It was promising, but City Crisis falls way short and crashes into a building.
Having recently previewed City Crisis, I went into popping in the final copy with high hopes that I would finally be able to live out my dream of piloting a helicopter and saving lives without having to leave the comforts of my room. Syscom and Take-Two Interactive have been able to accomplish bringing my dream into a virtual reality in City Crisis, except the ride of run is so short that it left me wondering if I’d done something wrong or somehow missed an option on the game menu. There are definitely plenty of good points to City Crisis, but it’s hard to warrant purchasing it for full price considering how little there is to do in the game.
One of the concerns that initially cropped up came up during the time spent with City Crisis at E3: the control. The left analog strafes the helicopter left, right, forward and backward, while the right analog changes the altitude and rotation of the helicopter. At first maintaining control of the helicopter is difficult, but after failing a mission a few times it becomes easier as the learning curve dies down. The rest of the control is a breeze; all that’s left is lowering the winch with circle, and firing water with R1 and R2. The only other trouble I encountered was that that sometimes movement wasn’t sensitive enough, and landing on helipads (used to drop off people you rescue) was tough without taking some damage. The sensitivity was also problematic when having to hover into a small place to pick up a victim, and somehow maneuver the winch to pick them up.
I’ll be honest. At E3 I thought that City Crisis was a PSOne title. Even now, I’m hard pressed to find the game any better than a high-profile title on the PSOne with added filter effects. The only part of the game that separates it from a last generation console title are the immense city sizes, but counteracting that, Syscom didn’t bother to make the cities look any different from each other except for what time of day it is, so the repetitive nature catches up quick. If there were no arrows pointing gamers in the right direction, it’d be nearly impossible to complete the game without tearing your hair out over every area looking exactly the same as the last.
There is no problem with a game being short as long as it’s fun while it lasts (case in point, Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil – a fantastic game that lasts no more than 7 or 8 hours), but City Crisis takes the idea to new, extreme lengths. Upon hitting the power button of the PlayStation 2, all the secrets of the game (two bonus helicopters included) had been opened in under two hours. Confused, I searched through the game’s menus wondering if I had missed an option to explore more missions. But sadly, there was nothing to be found. Considering the simplicity of City Crisis, there is no reason that it should end so abruptly. If City Crisis were a terrible game it would not be so bad to see it all end, but that is not the case with City Crisis.
It is not even that each stage in City Crisis is so different from one another that it is worth playing over and over again; each mission only consists of putting out fires, picking up the injured and chasing vehicles. The most unique of the missions was trailing an aircraft through a city, putting out the fires that appeared on its body and rescuing the crew that crawled out. City Crisis shows that Syscom has creative talent, but they really did not take any time to flesh it out. Once all the missions are opened, all that’s left to do in the game is attempt to score “S” grades on each stage.
Not knowing any better, I would have thought that City Crisis was part of Take-Two Interactive’s $9.99 brand of PSOne games. Charging $50 for City Crisis is a crime, and even for $10 it wouldn’t give much bank for the buck. It does quite a bit right, but there is not enough of it to keep gamers piloting their Dual Shocks for a few hours at most.
