Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice Review

As one of the early titles on Sony's PSP, Bigbig Studios' Pursuit Force certainly drew some attention back in 2005. It was instantly compared to the arcade classic Chase HQ and for good reason. The car chase sections certainly reminded us of those Miami Vice-esque pursuits in that black Porsche 928, hot on the heels of a "British Sports Car" (essentially a Lotus Espirit). But, while Pursuit Force was heavy on the old-skool arcade style, it certainly was more varied than Taito's coin-op classic.

Firstly, taking down those pesky crims wasn't restricted to merely battering them into submission. When you reached the outlaws you could then shoot at them or jump onto their vehicles and pump them full of lead at point blank range before commandeering their automobile. If you had full 'Justice', you could even shoot at criminals while jumping onto their cars in bullet time. Not to mention that there were a wide variety of different mission types and vehicles for gamers to enjoy - levels tended to intersperse on-foot sections, chases in speedboats and regular car pursuits with a lightning pace.

The good news is that Bigbig hasn't lost any of this charm in Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice, particularly the blockbusting Hollywood action movie feel that it so perfectly captured first time around. The even better news is that they've added to the formula in a variety of ways and smoothed out the niggling irritations from the first game. The bad news is... well, there isn't any really. In short, Bigbig has changed and improved the single-player just enough that it can't be criticised for being more of the same, while they've provided a multiplayer mode for the first time in the series. It's all good news for Pursuit Force fans and here's why...

Firstly, there's more variation in Extreme Justice's missions than we've seen previously. While you'll see the usual types of pursuit missions such as tailing a suspect, protecting a target and annihilating the bad guys, there's now more focus on the padding that surrounds this core gameplay. For example, there's greater emphasis on the mission sections where you'll be providing support from a gun turret (in a helicopter or vehicle), sniping from a distance or bringing the 'Justice' on-foot. This certainly helps to break-up the regular pursuit sections and, while these are arguably the most enjoyable sections in the game, if Pursuit Force was solely made up of chases then the experience would get a bit monotonous. As a result, the wider variation of mission types is welcome in Extreme Justice.

Speaking of the on-foot missions, the control layout has been perfected to the point where it is one of the best third-person shooter control systems on the PSP. The handheld console has struggled a lot when it comes to translating shooter-styled controls onto the face buttons and analogue nipple, but Bigbig studios has nailed it with Extreme Justice. While their first game did a fairly good job, the second game boasts significant advancements with a new free-look reticule, rewarding 'Sharpshooter' headshots and a lock-on system which is perfectly weighted (i.e. it's loose enough that shooting bad guys isn't ridiculously easy). Arresting a criminal whenever you get close to them is also more challenging now, with the addition of pushing prompted buttons in the right order to avoid attacks and detain the suspect. Okay, that's fairly archaic 'Simon-says' style gameplay, but at least it's a meatier close-quarters system than in the first game.

Boss battles are vastly improved and are now more like challenging mini-levels, rather than simply a vehicle that's a bit more difficult to bring down. For example, one of the boss battles takes place on a plane (and I literally mean on, rather than in) where you come up against a leader of the Raiders gang. He fires explosive arrows at you while you attempt to climb across the wing of an airborne bomber. It's just as exciting as it sounds and the level actually ends with quite a shocking plot twist. Nevertheless, these deeper boss battles certainly do add to the experience and are just another way that the gameplay has been expanded for the sequel.

Other nice touches include the tweaks to the 'Justice' meter. While you had to wait until the meter was full before you could replenish your health bar in the first game, you can now use your stores of 'Justice' to give yourself a small boast of health whenever you need it. It's a neat adjustment because there were many instances where the 'Justice' meter annoyed us for its lack of this feature in the first game and the change certainly got us out of a few sticky situations in Extreme Justice.

A similar nice touch to this sequel is the addition of checkpoints throughout levels, which you can continue from when you die. The lack of any save points throughout a level was incredibly frustrating in the first game as it was quite tricky at times. This made playing through 10 minutes of a level five times, just to get to the same difficult ending, incredibly tiresome. The new checkpoints nullify this concern completely, easing a gamer's stress levels in the process.

Of course, there are a few new vehicles on show for the sequel - Hovercrafts, jet-skis and motor bike sidecars all play a role - but they're more variations on the vehicular themes laid down in the first game than they are new driving experiences. However, one handling experience that has changed is that the vehicle controls have been moved from the D-pad in the first game, to the analogue nipple for Extreme Justice. This has freed up space on the control layout for a handy weapon inventory on the D-pad, which was completely absent in 2005.

One final thing to note about the single-player Story mode is that when the PlayStation 2 game eventually comes out, owners of both games will be able to utilise the cross-platform game saves feature. This nifty little addition means that you can upload your progress from the PS2 game onto your PSP, play the handheld game all day at work, and then upload that progress back onto the PS2 once you get home.

Other than the main Story modes, Extreme Justice also offers Bounty and Challenge as additional single-player modes. Respectively, these allow you to replay previous levels, or replay individual sections of past levels. They replace the Race and Time Trial modes from the first game and, in short, are a cheap way of offering extra content in the game. The aim is to complete parts of the game that you've already played through, although this time you can gain credits which allow you to unlock things like cheats and enemy vehicles. You'll forgive me, then, if I don't bother. However, at 10-15 hours of action in the main Story mode - depending on the amount of 'Justice' per square inch you can dish out - the game certainly isn't on the short side, although it's not epic either.

Thankfully, a more substantial mode comes in the form of the multiplayer mode. Four separate game types are on offer: Rampage is an on-foot deathmatch, Cops 'n' Robbers is a straight up pursuit, Ram Jam is also pursuit based but with ramming involved, while Survivor places gamers in a police 4X4 where they have to deal with attacking enemy vehicles. All four multiplayer games are available for four players via wireless ad-hoc connection. It's certainly a shame that there's no Infrastructure mode on offer, but at least there's some sort of multiplayer action this time around as there was none in the first game.

Graphically, the most significant improvement that Bigbig has made is with the ghosting, which is now fairly non-existent having been quite persistent two years ago. The overall visual experience has also been improved, with a touch of sandpaper seemingly being taken to some of the jaggies and the addition of some more advanced lighting effects. Finally, the sound is also very similar to the last game with a musical score that could have been composed by Hans Zimmer for a generic Hollywood action flick. The voice-overs are also well written and performed once again, although a more varied cast mixes things up quite nicely this time around.