Rest
All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
Some guy I've never heard of doing a review of the best FPS on the PS2:
That guy has some kind of annoying accent, so if you don't want to listen to that, just listen to this:
That is the Theme from Urban Chaos, "Modern Romance" by the Metro Riots (now known as Antlered Man)
You can also watch some dude play the game for several hours:
When you're finished with that, you can listen to the end credits music, the instrumental version of "Hazchem Remedy," also by the Metro Riots:
Now if you listened to that awesome piece rhythmic rock and felt that it was missing something, you should do yourself a favor and listen to the version with vocals too:
And for a retrospective from a dev, VICE interviewed Paul Saunders in 2016 because it was topical or some shit. (And since I don't trust VICE to keep that link alive, here is an archived copy.)
As for my own experience with Urban Chaos, this was a game that flew pretty well under the radar, popping up in used game bargain bins at placed like EB Games or Hasting on rare occasions. I'd been looking for new games to play, and Urban Chaos kept popping up under "recommended" on GameSpot or some other mid aughts video game website. I'd never heard of it, never seen it, and didn't really think about it until one day I saw it in one of those used game bargain bins. I picked up the case, remembering that it seemed to have gotten a better than average review, and was checking to make sure it had a manual in the case to go with the game. Not only did it have a manual, a clerk at the game store hadn't stripped the case properly, and it had a red PS2 memory card in it. I pocketed that sucker free of charge and took it as a good omen. I bough Urban Chaos for $8, took it home, and was stunned at just how great it was.
I should set the scene for what Urban Chaos was. This was 2008 or so, still very much in the post 9/11 mindset. Urban Chaos was a bit of digital catharsis, a game where you got to run around a city over run with terrorists trying to kill everybody and destroy society, and you played a cop whose job it was to murder every worthless terrorist shitstain that crossed your path. And oh yeah, you got bonus points for shooting the fuckers in the face or tazing them in the balls. Can you say America Fuck Yeah!?
The game its self had a few unpolished elements. Graphically, the models were fine for the time, but the lighting effects and textures had a matte, almost drab quality to them. It was also still the early days of voice acting in games, so some of the characters sounded downright awful. Everything else ran really well though, in my several playthroughs, glitches were rare, I don't remember any crashes aiming was smooth, and weapons felt impactful. The game also had some novel for the time mechanics, such as the ability to throw smoke grenades to obscure enemy vision (and as the player, you needed to get upgrades like heat vision to be able to see through your own smoke) and it's the earliest first person shooter that I know of that had you running around with a shield to block damage, bypass environmental hazards, and generally tank around like a badass. Did I mention that it was comically, cartoonishly ultraviolent? You could taze sumbitches 'till they caught on fire!
Did you play Urban Chaos: Riot Response? What are you memories of the cheesey 80's action movie in video game form? If you never played it, do yourself a favor and find a copy, because it's the shit.
That guy has some kind of annoying accent, so if you don't want to listen to that, just listen to this:
That is the Theme from Urban Chaos, "Modern Romance" by the Metro Riots (now known as Antlered Man)
You can also watch some dude play the game for several hours:
When you're finished with that, you can listen to the end credits music, the instrumental version of "Hazchem Remedy," also by the Metro Riots:
Now if you listened to that awesome piece rhythmic rock and felt that it was missing something, you should do yourself a favor and listen to the version with vocals too:
And for a retrospective from a dev, VICE interviewed Paul Saunders in 2016 because it was topical or some shit. (And since I don't trust VICE to keep that link alive, here is an archived copy.)
Paul Saunders said:
As for my own experience with Urban Chaos, this was a game that flew pretty well under the radar, popping up in used game bargain bins at placed like EB Games or Hasting on rare occasions. I'd been looking for new games to play, and Urban Chaos kept popping up under "recommended" on GameSpot or some other mid aughts video game website. I'd never heard of it, never seen it, and didn't really think about it until one day I saw it in one of those used game bargain bins. I picked up the case, remembering that it seemed to have gotten a better than average review, and was checking to make sure it had a manual in the case to go with the game. Not only did it have a manual, a clerk at the game store hadn't stripped the case properly, and it had a red PS2 memory card in it. I pocketed that sucker free of charge and took it as a good omen. I bough Urban Chaos for $8, took it home, and was stunned at just how great it was.
I should set the scene for what Urban Chaos was. This was 2008 or so, still very much in the post 9/11 mindset. Urban Chaos was a bit of digital catharsis, a game where you got to run around a city over run with terrorists trying to kill everybody and destroy society, and you played a cop whose job it was to murder every worthless terrorist shitstain that crossed your path. And oh yeah, you got bonus points for shooting the fuckers in the face or tazing them in the balls. Can you say America Fuck Yeah!?
The game its self had a few unpolished elements. Graphically, the models were fine for the time, but the lighting effects and textures had a matte, almost drab quality to them. It was also still the early days of voice acting in games, so some of the characters sounded downright awful. Everything else ran really well though, in my several playthroughs, glitches were rare, I don't remember any crashes aiming was smooth, and weapons felt impactful. The game also had some novel for the time mechanics, such as the ability to throw smoke grenades to obscure enemy vision (and as the player, you needed to get upgrades like heat vision to be able to see through your own smoke) and it's the earliest first person shooter that I know of that had you running around with a shield to block damage, bypass environmental hazards, and generally tank around like a badass. Did I mention that it was comically, cartoonishly ultraviolent? You could taze sumbitches 'till they caught on fire!
Did you play Urban Chaos: Riot Response? What are you memories of the cheesey 80's action movie in video game form? If you never played it, do yourself a favor and find a copy, because it's the shit.
