Review #179: Pursuit Force

 I finally found the game I've been looking for all my life!

 You've probably seen high-octane action flicks with scenes in which the hero would engage in firefights while driving at high speeds, and then jumping from his car onto a moving a truck. You probably thought it was awesome. Pursuit Force is a game that allows you to partake in action scenes like that, taking the lead in action packed chases throughout the city. This game is awesome.

 The story and characters are all kinds of silly, and it's so much better thanks to it. There's 5 different gangs that have been reigning terror on the streets, so the Government created a new police division, the Pursuit Force, a lethal squad of cops trained chase villains through populated streets. They also have a license to kill. The story never takes the center place in the game, and that's just fine, you don't need the context, but the five gangs are... they seem lifted from cheap action movies, there's the obligatory Mafia, the obligatory Yakuza, the obligatory all-female jewel-obsessed group, a mercenary group and a group of escaped convicts, a colorful cast. Each group has a couple of big wigs that are equally colorful and hilariously over the top. Even the Chief of the Pursuit Force has his moments, "If you die I can't fire you!". The story component of the game wasn't really needed, but it adds to the games flavor, it's rather charming and memorable due to how ridiculously over the top it is. And hey, you can just ignore it if you don't fancy it, you can skip the very few and brief cutscenes, or the mission overviews.

 There's three modes in the game: Career, Race and Time Trial. Race and Time Trials are basically races throughout the game's 30 stages, in Race you race against other gangs and in Time Trials against your best times. As I've mentioned over and over again in this blog, I don't like racing games, so I didn't really care about these two modes, and they don't unlock anything, but at least it gives you some extra stuff to do, and there's a fair amount of unlockable cars, speedboats and bikes. Career Mode is where the real meat of the game lies, there's 30 missions spread throughout the five different gangs(6 missions each) and you can do them more or less at your leisure, but you unlock them in 'sets'. After clearing each set of Missions you rank up and gain upgrades... but these don't carry over to older missions, which is rather disappointing. Clearing Missions with an A rank will unlock Vehicles for the other two modes and Cheats, both positive(Like invulnerability) and negative(Poisoned!), but these disable progress and ranks, which I think is fair enough, it allows you to have fun with them, without allowing you to cheese your way through the game.

 The way the game works is phenomenal, this is an Arcade game through and through, so don't expect a whole lot of depth, but you can get to the "good parts" every time you turn on the console. There's three different "segments", Driving, On-Foot and Helicopter, each mission having any combination of these, but Driving stages are in almost every mission. Driving segments are easily the best, the game is incredibly fast, and I like the way vehicles handle, however, the colliding with other cars feel kinda off, not a deal breaker. Pressing the L button produces an aiming reticule over en enemy vehicle, if there are more than once, you can cycle through targets by pressing it again, and R allows you to shoot, simple and easy. When you are not tasked with retrieving a car safely or driving someone somewhere, you can press circle to hijack enemy vehicles or civilian cars. Heck, some levels have you jumping onto trucks or speedboats! Amazing stuff. Controls work perfectly, and they allow you to do a ton of impressive stuff very easily, which lends itself to its frantic gameplay.

 Helicopter segments are simple turret levels in which you take aim, manually, and shoot a minigun that overheats, simple. On-foot segments are easily the worst, but not unmanageable. The PSP only has a single analog stick, which means the camera turns when you turn. Regardless, these are fairly short and easy, and just as with the vehicle scenes, the L button locks onto an enemy, so you can just strafe and shoot. These scenes were clearly implemented with the PSP's limitations in mind, so they aren't very taxing and they offer variety. There's another mechanic in the Justice Bar, which applies to all segments, destroying, killing or capturing enemies increases your Justice Bar, while crashing onto civilian cars, or accidentally shooting them(Happens when a civilian car gets between your target and your bullets) makes it decrease. A full Justice bar bestows you with double power, which is incredibly useful so you might want to keep it... but then again, you can use it to completely heal yourself and your vehicle or to use bullet time while hijacking an enemy vehicle, allowing you to take out the passengers without getting hit. It's a very fun mechanic, and often puts you in tough spots, should you heal? What if you need the extra fire power? Maybe it's just your car that's getting damaged, so you might not need bullet time to hijack another car and so on.

 There's a nice variety of missions in the game, but they all take place in very linear courses, and each course has a 'goal', which if enemies reaches is game over for you. Objectives include escorting other vehicles, capturing specific enemy vehicles, bringing down helicopters, reaching a certain place before the time runs out, tailing enemies at a certain distance, or killing every enemy before they reach the goal. I never felt the game to be repetitive, and it helps that each Enemy gang has their own vehicles and weapons, so even similar missions feel different between each other. Bosses are also interesting, they are simple, but each boss has their own gimmicks to avoid. The game can get very tough, some stages took me over to 10 retries, but it never feels unfair, and the game is so much fun, I never felt burned out while retrying a stage. Most stages also have checkpoints when you switch between segments, so that helps.

 Pursuit Force is a very beautiful game, character models are rather simple and the animation is a bit poor, but the vehicles and environments are gorgeous. There's a lot of different locales to visit too, snowy cities, urban cities, desserts, countryside, and so on, and it also happens be very colorful. Another thing to keep in mind, is that there's barely any slowdown in the game, and when it happens, it's very hard to notice. The music is very upbeat, and really gets you in the mood for some road mayhem, it really gets you into the game and makes stages even more exciting.

 Pursuit Force is one of the best PSP games I've ever played, and one of my favorite games ever(It probably cracks top 20), it's a game made on the whole premise of being "fun". The only thing that it needed was a little more polishing on the car collisions, and maybe tightening the on-foot segments a bit more, but as a whole, it's a fantastic game.
 9.5 out of 10