Urban Chaos (DC, 2000)
Graphics-6.5 Sound-7 Control-6/5* Challenge-7.5 Story-6
Level Design-6 Frustration-8.5 Fun-6 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-5.5
*Melee combat movement
+
Early GTA-style proto-open world game in 3D (hub map and missions structure - each area tends to feature 3-4 missions using the same layout though NPC and enemy encounters+item placements differ, modern urban setting, contemporary music (mostly d&b), play as a renegade cop)
Walking lets you move up to platform edges without falling
Can stun (by kicking them in the balls) enemies and throw stunned enemies - forward+kick then forward+punch
Slide attack move (longer if you sprint, can cancel the slide but only with jumping and you can't turn around while doing it)
Full control config, graphics options on console, audio settings (sfx, music, ambience), Subtitles
Various hidden stat upgrade items (constitution - affects for how long you can run+overall movement speed, strength - melee damage, reflexes - faster movement and better shooting accuracy, stamina - full healing+health bar increase)
Skippable dialogue on a per sentence/line basis during cutscenes
Can rotate the camera while moving, Several camera zoom level settings
Sprint move (Tomb Raider 3?) - stamina-based
Basic 3-hit attack combos (punch or kick) - kicks and punches can be combined in some ways (2 kicks+1 punch or vice versa, can't do 1 kick then 2 punches or vice versa though for some reason)
Can search arrested/knocked out enemies for items (works similarly to Impossible Mission - kinda slow though)
Radar feature (shows nearby enemies and the next main objective as well as arrows pointing towards them if they're further away)
Three different playable chars (most of the time you play as D'arci Stern, Roper is just a gimped version of Stern as he can't sprint or arrest)
Can side roll and side+back attack in melee combat mode though it's a bit stiff. Can side roll outside of combat too but it's tricky to pull off consistently
Explosive barrels, mines and some NPCs
Can pick up and throw some smaller objects laying around (not boxes though? - could've been used for puzzle platforming)
Can ride ziplines/cables between rooftops as well as jump between them
Some optional side missions during missions (the lack of area maps and short draw distance makes it a bit tedious to explore for them though) - these appear as scripted scenes when exploring rather than via NPCs or mission markers and can generally be failed without failing the main mission
Various optional scripted NPC encounters during missions
Some optional tutorial levels (the movement one also has some shortcuts, basic ranking system here)
Lock-on when using ranged attacks - no button for switching targets though and there are issues with it (see below)
Two unlockable bonus missions where you play as a criminal (he has one other mission during the game as well - finish gold grade tutorial missions?)
Fight alongside NPCs for some missions and near the police station
Some indoors locations (club, some stores, warehouse and mansion in the late-game) - there could've been way more though
Some stats when finishing a mission (enemy kills and arrests+ones still left, upgrade item collection stats when - how many were collected and how many were missed, time taken and current record)
Some minor puzzles (drive and place cars to climb them and reach on top of buildings or over certain fences you can't climb, basic switch puzzles)
Enemies can climb and perform slide attacks as well as jump down from rooftops or platforms+dodge roll+can knock your ranged weapon out of your hands in melee
Can drive cars (most parked cars are locked though and you can't break into them or find keys, control issues - see below, don't get a police car handed to you for most missions?) and run people over with them
Enemies will drop the weapon they were using against you
Decent mission variety (missile demolition mission where you have to take out the mechanics to prevent them from shooting the missiles after seeing you, minor stealth element (sneaking up on the suicidal NPC in mission 2, ), fetch quests, find and destroy
take out or arrest gang leader, rescue and escort, rescue and carry (can't jump or attack while carrying someone), robbery interventions, kill everyone under a time limit, capture and arrest gang leader under a time limit while he's trying to escape) and some missions end up turning into something else after you've completed one objective
Some nice visual touches (paper pieces and leaves drifting in the wind, you leave blood traces on the ground when near death, decent rain effect)
Traffic and NPCs tend to stop and honk if you get in the way of their car
One decent boss (giant fire monster that you need to lure into exploding barrels and mines)
+/-
Mostly linear structure (can do the tutorial missions and bonus missions in any order, can often do side missions within a mission in any order however the overarching structure for story missions is completely linear, some moving back to previous mission areas for new missions over the course of the game)
