My favorite Games of All-Time #20: State of Emergency - Originally published on 1UP - March 31, 2006

State of Emergency (SoE) by the now defunct Vis is my guilty pleasure. It is considered one of the shortest, lamest and easiest games ever published by Rockstar. In the all-time top games list of every magazine and website SoE is not even a footnote.

I rank State of Emergency higher in this list than any Zelda game, Shadow of the Colossus and God of War. I'm either insane or maybe I see something special in the game that most gamers overlook.

SoE first made news at the 2001 E3. Vis and Rockstar earned some respect for delivering up to several hundred people onscreen at the same time. Most PC developers said that the PS2 could never support that many characters at once.

The game was memorable for the characters, mechanics and plot. You are one of several revolutionaries fighting against "the Corporation." There is an ex-cop, lawyer, hacker and escaped prisoner that you can use in your missions. Each character has their own special attacks, strengths and weaknesses. The most well known revolutionary is the chubby gangbanger Hector "Spanky" Solada.

SoE features tons of weapons including assault rifles and axes that players can use plus various missions to accomplish en route to toppling the Corporation. Adding to the running and gunning of the game are the crazed levels. The game is set in the middle of a riot. It is easy to get lost and even easier to evade authorities in the mass of people looting.

The Corporation runs a totalitarian regime in an undisclosed country. The artistic direction and visual clues help set the tone from beginning to end. The characters are highly stylized and a bit cartoonish, however it works in this game. The charm of State of Emergency lies in capturing the chaos of a revolution and turning less into a console game and more into an arcade experience.

That is assuming I can call a revolution charming. You can ask anyone in my family, I find chaos exciting. Riots, explosions wild police chases... I love that stuff. SoE is non-stop chaos and I can't get enough of it. My brother says I need to play more GTA if I'm about the running and gunning. I tell him that I don't want to mess around with a wanna-be game. If I want guns, explosions, gang wars, riots and mass chaos then I cut to the chase and play SoE. From the first level to the last SoE is all about the sensory overload. If I want high speed chases and better car physics than GTA I play Driver. This all goes back to my definition of a great game. Vis identified the element that makes action shooters work and multiplies that tenfold and then wraps it in the middle of a chaotic environment.

This is why I call SoE my dirty little secret. There are very few games that can chill me out when I have to blow off some steam, SoE might be the best at it. Blowing stuff up is fun in the game, it could be called the Katamari of chaos because nobody does it better. There is something visceral about SoE that transcends most game design.

That visceral sensation is primal. The human psyche is tuned to either fight or flee when presented with images of a revolution, the rioting and chaos it brings out. We are reduced to our survival instincts in a mob mentality. As a group we can only be pushed so far by brutal regimes. We can tolerate only so much suffering and human rights violations before we begin rebelling. It is the struggle between freedom and power, the balance of order and chaos that goes back thousands of years. Whether you want to admit it or not, chaos it is as much a part of our humanity as order is.

The fight for freedom is a theme that keeps returning. Most recently in the game Getting Up and the movie V for Vendetta. No game before or since has captured that frenetic energy better than State of Emergency. For that reason alone it will stay on my top-20 favorite games forever and ever.

Viva La Revolucion!

PS. My character Avery won the Capoeira Fighter 3 character contest.

I found out about it earlier this month, but the hosted site had been down for a while. It should be up if you visit. HOLY SMOKES, have a great weekend!!!

I’d like to hear your personal top-10, top-20, top fighting games, top sports games, or top games in any genre. Let me know in the comments section please. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

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