Suckered
Yeah, okay. You know what? This is one of those semi-rare cases when I won't even try to beat around the bush. This is one of those times when I will state rather firmly that I was gullible and a complete idiot. One of my moments of shame. Enjoy it kids, 'cause it doesn't happen very often. I do take some small consolation from the fact that I wasn't alone. That many others, also having just played Grand Theft Auto 3 and feeling that Rockstar Games could do no wrong, preordered and purchased State of Emergency - for fifty fucking dollars.
The game was based on a concept that sounds fun enough – wander through areas like malls and city streets and kill well, everyone. Be a rebel! Smash the Corporation, and shove a rocket into the face of anyone that tries to stop you. Deal with crowds of 100+ people on screen simultaneously with little to no slowdown, an impressive feat at the time. Use an arsenal of nasty weapons, ranging from semi and automatic rifles to flamethrowers to grenades and rocket launchers. Play through the challenge-based story mode, or take on mini-quests that can involve wonderful objectives such as “kill as many civilians as you can in one minute.” And you know what? It is fun. For about...an hour. Maybe two. Two whole hours of entertainment - for fifty fucking dollars.
So then what happens? You start realizing that the only real point of the game is to run around in a tiny handful of small environments picking up weapons and firing in almost any direction over and over and over and over and over. Close your eyes, rotate the left thumbstick slowly in a circle, repeatedly tap the X button, and you will probably get a decent score. This is what happens when you get too much of a good thing. This is what happens when someone in a boardroom says “HEY! Kids like shooting innocent people in Grand Theft Auto 3. If they like shooting one person, they'll LOVE shooting a hundred. Let's make a game about THAT!” And so they did. They took a single facet of a popular game, purified it, proceeded to beat it into the ground, and then dropped it on store shelves - for fifty fucking dollars.
When you really boil it down, State of Emergency is nothing more than a mini-game from Grand Theft Auto 3. Run around and kill people. Rinse and repeat. It's so ridiculous that I almost wonder if Rockstar realized this during playtesting, if they watched people cackle with glee for about two hours before getting bored and frustrated. Come to think of it I feel sorry for those testers, because I know they weren't allowed to put it down when they got bored. No, they had to keep playing and playing and playing until I'd imagine someone drilled through their right eye with a Black and Decker. Maybe they got to go home early that day, making that guy a hero. Even without that I think Rockstar knew what they had, that they held in their hands a game that would at least at first sell like hotcakes based on the concept and the hype. By the time anyone figured out they'd been had it was too late. Thanks to the asinine rules at almost every retail chain, you can't return a game you've opened after purchase. Nope, Rockstar just took you for a ride - for fifty fucking dollars.
I'll freely admit this was really my mistake. That I was a fool for buying into the hype that few games manage to actually live up to. It's okay though. I learned my lesson, so the experience was worth something in the end. I'm only really mad about the money - fifty fucking dollars.