Pretty large and partially maze-like levels (some later missions are more maze-like)
Save in-between levels/missions (multiple slots, can't see time taken or current mission number - only mission title), No save points or checkpoints
Black female main protagonist
Can't move while looking around freely
Can arrest knocked down enemies however it's a bit too easy (can just slide into one and then arrest them right away or you can throw them and do it)
Can arrest random NPCs on the street and take items from them without the game reacting to it. Can also run over random people in the streets, and steal cars by shooting at them to make their drivers leave without penalty
Some stat upgrade items are basically out in the open
Pretty uneven voice acting (some like Stern and most other police are pretty good and there is quite a lot of it)
Can replay beaten levels however your progress in them resets and the NPCs act like it's your first time playing them
Swearing and slurs are used fairly frequently and the game has a jaded and edgy atmosphere to it overall
Fall damage (die from falling too far) - breaks flow at times when you have to find or backtrack to a ladder and slowly climb down instead of using a zipline/cable
Sometimes have to press a button to pick up health items (good for when you're at full health but could've just automatically not picked them up when you were)
Can't switch weapons while moving (you'll stop for a sec)
Cheesy dialogue
Can crush enemies under elevators though it's due to their inconsistent AI rather than skillful timing
Can't climb sideways on a fence
Can shoot while moving
Can listen in on conversations between criminals before attacking them (weird how the voice clips keep going after shooting them though)
Some other boss-like enemies but they aren't harder than normal ones (these have introduction speeches)
-
Scripting issue in the The Fallen (5 clues) mission where the robots on the apartment roof can end up jumping down and not dropping the clue - only get semi-stuck though as you can make another one spawn and it'll drop the clue. Another scripting issue in the final mission in that it doesn't tell you that you're supposed to escape after bombing the gas tank
Game goes into a different control mode during melee combat which takes some getting used to and uses non-relative/tank controls even if you changed to non-tank controls for other movement (movement here is more like a fighting game except in third person, triggers when close to an enemy and they're about to attack or you attack them)
No map feature (kind of repetitive level layouts in the early-mid game+short draw distance+levels soon start to make you explore for the path to a rooftop to reach your objective, at least the HUD shows the name of the current street you're on) and no compass
Can't save during a mission and some are rather long - You also die very quickly to machinegun fire+it can stunlock you (there's no armor you can find and upgrading your stamina barely helps (unless perhaps you find every single one but that takes forever, when you start facing the robots you'll be fighting two machinegun wielding enemies at a time))
Can't carry healing items with you for later use (you do have a weapon inventory so why not?)
Various control/interface issues (sometimes sloppy hit detection in melee combat, can't access the control config while in-game - game defaults to tank control movement which is also in the general options menu instead of the controls one, some delay after landing from a jump unless you were holding forward and didn't fall from a ledge (seems based on speed in mid-air), some delay after landing is always there after jumping off of a cable/zipline, can't grab the top of fences and there's some delay after grabbing onto one, annoyingly tight timing on attack combos (tap quickly twice, wait a bit, then again), have to be walking to be able to start punching or kicking while moving - otherwise you'll slide attack if kicking, can't press a button to go in or out of melee combat mode and it doesn't stop after downing an opponent so walking up to and arresting one is a bit awkward, sloppy hit detection on the slide attack move - can clearly be hitting and it still doesn't register, overly punishing momentum loss from running into things while driving and it can be hard to get going if standing right next to something, the context sensitive action button doesn't work unless you stand still, for the combat tutorial levels the tutorial messages pause the action - for the other tutorials you get spoken dialogue+subtitles during gameplay which is much better, crouching is canceled if you start moving before fully crouched, no acceleration meter while driving a car, the game is overly picky about how you stand when trying to search someone or trying to grab a ladder from above - same with trying to talk to NPCs, slow ladder climbing and very slow shimmying, no jump