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Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice

Platforms: PlayStation Portable

Publisher: Sony

Developer: BigBig

ESRB Rating: Teen

29 January 2008, 1-4 players, $29.99

by L.B. Jeffries

Despite the fact that the console and handheld war has been going on for a year now, the only truly successful things that next-gen developers have produced are games with next-gen graphics and interface. There has not really been a game that featured next-gen game design to go with these new methods. It’s still just the same game design formulas across the consoles—still the same setup for delivering plots in an FPS, still the same play times for huge levels. Even the Wii, which radically changed the way people interface with games, is still just using casual mini-games in its big hits. The hardcore themes of long complex play times versus the casual theme of short bursts of fun are still the two dominant formulas.

Yet a curious new development has begun to form in the way people are making games for the casual and hardcore audiences. Like a Pixar movie with adult humor laced into a children’s setting, developers have started creating a new genre of video games to appeal to fans of both genres. Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice has managed to deliver a game that fits into this new genre by using core gameplay elements to create a casual gaming experience.

So how do you make a game for a new genre that will appeal to both casual and hardcore players? The casual gamer market may have an incessant infatuation with assembling colored gems and bowling, but it’s important to remember that a lot of these players are ex-core gamers themselves. Many of them spent their youths whittling away at digital obstacles and don’t mind a complex controller or deep game design. On the other hand, their appetite for overcoming extreme difficulty has abated a bit and they aren’t liable to feel good about spending hours trying to beat a game either. Alex Macris, CEO of the Themis Group and Publisher of ‘The Escapist’ magazine, noted in a lecture at the Carolina Games Summit that casual and core gamers actually spend roughly the same amount of time playing video games. What’s different is that a casual gamer does not play for a sense of fulfillment or satisfaction by beating a tough obstacle, they are there to kill time.

Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice adapts to this with great effect by making each game mission clock in at about 6 or so minutes, so that the average play session consists of two or three missions before you’re getting off the train or heading back to work. The difficulty can be set to the aptly named ‘Casual’ setting, yet the game still provides a few missions that will take multiple tries. It effectively applies the idea of not just using different controls or graphics, but actually playing a game differently—but somehow, it still manages to come across as a hardcore title.

Like the audience it’s appealing to, the game design of Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice is a bit of a hybrid in that it takes the concept of a compilation of countless mini-games and strings them into a coherent whole. If you took the design of a racing game, applied Grand Theft Auto-style car stealing, and threw in some guns for good measure, you would come up with the central car portions of the game. These levels generally consist of chasing down fleeing thugs, leaping onto cars, and gunning down their occupants. Sometimes you have a really short amount of time to do this, sometimes you have to ram stuff, and sometimes you’re just racing against the clock. There are also mini-games featuring rail shooting sessions, a few sniper rifle sessions, and a great deal of effort is spent combining all these mini-games together to create missions.

At times you also have to hoof it on foot, and here the game has garnered some criticism for being a bit dodgy but there’s nothing about it that should deter playing. Your character auto-locks onto people for those who can’t aim on the PSP and you can always duck for cover if you feel like pretending this is a real shooter anyways. Like the GTA-car racing, these varied levels are meant to be quick, accessible, and fun. As mini-games alone these sections hold up well, but when strung together the variety of play makes for a remarkably apt new way to experience a game. Gone are the long play sessions and mind-numbing multiple tries. Most levels can be beaten after a few attempts and are intuitive for learning the trick to winning. In essence, you can casually play a core game and still have fun with this setup.

Criticizing the graphics of handheld systems feels a little bit like yelling at someone for their crayon drawing not being realistic enough, but this game shows the processing power off nicely through excellent art direction. Each side has its own unique brand of vehicles that do a good job of representing the factions driving them. The Redneck Raiders all sport junky cars that look like something out of Mad Max while the elite Syndicate forces all drive Porsches and fancy motorcycles. Other gangs all have their own unique stylized cars, along with a wide host of civilian vehicles to dodge to give you some idea of the attention to detail this game utilizes. This attention is even more cleverly realized in each level of the game. Levels will have you racing through malls, across a golf course, through Alpine towns, Bayous, and other fun locales. Whether it’s a few shopping carts tucked in a corner, some carefully placed sand traps, or the change in tree types to the pines that make-up the Sierra mountains, the game puts a lot of effort into tiny details to make the levels immersive to blast through. There is some overlap of replaying the same areas but the game does generally take place in one “Quasi-California” location so it’s not as if it’s stretching your senses to think you’d drive around the same area.

Given that you’re playing a game that involves leaping from car to car at high speed, it should be no surprise that the game takes a cue from big production action movies for the plot. The game mainly consists of you chasing down a seemingly endless supply of nuclear bombs and villains who have the classic “Nuke first, plan later” approach. It’s able to tell a much longer action story by keeping the viewer engaged and facilitates a lot of great gaming moments. Gunfights on airplanes, blowing up trains, and shooting down missiles are all highlights. For the most part it gets a few laughs and keeps the violence churning but it’s fair to note there are a couple of moments that might offend some. Constant references to in-breeding hicks, mocking the female team members for being weak, along with a couple of other moments might not be everyone’s cup of tea. For a game whose design appeals so well to an older, ex-core crowd, it should be noted that the plot is still aiming for a pubescent audience.

There are plenty of options for those who’d like to ramp up the difficulty. There’s even a multiplayer that’s good for a few laughs and you can replay missions to improve your time as well. But frankly, it feels like all those features are an afterthought and don’t have much appeal when you could instead be playing a smooth, fun game of constant variety and entertainment. When you fire up Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice and think, “Okay, I’ll just play for ten minutes,” it’s actually a viable promise. You won’t get sucked into some lengthy mission that you have to pause before running to work. At the same time it’s a video game that can still be played by an ex-core gamer without forcing them into a Bejeweled-esque hell of mindless colored brick swapping. It is the first game that I can actually say features what may become the template for next-gen game design. The high speed chases, quick gun battles, and huge variety of vehicles all make Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice one of the most casual hardcore games yet made.

— 29 February 2008