I remember playing the first State of Emergency back in 2002. I enjoyed it, but certain flaws kept me from playing a whole bunch of it. I grew bored of its repetitive missions, but still had fun running through a huge crowd and wreaking havoc. Well, when I heard State of Emergency 2 was going to have a wider mission variety, I imagined an extremely entertaining game was on the way. I was wrong.

State of Emergency 2 does have a wider mission variety. In fact, it’s completely mission-driven now. Each area has a mission that leads to another, and the missions guide you through each area. This means you’re only in each area for a little while. I thought I would like this, because I felt you were in the same area for too long in the first SoE, but SoE 2 doesn’t even give you a chance to get comfortable in an area before dumping you somewhere new. But maybe this isn’t the real problem; let’s explore further…

SoE was a game based on riots and mass carnage, so naturally one would think the sequel would be driven by that same force. There were riots in SoE 2, but not on the same scale as the first. Plus, there are a lot of levels that have you either solo or with one other companion as you battle hordes of enemy soldiers. I remembered the previous game having a lot more characters on-screen than this one did.

Another aspect of the series that really separated it from the rest was the ability to use crazy objects as weapons. For some reason SoE 2 is strictly shooting. No hand-to-hand, no using dismembered body parts, and no smashing someone with a TV … it’s nothing but guns.

Sometimes those guns take the shape of a vehicle, such as a tank or helicopter. These vehicles aren’t optional, either; since the game flows through missions, the characters will enter the vehicle for a certain missions, and upon completion will hop out again.

Mission structure is extremely simple. Your hacker friend relays your objectives to you via a headset your character wears. You don’t even need to listen to him, because your objective is marked on your radar. On your way to the objective enemies will jump out. The enemies are marked with a floating blue arrow over their head, so you can easily pick them out of a crowd. All you need to do to move on is mow them down and get to the objective. It’s pretty simple, and not all that fun.

To help complete these objectives, on certain levels you can recruit gang members. Holding down the L3 button brings up a quick command menu, and if you don’t use it they will never do what you need them to do. They do provide something else for the enemy to shoot besides you, though, so they do help out.

Every once in a while these missions are interrupted with mini-game style missions. These sometimes take the form of beating a confession out of someone, or using a turret to shoot down waves of approaching enemies. I honestly found these annoying instead of refreshing. For example, in the interrogation mini-mission you have to hold X as a marker moves along a bar, then let go while it’s within the green area. But because of the delayed controls it’s easy to mess up, and messing up means “Game Over, try again from the top.”

My biggest complaint with SoE 2 is the controls. They are extremely floaty and almost impossible to make precise movements with. Since there are times where you snipe, or have to shoot drone guns from around corners, it is important that you can make precise movements. If you try to take a single step in any direction, your character always takes another step after releasing the joystick. No matter what action you’re taking, the game goes just a little further after you release the controls.

There are plenty of other problems I could mention, but they’re purely cosmetic. The animations of characters running around are choppy and look unfinished compared to the death animations and animations of people falling down. Also, one thing that confused me was how my targeting reticule got smaller as I moved, and bigger when I stopped. Wouldn’t my shots become more accurate if I stopped moving?

But is it fun to play? That depends on how easily amused you are. I consider myself pretty easy to entertain, and I found myself getting bored very often. They improved on what was wrong with the first State of Emergency, but turned around and took out everything that was just fine. If you like to just shoot lots of people over and over again, you might like State of Emergency 2, otherwise don’t worry about trying this one out.     

Gameplay: 4.5
This game might have been a bit more entertaining if the controls were more polished. State of Emergency 2 is a good example of a game whose controls get in the way of the gameplay. But that isn’t the only thing holding this one back; bad AI and simple missions offer nothing to be excited about.

Graphics: 5.5
SoE 2 looks a little better than the first, but there are noticeably less characters on-screen at once. And even though it’s an improvement on the first, that’s not really saying a lot.

Sound: 7.0
The soundtrack is one redeeming factor this game has going for it. The score really fits the action on the screen. However, the voice acting sounds extremely forced, the accents sound fake, and overall the voices get really annoying. Luckily the character doing the most talking isn’t too bad.

Difficulty: Easy
Thanks to the simple mission design and poor AI, the only reason you’ll be dying in this game is because of the controls. Sometimes the number of enemies can get overwhelming, but your character takes so little damage per shot, and you can drop them in just a few shots each.

Concept: 3.5 
Right now the market is being flooded with games like this. But in relation to the series itself, they took the idea of missions in the right direction. Unfortunately they brought down every other feature in the process.

Multiplayer: 4.0
SoE 2 supports up to four players in various types of multiplayer settings. But none of them game types are that fun for the same reasons the rest of the game isn’t fun. You’re better off playing SOCOM.  

Overall: 4.0
State of Emergency 2 isn’t an extremely horrible game (I’ve played much worse); it just isn’t very fun. There are just too many flaws within the good ideas they had. There isn’t enough lasting appeal, or any real excitement, to recommend this one to anybody. For every aspect of this game there’s another game out there that does it better.