height control, can't check your current character stats anywhere (on PS1 they are shown briefly when picking up a new upgrade) nor the mission objectives, sometimes can't talk to an NPC twice, can't stop crouching by letting go of the button or by jumping - have to stop moving, can't arrest and search in one move, automatically lock onto non-criminals - bad since you might not be looking at them with the camera so you can't tell if there's a threat without rotating the camera, automatically lock on to cars when armed criminals are near, camera sometimes gets weird when driving in-between buildings and tends to start rotating when moving backwards in a car, when switching weapons the game will still select a gun that you have no ammo for, hard to turn without your avatar making a circling motion which is slower, can't place the camera behind you if standing with your back near a wall, searching is kinda slow, can't attack while crouching, can't throw a grenade while in aiming mode and the throwing arc is pretty limited)
Some tedious aspects (sometimes it takes too long to find a ladder to climb a building - sometimes the only way to progress, slow elevators, can't climb certain fences that look the same as ones you could climb elsewhere (sometimes you can climb to the top but not over it or climb one side but not the other) - sometimes for navigational challenges however they could've used barbed wire or something, weapons don't carry over between levels - you do sometimes start with some weapons though but you won't know what they are and it's generally just a pistol and a knife when you might've finished the last mission with a machinegun or grenades, many criminals don't drop anything when searched, can't get a weapon from the police station in the beginning, fairly long delay before you can get up after being knocked down, can't pull yourself down while standing near a ledge like in Tomb Raider - sometimes makes going back down from a rooftop pretty tedious, pointless kidnapping of D'arci in the mansion level where you're forced to replay half the level as Roper, backtracking if you fall down)
Framerate issues - causes input lag and sometimes button presses don't even register (seems like a retroarch issue though)
Can't throw enemies into each other
So-so textures and models (barely an upgrade from PS1), So-so draw distance
Mostly uninteractive indoors environments
Sometimes you kill a suspect or criminal and the game doesn't even register it while other times you fail the mission (suzie in the second mission, most generic thugs)
Trial & error (dealing with the jumper in mission 2 - immediately spots you if you take the ladder even if you try to crouch immediately, can't stay in a mission after finishing the main objective, finding the specific NPC to get a hint to the stolen police car in mission 2, etc.)
Various NPCs look identical
No "you're under arrest" line in this version
Difficulty spike in the first mission of the second mission area and some dips later on in the game (infiltration mission for example where you really don't need to be stealthy)
Annoying how criminals can die just from punching or sliding into them so you have to keep checking their health and arrest them at the right time to not kill them and if you did too much damage already it might be impossible since you only knock them down at the end of a combo or with a throw
Sometimes poor enemy AI - a group of enemies won't necessarily react if you shoot one of them and enemies sometimes walk into their own mines+at one point an enemy jumped down from too high up and died+some enemies react very slowly to you+some enemies standing guard won't react to you shouting stop/freeze or shooting near them
Invisible walls near water - can't swim nor walk into water
Non-solid raised railways
Weird how NPCs just walk into you while you're standing still or even arresting someone, NPCs tend to run back and forth instead of away from a gunfight, can't travel by helicopter (there are a few as NPCs) - could've been an alternate path to rooftops in some missions, gets repetitive after a while (few enemy types, no new melee combat moves or combos to learn nor any new movement abilities, no new weapons after about 1/3 of the game, very few music tracks in this version - more on PC and PS1, samey looking locations in the early-mid game), very short headline hostage mission, pretty easy final mission
Bugs:
-Sometimes there's a short delay right at the beginning of a mission where you can't move but the clock starts ticking and enemies start moving
-Can't see the ranking stats after a tutorial mission in Flycast for Retroarch
-Enemies can become unable to climb fences at times
-Can sometimes jump through fences
-At one point you can kill Deeks after getting the quest info on him and then carry on like nothing happened
-No chain reaction from exploding barrels (does happen with mines)
-Roper can glitch out in the mansion mission and just sort of disappear (supposed to follow you and help with enemies)
