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!

Blog, favorite games, arcade, 1up, reprint

A look at IGS, Demon Front - A 1UP classic from December 27, 2011

IGS had developed a handful of memorable titles only a few of which were ever released outside of the arcade. The best titles featured on their PGM arcade system never saw home release. That would be one of the biggest tragedies in all of gaming. The one featured today was easily one of the best titles they ever produced. Like Martial Masters, the first title featured was copying the artistic style and mechanics of a rival studio. In this case they would be copying SNK and Nazca's masterful Metal Slug series. The perpetrator in question was Demon Front. The game came out in 2000, around the time of Metal Slug 3. The pictures featured here are courtesy of NGGames.

Artistically and design wise the games were so similar that arcade visitors were likely to overlook the title. Just like Martial Masters though players often did a double take when they realized this was a completely different studio. This curiosity would cause them to take a closer look. As they dug in they realized that the game had slightly different mechanics and a slightly different take on the genre, which was actually refreshing for fans of the Metal Slug series. The game took place on the alien planet Andres, some 20 light years away from Earth.

Every three years the planet had a lunar eclipse. According to legend during the eclipse the inhabitants could become demons. This was just a myth as none of the inhabitants had turned to demons during the previous eclipses. That was until one eclipse lasted for 3 months causing most of the population to mutate into horrible creatures. Few escaped before going mad. One of the main characters, Maya, had survived his mutation and was drawn back home to clean out the demons. That was where the adventure began for players.

The game featured four main characters, each highly stylized and with the familiar Metal Slug proportions. Two were humans from Earth, Jack and Sara. The bearded humanoid Dr. J from the planet Loukai and Maya from Andres. What separated these characters from the MS ones were the additions of tiny pets. Each character was accompanied by a small avatar that could form a protective shield around their owner but also possessed a special attack power. Jack had a red ghost-looking creature called Rage. He could perform middle distance attacks. Sara had an alien-rabbit type creature called Bunny which had long range attacks. Dr. J had a one-eyed robot called Chip that had a powerful close range attack and Maya had a bat-like creature called Flip which could perform middle-distance shots.

These pets closely followed the players through the levels and were always available to use. The addition of pets actually improved upon the Metal Slug mechanics.

In Metal Slug players had to carefully manage their weapons and ammunition There were ways in which to unlock unlimited ammo in the game, however these techniques were not common knowledge to players. Most gamers would just run from location to location hoping that more powerful ammo would be available.

In Demon Front players could get different ammo types, but they could also supplement a lack of a weapon upgrade by using the special attacks from the pets. More important, the pets could form a protective shield around their masters. This shield energy could be replenished or deactivated by the player during the course of any level. Anybody that has ever played Metal Slug could say how much they wish characters could have had some sort of defensive or energy absorbing mechanism. Players also had backpacks that formed energy wings, allowing them to glide for short moments and clear massive gaps.

The characters and pets could all be leveled up, depending on how many opponents were defeated and which player did the most damage to the boss. A player could have more tiers on their health bar and the pets could have stronger attacks or have their shield last longer. In fact the pets themselves would physically change and become larger and more aggressive-looking as they leveled up. This leveling system was unique among run-and-gun titles.

The world of Andres was fun and fanciful. Because it was based in part science fiction, part alien and part demonic incursion, the artists were able to design levels and vehicles that were unlike those featured in other run-and-gun titles. The balance between animated humor, action and monsters was well struck. None of the bosses or monsters was ever too gross or visceral. None of the five stages poached those featured in Metal Slug. The game offered a sixth and final stage against four possible demon bosses, each one was a sort of gigantic, and gross looking version of the pets of the main characters. The only way to reach the hidden boss was if players could collect the demon claws hidden in each level. Otherwise they would just get to enter their initials on the leaderboard and it would be Game Over.

The game was great but the differences between it and Metal Slug were obvious as players went through it. The opponents were not as diverse or as numerous as they would have been in a Metal Slug game. Nazca and SNK would go out of their way to pack every level with scores of enemies. Some even riding in tanks or other vehicles, all raining gunfire, mortar shells and grenades down onto players. During the most hectic battles in Metal Slug there was actually very little breathing room for players. Of course the same thing could be said of most shoot-em-up titles. They catered to a certain type of player that thrived on nonstop action.

In Demon Front players could select which order they were going to do the levels in. This allowed players to save themselves for the harder stages, especially once the pets and characters had increased statistics. By comparison Metal Slug had always been a linear experience.

Demon Front had great themes, details and solid art direction but it was by no stretch of the imagination as hyper detailed as any Metal Slug game. The difference between level designs, details and the enemy types between the two games was not apparent the first time I played the title. It was not until I looked at a side-by-side comparison of it with Metal Slug that I realized Demon Front was slightly anemic. Not that it was a bad thing. The game certainly had more polish and work put into it than Martial Masters did when it was compared to Street Fighter III. While Demon Front didn’t have the diversity or details from the SNK series it more than made up for those elements by adding a winged backpack, pets, and a level up system.

 

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