State of Emergency had a lot of hype right off the block. It is an original game that garnered a lot of praise in its pre-release days. Did it rightfully deserve to gain that praise for its visuals as well as other elements? Sure. Visually, SoE is pretty clean looking. The levels are huge (although there are only four of them) and colorful. Buildings on each level are distinctive by their color schemes and signs. Even now, I can clearly envision the Rocket Burger sign as I devise this review. The characters that inhabit the cities (or in the case of the first level: the Mall) are as individual as they are admirable. You start out choosing one of two characters that are likeable as well as tough. Mack is an ex-cop that runs through town causing trouble in his precisely-rendered floral Hawaiian shirt. Libra is the one and only young lady you may choose who looks great in a mini skirt and even better with a shotgun. The other three characters look very individual as you have the tattooed Spanky, the slim Freak and the muscle-bound Bull. Attention has been paid even to the particular animations of each character as Mack (who is an ex-cop) will hold his gun 'professionally,' while Spanky (an ex gang member) will cock his Uzi to one side as only the latest of fads has defined. Each character also has his own original array of punching and kicking with the funniest being each character's grab move. Upon grabbing any bad guy, you can continue to mash buttons and do your character's particular arm break or head bash. All of the moves are fluid and amazing looking.

Each level that your freedom fighter finds himself in has a constant array of items to pick up and throw or shoot. A weapon manifests itself just nicely in the middle of a concrete courtyard. The weapons look so distinctive, that it was easy to tell the difference between the AK47 and the M16. Benches can be smashed through windows, which shatter into millions of pieces. Missile launchers can fire big time ammo into buildings, decimating the whole structure. Policemen can be decapitated and their freshly lopped head be used as a lethal weapon. Scores of 'citizens' can be on the screen at once. This was especially nice since it added to the general feeling of panic, while providing absolutely no slow down. Some of the citizens are obviously concerned about their safety, while others are concerned about getting the latest DVD player...free. With all the good-looking chaos running around on the screen (with no slowdown!), you can bet that even the crabbiest of graphics gurus will be well pleased.

The sound, while definitely mentionable, is a little short of the lofty aspirations set forth by the graphics. The music is absolutely enthralling. It makes chaos a little more fun. What better to set the mood of destruction than with a deafening bass line and some real funky, aggressive techno? Add in a crunchy guitar here and there, and you have yourself a real musical salad. The music unfortunately is not supported well by the sound effects. Sure they sound good for the first ten minutes. Then it sinks in that these are the only sounds you will hear for the rest of the game. All the good looking guns sound the same. Punches, kicks, slashes and bashes all have the same whoosh with the 2x4 having a slightly deeper growl. You can hear phrases rise up as the crowd begins to panic more (like when a crazed maniac is shooting an Uzi amongst 5000 people), but all of these phrases are regurgitated soon and end up only totaling about six or seven distinct, original phrases. At best, the music is sensational while the sound effects are tolerable.

Does State of Emergency have an original idea behind it? Oh yesssirree, as original as a pepperoni and popcorn pizza. You start off as one of the two lovely characters previously mentioned (Mack or Libra). You are on the streets working for an organization called 'Freedom' that is looking to bring democracy back to what seems like America. Why does America need democracy? Well, some big organization aptly called 'the Corporation' has placed a stranglehold on the people and imposed big time curfews. It has also split cities in half disallowing citizens to cross those lines. As found out early in the game, the Corporation is also up to something else sneaky. Just what that is, well that's your goal to find out. You meet up with the self-proclaimed leaders of Freedom, which give you tasks to perform. Each task slowly loosens the grip that the Corporation has on the working man! How you accomplish these tasks are solely up to you. You can pick up a weapon and go to town (which will bring attention to yourself) or you can go bare fisted into a brawl which makes a fight last longer, but doesn't warrant the attention of the riot police. The riot police are nasty too. Some of the tasks include things like retrieving important documents, sabotaging computers and the good ol' assassination of an important corporate head.

These goals can either be played out in Chaos Mode or Revolution Mode. There is also your usual video, audio and control options. There is no way to change the difficulty which comes back and ultimately haunts State of Emergency . Chaos Mode has you timed trying to beat a preset high score of a level. While Chaos starts out relatively simple, you spend your last two minutes of time trying to stay alive as insane amounts of military soldiers and death squad cops come mow you down. However, it is accomplishable to get the high score on the first few levels. Do be prepared for many frustrations on the last couple of levels. Revolution Mode is the mission based mode that has you doing tasks. While the first twenty tasks seem cool enough, they quickly become monotonous. State of Emergency seems to have you doing the same thing over and over again but with different variations. SoE has you going after important papers before a corporate head gets away. To chase him, you have to get through his sea of bodyguard cops. If he leaves the mall or city boundaries, then you lose the mission. After you accomplish this, then you have to retrieve some drugs, then you retrieve this, then retrieve that. Between being a Golden Retriever, you hap upon slight smatterings of getting to blow something up or take something or someone out. It quickly became boring to me to do these same rinky-dink yet progressively difficult tasks over and over again. There wasn't enough time to explore and cause havoc, because any hesitation on your part and chances are the target either got away with something important, or your informant got killed.

This game is undeniably difficult. I believe that most players will find that State of Emergency kind of shoots itself in the foot, with its violent tag. It seems to me that 80 percent of the missions are either retrieving something or being some poor helpless Freedom agent's protector to get him to a certain place. These missions are extremely boring at times and not fun as any policeman that sees you automatically attacks the person you're trying to protect even though you have the weapon that is killing hundreds of civilians. This results in cops popping seemingly out of nowhere to take out the person you are trying to protect. Usually missions are four or five task-based missions with the last task being the most difficult. If you die on the last task you have the pleasure of doing the whole mission over. I think that the initial fun rioting idea of SoE gets washed up quick as you are either dead too quickly or find yourself hating the particular mission. This lack of constant enjoyability discourages a player from staying true to such a difficult mission, because the next mission won't be fun, so why try? So as a basic rundown, the first level is kind of neat. The subsequent three levels are too boring to keep at trying, but too difficult to progress at any enjoyable pace.

The controls are a bit skittish adding to some of the difficulty. If you stay in one place and mash your punch button, one second you'll be dealing out massive damage, and the next you're punching air while cops are behind you whipping your backside. Another thing is when you are escorting or protecting one of your mates, they always stay behind you. Since the view is from behind your man, you don't see your charges because they're behind you off of the screen. Now guess where the riot cops pop up from? Yep, behind you. So they've beaten the person you're supposed to be protecting half to death before you even know what's going on. This of course is a camera angle issue that isn't too bad, but only adds some frustration of trying to beat SoE 's difficulty. Hey, at least the manual and music are super awesome.

Riot Rundown : State of Emergency had a lot of hype, that for the most part it lived up to. However, small things made huge differences for this game. But, these small differences can be tweaked in any future installment to turn an above average game into something really special. The idea is definitely commendable, but can only be played by Mature players as the amount of carnage and useless bloodshed is a bit much for anyone younger. I think that the carnage was supposed to keep the player interested, but it wears off quickly. I would definitely consider this a rental, even though you can't play with a friend. If you like it after renting it, I would buy it, but seriously only after renting it. State of Emergency will be a siren's call for a few gamers out there that have to have it. Still though, it's not for everyone whether it be the content or just the fact that when you strip everything away, it's not a particularly deep game that is very rewarding.