Notes:
-Original PC ver. is from 1999
Level Design-6 Frustration-8.5 Fun-6 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-5.5
*Melee combat movement
+
Early GTA-style proto-open world game in 3D (hub map and missions structure - each area tends to feature 3-4 missions using the same layout though NPC and enemy encounters+item placements differ, modern urban setting, contemporary music (mostly d&b), play as a renegade cop)
Walking lets you move up to platform edges without falling
Can stun (by kicking them in the balls) enemies and throw stunned enemies - forward+kick then forward+punch
Slide attack move (longer if you sprint, can cancel the slide but only with jumping and you can't turn around while doing it)
Full control config, graphics options on console, audio settings (sfx, music, ambience), Subtitles
Various hidden stat upgrade items (constitution - affects for how long you can run+overall movement speed, strength - melee damage, reflexes - faster movement and better shooting accuracy, stamina - full healing+health bar increase)
Skippable dialogue on a per sentence/line basis during cutscenes
Can rotate the camera while moving, Several camera zoom level settings
Sprint move (Tomb Raider 3?) - stamina-based
Basic 3-hit attack combos (punch or kick) - kicks and punches can be combined in some ways (2 kicks+1 punch or vice versa, can't do 1 kick then 2 punches or vice versa though for some reason)
Can search arrested/knocked out enemies for items (works similarly to Impossible Mission - kinda slow though)
Radar feature (shows nearby enemies and the next main objective as well as arrows pointing towards them if they're further away)
Three different playable chars (most of the time you play as D'arci Stern, Roper is just a gimped version of Stern as he can't sprint or arrest)
Can side roll and side+back attack in melee combat mode though it's a bit stiff. Can side roll outside of combat too but it's tricky to pull off consistently
Explosive barrels, mines and some NPCs
Can pick up and throw some smaller objects laying around (not boxes though? - could've been used for puzzle platforming)
Can ride ziplines/cables between rooftops as well as jump between them
Some optional side missions during missions (the lack of area maps and short draw distance makes it a bit tedious to explore for them though) - these appear as scripted scenes when exploring rather than via NPCs or mission markers and can generally be failed without failing the main mission
Various optional scripted NPC encounters during missions
Some optional tutorial levels (the movement one also has some shortcuts, basic ranking system here)
Lock-on when using ranged attacks - no button for switching targets though and there are issues with it (see below)
Two unlockable bonus missions where you play as a criminal (he has one other mission during the game as well - finish gold grade tutorial missions?)
Fight alongside NPCs for some missions and near the police station
Some indoors locations (club, some stores, warehouse and mansion in the late-game) - there could've been way more though
Some stats when finishing a mission (enemy kills and arrests+ones still left, upgrade item collection stats when - how many were collected and how many were missed, time taken and current record)
Some minor puzzles (drive and place cars to climb them and reach on top of buildings or over certain fences you can't climb, basic switch puzzles)
Enemies can climb and perform slide attacks as well as jump down from rooftops or platforms+dodge roll+can knock your ranged weapon out of your hands in melee
Can drive cars (most parked cars are locked though and you can't break into them or find keys, control issues - see below, don't get a police car handed to you for most missions?) and run people over with them
Enemies will drop the weapon they were using against you
Decent mission variety (missile demolition mission where you have to take out the mechanics to prevent them from shooting the missiles after seeing you, minor stealth element (sneaking up on the suicidal NPC in mission 2, ), fetch quests, find and destroy
take out or arrest gang leader, rescue and escort, rescue and carry (can't jump or attack while carrying someone), robbery interventions, kill everyone under a time limit, capture and arrest gang leader under a time limit while he's trying to escape) and some missions end up turning into something else after you've completed one objective
Some nice visual touches (paper pieces and leaves drifting in the wind, you leave blood traces on the ground when near death, decent rain effect)
Traffic and NPCs tend to stop and honk if you get in the way of their car
One decent boss (giant fire monster that you need to lure into exploding barrels and mines)
+/-
Mostly linear structure (can do the tutorial missions and bonus missions in any order, can often do side missions within a mission in any order however the overarching structure for story missions is completely linear, some moving back to previous mission areas for new missions over the course of the game)
