Pursuit Force - Playstation Portable (PSP) Reviews


	Platform PSP Genre Action Publisher SCEA Developer Bigbig Studios ESRB T (Teen) Released Q1 2006

- The ability to jump from one car to another - High speed chases - Lots of extras to unlock - Great graphics - Hard difficulty

- Hard difficulty - A little more story would’ve done this game some good

Review: SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo (PSP) Review: Twisted Metal Head-On (PSP) Review: Driv3r (XB)
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Pursuit Force

Score: 8.0 / 10

Let us face the facts. The PSP does not exactly have the luxury of any good original action games out right now. However, Pursuit Force looks to fulfill a gamer’s thirst for action on the go.

Pursuit Force is full of action. Don’t expect a kick-ass storyline, because you get a mission briefing and then you deliver some justice. Most of the time, you are in the vehicle, cleaning the streets of scum who think they are above the law. There are around 5 types of different gangs to take down, like the Capelli family (mafia) or escaped convicts. Some missions require you to do some ground work where you have to arrest/shoot bad guys on foot, but I’ll expand on that subject later.

The majority of times, you start off a mission in a car and basically play a little game of cat and mouse with your enemies. Once you're close enough to an enemy car, you can either shoot it down or actually leap from your current car onto the enemy’s car and then shoot down the enemy/enemies inside and hijack their vehicle. Does that sound sweet or what? I have never encountered before in an action game and it works very well (not to mention that it's a lot of fun). To leap from your car to another you have to get close enough to the vehicle of choice and then an icon will appear on the screen. The player must then engage the circle on the PSP and that’s when the player will either land on the front hood or the back of the car. If you just hijack a civilian car, the civilian will move over and you will take control of the wheel without all the gun-firing hassle. The one major thing you will benefit from hijacking an enemy car rather than a civilian’s is that you will get a better weapon than your default handgun. A couple of weapons that you can steal from enemies are machine guns or revolvers. Hijacking is great, but sometimes the icon fails to appear, even though you could be a very reasonable distance from the car. This can sometimes jeopardize a mission since time is everything.

Taking down enemies in different ways can give you different kinds of points. If you decide to just shoot down an enemy vehicle without hijacking their car you get “eliminator” points that build up your Justice Bar (on the bottom right of the screen). You can also arrest people which will give you “Capture” points or just jump on top of their car and finish them off. Each method builds up your Justice Bar. Once it is filled, you can do some serious damage to your enemies with gunfire or use some special abilities like pushing triangle to heal (which will cause the Justice Bar to go back down to 0). Justice Bar also aids you in hijacking because while you are jumping on an enemy car, the game will catapult you into a “bullet time” like mode

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while you’re in mid air and you can easily shoot down an opponent or two before even landing on a car. The Pursuit bar really helps you when you are in a pickle, especially with this game’s high difficulty level. You do not have time for screwing up or you will most certainly fail a mission. Trial and error is what you will find yourself doing.

Players will be glad to know that there are a variety of cars in the

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game. Naturally, some cars are slower than others. If you get a good sports car, you're really packing some heat. Controls were very well implemented and my hats off to the developers. Cars are not the only thing you will be driving in Pursuit Force. Some missions require you to use a speedboat. Other missions will have you in a helicopter using the big guns to take down enemy vehicles below.

In certain stages, there will be a point where you must leave your vehicle and continue your mission on-foot. There are checkpoints before starting these parts which is convenient because I, for one, definitely would not want to start the stage over from scratch and repeat the long car chase that precedes it. These on-foot sequences aren’t the most impressive, but is a nice departure every once in a while from the car/boat chases. They are relatively short, so they avoid getting tiring and, like I said, it is a nice change of pace.

After completing missions, players will unlock various things including new vehicles that can be used in the racing mode or time attack. They packed a bunch of extra goodies here that will keep you coming back.

Graphically, Pursuit Force is a beauty. Crisp character models, cars, boats, environments, etc. I was worried about some slowdown when I heard how fast paced the game was, but to my surprise I have not encountered any. The game sounds just as good as the visuals, except for some voice acting. Voices are a real mixed bag between great or ridiculous. Sound effects are good and the music keeps things tense.

With the lack of any good and original PSP titles hitting store shelves, I would definitely recommend Pursuit Force.

- J'Tonello

(April 17, 2006)