G-Police: Weapons of Justice
Score: 92% ESRB: Teen Publisher: Psygnosis Developer: Psygnosis Media: CD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Action/ Flight
Graphics & Sound: The graphics in this game are amazing for the PlayStation. Lush detail, tons of things moving around, high-poly models. Of course, with this lushness, a price must be paid. In G-Police: Weapons of Justice's case, the price is both in framerate (which gets almost uncontrollable when you're getting bombarded by tons of enemy ships, making the matter worse) and the distance that you can see. Things frighteningly close to you are represented by green bounding boxes instead of the actual texture maps, because there just isn't enough RAM in the PlayStation to pump all of the data needed to display any further. Agh! At least the radar shows you where things are, so that you don't slam into enemy ships because they haven't been drawn yet. What is there, though, is gorgeous -- nonsensical billboards, hundreds of buildings and interconnecting tubes, vehicles that serve no point other than for flavor. Good stuff. The sound is uniformly excellent, with good music, superb effects that let you determine exactly what everything is by the way it sounds, and good voice acting. Overall, the presentation is splendid, poor distance viewing aside.
Gameplay: The G-Police/Colony Wars series centers on relentless, constant, pulse-pounding gameplay, and in this, Weapons of Justice delivers. You still have your ol' trusty Venom VTOL 'copter' from the first game, but now you have four (?!) more vehicles that you can pilot, from an updated Venom to a ground car to a corsair. Each one controls differently (well, the updated Venom controls pretty much the same, but so much better you'll wish you had it in the first G-Police), and driving the Rhino (the car) is an experience in and of itself. I found myself tooling aimlessly around the levels in the Rhino, just having fun driving. It helps that as you gain new vehicles, 'secret levels' open up that let you practice using them, a la the training missions in the original G-Police. Very, very nice. The gameplay is much like the first -- mission based destruction. 'Protect fozzle' and 'Blow up fozzle' are very common objectives, but in Weapons of Justice, terribly often, your objective will shift mid-level to something completely different, and you've got to scramble to gather your wits and make the best of the mess you've caused inadvertantly. This makes the game all the more engrossing, along with all the more difficult. You can also control wingmen, which vary from other G-Police members to squads of Marines. The control mechanism is extremely simple (pretend they're a secondary weapon and 'fire' them at the enemy), but it makes for even richer gameplay, as you can send your lackeys to do the destruction, while you hide away so you don't get blown up. Of course, that generally means that you don't get the Secondary Objectives, but hey... who said war was fair? As before, you're protecting the domes of Callisto, and Weapons of Justice is set a mere few weeks after the first game. Nanotech has been destroyed, but splinter groups are coming together and forming a crime syndicate that oftentime rivals the power of the old Nanotech. The story unfolds as the game progresses, with the requisite twists and turns. As in most of Psygnosis' games, the story is just there as a hook -- the gameplay is what keeps you coming. And this game never gets old, even after you lose a mission for the 10th consecutive time. Blow stuff up, dodge around a skyscraper, blow more stuff up, dodge incoming missiles. Ah! This is the life!
Difficulty: If you thought the first G-Police was hard, be forewarned. This game is even more difficult. The first six or so levels are relatively easy, but when you hit the mission where you have to destroy the convoy, the game takes a turn for the impossible. None of the missions are truly impossible, though, just highly aggravating. You won't mind, though, because blowing up stuff is too much fun to pass up.
Game Mechanics: This game's controls are spot on, with the notable exception of the Rhino's Speed Boost, which seemed to flake out on me at the most inopportune times. Ah, well -- I ended up not using it most of the time instead. The vector-thrust craft work a bit more realistically now, with no magic 'float down' button like in the first one, which makes the game a touch more difficult, but makes it a good bit more realistic. The game's never so realistic as to take you down with one hit, though. Once you master the controls (I highly recommend Dual Shock with one pad as moving the nose and the other as thrust), the game is a joy to play, as you swoop in and around and over buildings... and summarily die, but hey, that's the fun of it! If the game were a touch less difficult, and the graphics engine more refined so you could actually see more than a hundred feet in front of you, Weapons of Justice would be the penultimate flight combat sim. As it is, it's still a great game. If you enjoyed the first G-Police, or either of the Colony Wars games, I highly recommend getting this one. And if you've been looking for X-Wing style gameplay on the console, look no further than this holy quadrangle of Psygnosis.
-Sunfall to-Ennien, GameVortex Communications AKA Phil Bordelon
Grandia Lucky Luke