Emergency Mayhem

Emergency Mayhem

Most videogames are, in some way, about fixing things. In Super Mario it’s about rescuing the kidnapped princess; in Final Fantasy its about toppling an evil overlord to bring peace and restoration to the universe; in Tetris, it’s all about tidying up the blocks and clearing the mess.

Human beings like sorting out problems and making things better, and videogames have long tapped into this desire in interesting and clever ways. In Emergency Mayhem there’s virtually no metaphor for this do-gooding. You’re dumped in a broken city where fires rage, bombs tick, criminals roam the streets and citizens with broken limbs lie hunched on the pavement. Your task? Make it all better.

The game plays very much like Sega’s arcade classic, Crazy Taxi. You assume the role of either the police, fire or ambulance services and drive a squad car, fire-truck or ambulance from place to place in the city, carrying out mini-tasks to reduce the amount of ‘mayhem’ (represented by a mayhem bar in the top right of the screen) while doing so. You start out with a small amount of time on the clock and, as you race to and complete challenges (by following the huge arrow in the centre of the screen) you add more seconds to your timer. The quicker you fix things the longer you can play for.

While the graphics are decidedly basic, the actual control of the vehicles is tight and enjoyable. You use the Nunchuck to steer (and trigger the siren), while the Wiimote is used to accelerate, brake and execute actions in the numerous minigames. These provide the meat of the whole experience and you simply need to drive up to any glowing coloured area on the ground to automatically begin one.

Different colours indicate the type of game on offer. Yellow signifies delivery missions (straightforward drive from A to B type things); Orange shows Timed missions where you have to reach a certain point before the timer runs out; Red means a ‘Delicate’ mission in which you must drive carefully to deliver a fragile package (a difficult thing in this densely populate city) while Blue areas indicate Special missions. These are arguably the most interesting and include tasks such as running felons off the road by ramming in their vehicles.

Of course, at its heart this is just another selection of Wii minigames, albeit one wrapped up in an interesting premise. The city areas you play in are small but packed with stuff to do. Sadly, the meagre range and variety of tasks ensure the game soon gets repetitive, something the party mode doesn’t really help to alleviate. For younger players playing in short bursts the game offers some condensed enjoyment but, as a long-term proposition, this is one world that few will bother to properly fix.

3 out of 5