Although the world has already passed into the much-dreaded year 2000, Urban Chaos' rendered introduction begins on New Year's Eve, just before the launch of the new millennium. Encountering a group of criminals threatening to kill a innocent women, the two main characters are able to fend off the bad guys, but soon an assembly of men dressed in black begin walking out in chain guns and pumping bullets into everything in sight. The two heroes and others involved, jump for cover, but before leaving, the mystery men drop off a bomb for a gift. This is where the actual game picks up. You are D'arci, a beginning police officer who is at the start of her job and is unaware that she will soon become involved in a plot that involves the end of the world as we know it.

Everything today seems to be about having better and faster graphics as compared to the competition (i.e. Unreal Tournament engine vs. Quake III: Arena engine). Instead of creating their own engines, most developers end up paying the fee for another company's engine and use that for their game. Mucky Foot, on the other hand, has created their own engine specifically for Urban Chaos. Not only is the engine powering Urban Chaos a fast one, but it is also chock full of little details that near all games in the same genre as Urban Chaos don't contain. Just by looking around you it's possible to see that oodles of time must have been spent simply adding and tweaking the environment's little details. It is possible to pick up soda cans off the ground and use them as weapons, shuffle newspapers around as you whiz by, splash blobs of water all over when stepping through a puddle and running through bounds of leaves falling from nearby trees.

The aforementioned were interesting, subtle touches that made the city around you seemingly come alive, but I must say the aspect I was most particularly impressed with was that by walking up to a nearby puddle it was possible to see a distorted reflection in the water. These kinds of things are usually overlooked during the development due to wanting to rush a game into store shelves, and so it's nice to see a developer take the time to comb through their first game and make it the best it can possibly become.

Other than what has been previously mentioned, Urban Chaos' engine holds up fairly well. Running at 1024x768 with all details on the frame rate was able to keep up with the action most of the time. I did find, however, that when nearing a car that had exploded and has a continual flame surrounding it that the frame rate will drop substantially. It baffled me to see it drop down so much, but the chances of encountering the situation I have described more than once or twice during the entire duration of playing time range from slim to none.

The basic gist of Urban Chaos is that you're a female cop who is out to stop the crime that is beginning to erupt around the city. In the first couple of missions the main plot behind the game will not come into play quite yet, and you'll just end up having to perform routine jobs that any cop might be forced to do. You'll have to scout out the area to see if there were any witnesses to a crime (i.e. a car stolen), arrest the prostitutes that loiter around the streets and maybe even have to calm down a person who is on the verge of leaping off a tall building onto a busy sidewalk full of innocent onlookers. As the missions progress, though, D'arci will be faced with continually more difficult missions that soon begin to incorporate the story. You will have to meet up with informants who will drop hints concerning what you need to do next, battle off the local gangs infesting the streets and occasionally arrest one or two to pump them for information.

It all becomes much more complex and in-depth quickly, but I found that most of the time I had little problems with the difficulty setting. It would have been a nice addition, however, if there were save "checkpoints" in the level where you could restart at when you die. Even if you make it all the way to the very end and die from a slight fall you'll have to warp back to the beginning and start all over again.

A good portion of the game is spent battling enemies, and it is essential that the player masters the controls quickly if they are going to stand any kind of chance against their opponents. Thankfully though, the control scheme that has been devised it incredibly simple and can deciphered and used in a matter of seconds. This is no Tekken or Virtua Fighter-type depth, but there are an assortment of moves and combos that will have to be utilized in different situations in order to get out of them alive. From using a slide attack to give the enemy a jolting wake up call to kicking back and left and right while attacking someone in front of you, there are a variety of life saving moves that will definitely come in handy. And even if you are having a hard time grasping what to do with the many moves, there are training tutorials available that can be picked from right from the main mission screen. Completing all the training sections will result in certain secrets being opened, as well, so it is worth the time and effort to beat them all.

Now that we have most of the compliments out of the way, it's time to dissect Urban Chaos and begin nit-picking at some of the not so good parts. First off, who was the person who designed the butt ugly character art that's to the right or left of the dialog that's been spoken? Not only is it somewhat repulsing to look at, but more than a couple of times it becomes overused. One character will use a piece of character art, and a totally different person in the same, next or later mission will use the same one. Little effect on gameplay, but annoying, nonetheless. Then there are the character's models themselves. There's nothing wrong with them, except for the fact that, along with the character art, it is overused. Some of the enemy models are used tons and tons of the time during a level. And while I can understand this to a point, at times it seems like you're fighting the same person for the 100th time. Finally, some of the voice actors used for the characters was a bit weak. Not the point of laughable (i.e. Capcom's Resident Evil series), but enough to make you smirk.