Psygnosis must have a thing for tiny lettering. As if WipeOut 3 weren't bad enough,
here comes G-Police: Weapons of Justice with text readable only by the bugs in Pixar's
A Bug's Life.
I don't know where to begin. The number of problems disappoints me. They destroy
what could have been a decent game. The graphics, ineffective at creating a mood, are
vastly outdated in terms of depth-cueing. This term loosely means how soon we see
the horizon. While it's easy to blame this problem on aging PlayStation technology,
other games like Spyro have no problems in this area whatsoever.
The wobbly controls are endlessly frustrating. Airborne enemies move way too fast. It's
hard to separate your team from your enemies. The maps for each level are useless,
and worst of all…
Why on earth do four vehicles have different on-screen displays for information which is
95% the same from vehicle to vehicle? This is unnecessarily confusing. Maybe the
developers were going for a more simulation-based experience. I don't know. I just
don't like it. I play games to have fun, not to have to study different models of Raptors,
Corsairs, Havocs, Venoms, and Rhinos, three of which are totally new to the series.
The Havoc and Venom are two types of helicopters. The Raptor is a giant mech. The
Rhino is an armored car, and the Corsair is some sort of spacecraft.
The weak controls make dog-fighting frustrating, especially for more complex missions
involving wingmen and deployable ground troops. Some of you may be drawn to this
kind of challenge, however. Though this game is easier than the original (thank God), it
is still quite an accomplishment if you are able to tame this beast, with 25 weapons and
35 enemy craft. Our hat is off to anyone who makes the grade after completing over 30
game missions.
The background of the development team extends to such titles as Assault Rigs, Die
Hard Trilogy, Destruction Derby, Quake, Nations, F15 Strike Eagle, Sub Wars 2010,
and of course, the first G-Police. Do you notice the common factor? Perhaps it would
behoove Psygnosis to add a little more variety in the talents of the team, if and only if
this series is intended for a general audience. I suspect that is not the case, but the G-
Police series thus far is only appealing to serious tech-heads.
Graham Sergeant, designer for this game as well as Psygnosis' outstanding
Shipwreckers, seems to be the only one on the team whose background extends
beyond "mechanical" games. It is my humble and perhaps uneducated opinion that the
developers are too familiar with these themes themselves to make it fun and accessible
for those who are not instant lovers of this kind of material.
I'm probably being too hard on G-Police, but it's only fair; G-Police is hard on me.
Publisher: Activision