Pretty large and partially maze-like levels (some later missions are more maze-like)
Save in-between levels/missions (multiple slots, can't see time taken or current mission number - only mission title), No save points or checkpoints
Black female main protagonist
Can't move while looking around freely
Can arrest knocked down enemies however it's a bit too easy (can just slide into one and then arrest them right away or you can throw them and do it)
Can arrest random NPCs on the street and take items from them without the game reacting to it. Can also run over random people in the streets, and steal cars by shooting at them to make their drivers leave without penalty
Some stat upgrade items are basically out in the open
Pretty uneven voice acting (some like Stern and most other police are pretty good and there is quite a lot of it)
Can replay beaten levels however your progress in them resets and the NPCs act like it's your first time playing them
Swearing and slurs are used fairly frequently and the game has a jaded and edgy atmosphere to it overall
Fall damage (die from falling too far) - breaks flow at times when you have to find or backtrack to a ladder and slowly climb down instead of using a zipline/cable
Sometimes have to press a button to pick up health items (good for when you're at full health but could've just automatically not picked them up when you were)
Can't switch weapons while moving (you'll stop for a sec)
Cheesy dialogue
Can crush enemies under elevators though it's due to their inconsistent AI rather than skillful timing
Can't climb sideways on a fence
Can shoot while moving
Can listen in on conversations between criminals before attacking them (weird how the voice clips keep going after shooting them though)
Some other boss-like enemies but they aren't harder than normal ones (these have introduction speeches)
-
Scripting issue in the The Fallen (5 clues) mission where the robots on the apartment roof can end up jumping down and not dropping the clue - only get semi-stuck though as you can make another one spawn and it'll drop the clue. Another scripting issue in the final mission in that it doesn't tell you that you're supposed to escape after bombing the gas tank
Game goes into a different control mode during melee combat which takes some getting used to and uses non-relative/tank controls even if you changed to non-tank controls for other movement (movement here is more like a fighting game except in third person, triggers when close to an enemy and they're about to attack or you attack them)
No map feature (kind of repetitive level layouts in the early-mid game+short draw distance+levels soon start to make you explore for the path to a rooftop to reach your objective, at least the HUD shows the name of the current street you're on) and no compass
Can't save during a mission and some are rather long - You also die very quickly to machinegun fire+it can stunlock you (there's no armor you can find and upgrading your stamina barely helps (unless perhaps you find every single one but that takes forever, when you start facing the robots you'll be fighting two machinegun wielding enemies at a time))
Can't carry healing items with you for later use (you do have a weapon inventory so why not?)
Various control/interface issues (sometimes sloppy hit detection in melee combat, can't access the control config while in-game - game defaults to tank control movement which is also in the general options menu instead of the controls one, some delay after landing from a jump unless you were holding forward and didn't fall from a ledge (seems based on speed in mid-air), some delay after landing is always there after jumping off of a cable/zipline, can't grab the top of fences and there's some delay after grabbing onto one, annoyingly tight timing on attack combos (tap quickly twice, wait a bit, then again), have to be walking to be able to start punching or kicking while moving - otherwise you'll slide attack if kicking, can't press a button to go in or out of melee combat mode and it doesn't stop after downing an opponent so walking up to and arresting one is a bit awkward, sloppy hit detection on the slide attack move - can clearly be hitting and it still doesn't register, overly punishing momentum loss from running into things while driving and it can be hard to get going if standing right next to something, the context sensitive action button doesn't work unless you stand still, for the combat tutorial levels the tutorial messages pause the action - for the other tutorials you get spoken dialogue+subtitles during gameplay which is much better, crouching is canceled if you start moving before fully crouched, no acceleration meter while driving a car, the game is overly picky about how you stand when trying to search someone or trying to grab a ladder from above - same with trying to talk to NPCs, slow ladder climbing and very slow shimmying, no jump height control, can't check your current