System Requirements
OS: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP CPU: Pentium 600Mhz RAM: 128MB HDD: 300MB VIDEO: 16MB 3D Direct X 8.1 Compatible SOUND: 16 bit Direct X 8.1 Compatible Age: Teen
The pressure is on. Do you think you have what it takes to save peoples lives, and quickly? One wrong move and people will die. On the flipside, if you do a good job your budget will increase and peace will be restored. However, if you fail you\'ll have to start all over. Thank God I don\'t do this in real life! There are so many details to consider and if you forget just one, lives will be hurting. Can you handle the heat?
How do I help?
In Emergency 2 you can control police, fire fighters and medical rescue units. There are also miscellaneous services you will use like tow trucks and K9 rescue dogs. Each division has special abilities and resources. For example, Police have armored vehicles and sharp shooters. Firemen have many tools to make rescues easier. You\'ll get familiar with the jaws of life, axes, chain saws, etc. There are helicopters for police and rescue units. They will get you to the action faster, but will cost more. If you run into a situation where you need to negotiate or buy yourself more time, be sure to send a psychologist to do some smooth talking. What kind of situations will I run into? There are twenty five levels in this game for you to complete, each getting a tad bit harder. You will deal with car and train crashes, fires, robberies, hostage situations, and riots. There are even some terrorist situations and a level where you must save the president. The last level is a bit extreme where you must prevent an alien attack. There is no multiplayer in this game so you can only lengthen your game play by adjusting the difficulty level (easy is hard enough) or wait for future expansion packs/releases.
Game Play
Before each mission there is a movie to brief you on the situation. After that you are taken to mission control where you are only a click away from dispatching fire, police and rescue units. The clock does not start ticking until you go to the scene or dispatch units. From there scripted events occur trying to trip you up. If you get stuck, there are tips in mission control that may help you out. Chances are that you will be replaying missions until you get them right. This can be a bit frustrating at times because it seems that in order to beat some scenarios you have to foresee the future to prevent some events.
AI
Although many of the units are as smart as the gamer controlling them, I do feel that there is room for improvement. My main gripe is with the sharp shooters. Granted you have to arm them, but a guard option or even a retaliate feature in the AI would be helpful for them to defend themselves. Instead you have to arm each individual sharp shooter and have each one aim and shoot at their target. This is time consuming and often leads into more ambulances being called in to attend to wounded sharp shooters.
Appropriate?
From a Christian perspective this game has realistic situations and violence (and some far fetched situations as well.) There is blood and injuries, which is to be expected in this game genre. However, I did encounter some swearing which should not be needed to add realism.
Overall experienceEase of use
Emergency 2 is easy to install and play. There is a game update feature in the game menu to help keep it patched. As of the date of this review there have been no patches for it. There are cheat codes though! The graphics are nothing special by today\'s standards. The realistic weather effects and abilities to go inside buildings is nice, so there is a lot of detail. The movies add a nice touch. The sound effects are very fitting. There appears to be CD audio tracks but the game console shows errors loading them. Not quite sure what\'s up with that. I guess there is suppose to be background music but not on my system. The game ran very stable with no crashes. The controls are easy to use, the zooming in is the reverse to what I\'m used to but it works. If you like saving lives and don\'t mind the pressure, this game might be for you.
