Emergency Mayhem Review

By Kevin "Berserker" Hall

Emergency Mayhem
Player(s): 1-4

What do you do from day to day to reduce chaos and panic in your life? Do you clean your room? Help your parents out with chores? Try to multitask at a job? Have you every tried to reduce panic while driving? Well, thanks to Emergency Mayhem and your Wii-mote, you can, but do you really want to take up this challenge? Read on and find out.

The core gameplay in Emergency Mayhem is the driving portion where you take on the role of one of three emergency vehicles to reduce mayhem in the city. Choose a precinct of the city then choose from operating a police car, a fire truck, or an ambulance. The objective with all vehicles is to reduce mayhem. For the police car, you will race to the scene of thefts, chase down criminals in a getaway car, fix flat tires, among other types of police work. With the fire trucks, put out fires, fix leaky fire hydrants among other tasks. And finally with an ambulance, rush to a scene to revive a citizen or help get a fly out of a guy's chest... yes, you heard that right.

Each job requires the player to find an emergency scene by following an onscreen arrow on the top portion of the screen. The emergency area is always showcased by a glowing circle. Plow right through a group of pedestrians or turn over plenty of other cars and trucks while in your attempt to reach the scene to reduce mayhem. Yes, the game takes itself very lightly. One thing that really got on my nerves at times was the lack of an onscreen map in this game. The problem doesn't really showcase itself well until you get down to the last few tasks and you are not close enough to the next task so that the onscreen arrow will guide you. This leads to a lot of extra driving in order to find the correct proximity to receive another help arrow.

Anyway, once the emergency scene is reached you will either play a mini game or have to deliver some items or go to another destination. Each driving stage is timed and you will receive extra time by performing tasks or by collecting clock icons. Once enough jobs have been finished then you are required to go back to your headquarters and the stage ends. The driving gameplay of Emergency Mayhem is much like playing Crazy Taxi. To sum the whole game up, it is Crazy Taxi without pedestrians and with added mini games.

No matter what vehicle is chosen, the core gameplay feels the exact same until a new scene is reached. Each vehicle requires the same main task - reach the glowing circle by following the arrow. There is no evidence of any chaos or need of help until your vehicle stops on the glowing circle. The only real differentiation between the jobs is the vehicle that you drive and the mini games that you will perform.

All of the mini games make use of the Wii-mote's motion sensitive controls. Move the Wii-mote up and down to pump water in order to put out a fire, rotate the Wii-mote to turn a crank in order to tighten the bolts on a leaky fire hydrant, quickly move the Wii-mote downward to revive a citizen, use the onscreen pointer to match up electrical cords in order to fix a traffic light, among many other types of mini games. There is quite a bit of variety in the mini games but most of them become repetitive after the first few times. The game will require you to go through a select few mini games multiple times on the beginning precincts then it will start to mix them up more when the next precinct is reached by offering newer minigames.

The only other tasks that you will be doing besides mini games are driving from one location to the next in order to deliver some goods, chase down a car, or simply get to another area. While delivering goods, you must keep from crashing into other cars in order to keep the goods from being damaged. One unique feature that you can use while performing this task is to turn on your siren to make other vehicles pull over to the side. When ordered to get to a certain area to perform some task, you will simply drive there and the game will announce that mayhem has been reduced without any action from you, which made me somewhat displeased since I was expecting some form of interaction with the situation.

The overall graphics resemble a slightly better Dreamcast game, which basically matches the simple approach that the game is going for. Character models and the overall environmental surroundings are full of color and everything matches the wacky mood of the game.

The controls for the actual driving are very solid and fun to use. You'll be running over plenty of pedestrians and dodging out of the way of other cars pretty easily. The mini game controls work fairly well, but some of the mini games require too precise of a motion or too rapid of a motion. For instance, the mini game where you have to pump water to put out a fire really got to my wrist with the constant up and down motion that was needed. On the other hand, the fire hydrant rotating had to be done in a much slower motion that had to be performed perfectly or the game would not recognize the rotating movement.

The person over the radio will shout out constant phrases during your tasks. She can get annoying with some of her phrases that start to repeat a bit, such as "Hasta La Vista Mayhem" and other such remarks. She isn't afraid to insult you either. The music is upbeat enough to match the overall carnage that is taking place as you rush to each scene.

As I said near the beginning, the game takes its core driving gameplay from Crazy Taxi, except you will be rushing from point A to point B in order to get to some sort of delivery, chase or mini game. The game gets really repetitive very easily since the only breaks from driving are some short mini games involving the Wii-mote. Overall, the driving portion lacks the charm that Crazy Taxi had and the mini games lack excitement. Emergency Mayhem might be worth a rental for the curious but I can't recommend buying it.

The Good:
+ Solid controls for the overall driving

The Bad:
- Much of the mini games get boring after the first few times
- Controls for the mini games can be hard to manage

Graphics: 7.0
Controls: 7.0
Sound: 7.5
Gameplay: 5.5

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 58%. Emergency Mayhem throws some wacky tasks our way as we race to reduce mayhem but really reducing panic has never felt so repetitive.