character stats anywhere (on PS1 they are shown briefly when picking up a new upgrade) nor the mission objectives, sometimes can't talk to an NPC twice, can't stop crouching by letting go of the button or by jumping - have to stop moving, can't arrest and search in one move, automatically lock onto non-criminals - bad since you might not be looking at them with the camera so you can't tell if there's a threat without rotating the camera, automatically lock on to cars when armed criminals are near, camera sometimes gets weird when driving in-between buildings and tends to start rotating when moving backwards in a car, when switching weapons the game will still select a gun that you have no ammo for, hard to turn without your avatar making a circling motion which is slower, can't place the camera behind you if standing with your back near a wall, searching is kinda slow, can't attack while crouching, can't throw a grenade while in aiming mode and the throwing arc is pretty limited)
Some tedious aspects (sometimes it takes too long to find a ladder to climb a building - sometimes the only way to progress, slow elevators, can't climb certain fences that look the same as ones you could climb elsewhere (sometimes you can climb to the top but not over it or climb one side but not the other) - sometimes for navigational challenges however they could've used barbed wire or something, weapons don't carry over between levels - you do sometimes start with some weapons though but you won't know what they are and it's generally just a pistol and a knife when you might've finished the last mission with a machinegun or grenades, many criminals don't drop anything when searched, can't get a weapon from the police station in the beginning, fairly long delay before you can get up after being knocked down, can't pull yourself down while standing near a ledge like in Tomb Raider - sometimes makes going back down from a rooftop pretty tedious, pointless kidnapping of D'arci in the mansion level where you're forced to replay half the level as Roper, backtracking if you fall down)
Framerate issues - causes input lag and sometimes button presses don't even register (seems like a retroarch issue though)
Can't throw enemies into each other
So-so textures and models (barely an upgrade from PS1), So-so draw distance
Mostly uninteractive indoors environments
Sometimes you kill a suspect or criminal and the game doesn't even register it while other times you fail the mission (suzie in the second mission, most generic thugs)
Trial & error (dealing with the jumper in mission 2 - immediately spots you if you take the ladder even if you try to crouch immediately, can't stay in a mission after finishing the main objective, finding the specific NPC to get a hint to the stolen police car in mission 2, etc.)
Various NPCs look identical
No "you're under arrest" line in this version
Difficulty spike in the first mission of the second mission area and some dips later on in the game (infiltration mission for example where you really don't need to be stealthy)
Annoying how criminals can die just from punching or sliding into them so you have to keep checking their health and arrest them at the right time to not kill them and if you did too much damage already it might be impossible since you only knock them down at the end of a combo or with a throw
Sometimes poor enemy AI - a group of enemies won't necessarily react if you shoot one of them and enemies sometimes walk into their own mines+at one point an enemy jumped down from too high up and died+some enemies react very slowly to you+some enemies standing guard won't react to you shouting stop/freeze or shooting near them
Invisible walls near water - can't swim nor walk into water
Non-solid raised railways
Weird how NPCs just walk into you while you're standing still or even arresting someone, NPCs tend to run back and forth instead of away from a gunfight, can't travel by helicopter (there are a few as NPCs) - could've been an alternate path to rooftops in some missions, gets repetitive after a while (few enemy types, no new melee combat moves or combos to learn nor any new movement abilities, no new weapons after about 1/3 of the game, very few music tracks in this version - more on PC and PS1, samey looking locations in the early-mid game), very short headline hostage mission, pretty easy final mission
Bugs:
-Sometimes there's a short delay right at the beginning of a mission where you can't move but the clock starts ticking and enemies start moving
-Can't see the ranking stats after a tutorial mission in Flycast for Retroarch
-Enemies can become unable to climb fences at times
-Can sometimes jump through fences
-At one point you can kill Deeks after getting the quest info on him and then carry on like nothing happened
-No chain reaction from exploding barrels (does happen with mines)
-Roper can glitch out in the mansion mission and just sort of disappear (supposed to follow you and help with enemies)
Notes:
-Original PC ver. is from 1999