’s barely anything to recommendit here, even down to the fact that I’ve just added them to my list as yetanother inhabitant of the planet who doesn’t know that the third millenniumdoesn’t begin until NEXT YEAR, not the January 1st just gone.
There is one saving grace though: you get to run people over! They don’trun out of the way as they do in Midtown Madness, Crazy Taxi….Real Life (ahem!)
If you’re after some more info on Eidos Interactive’s games, you can checkout their official Website atwww.eidos.co.uk
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ORIGINALITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.