Back in the days of the original State of Emergency, developers Rockstar were riding high on the wave of controversy and hype surrounding Grand Theft Auto III. As a result of this and the inclusion of flamethrowers in the screenshots on the back of the box, more people probably bought State of Emergency than really should have. What they got was not an expansive, open-ended world like GTA, but instead a confined, frantic excuse to maim and brutalise as many people as possible. It was by no means a classic, but still fun in small bursts. Shamefully, the sequel has managed to thoroughly abolish any passing element of enjoyment, in what I can confidently say is one of the worst games of the year so far.

You know you're in for something dull when the opening cinematic involves a camera sweeping around badly lit streets, focusing on illegal activities that are obviously supposed to shock you. Unfortunately, Mexican gangsters swearing and beating up some guy, pixellated prostitutes with polygon breasts and gratuitous examples of police brutality all in about six seconds just seems laughably over the top.

Add to that the 'evil government versus terrorist freedom fighters' storyline you're then introduced to, and you'll instantly identify a game that takes itself far too seriously. The first game had very little in the way of plot and whatever was there was merely used as an excuse for mass carnage, rather than an attempt at being as complex and profound as Metal Gear Solid. Basically, it was never going to work and the developers were foolish to think otherwise.

I suppose the graphics aren't exactly terrible, and by this I mean I've seen worse. Grey on a slightly darker shade of grey is about your lot for textures, as if screaming, "Look! I'm gritty and urban!" but they're not technically bad. The character animations are relatively well executed too, with enemies dying in all manner of hilarious poses, at least ensuring that you get the odd smile every now and then. I suppose you could call the menus well done too, but by now I'm just struggling for nice things to say.

The audio is instantly forgettable, with the generic 'pop' noise for every single weapon and the even less unique 'argh' for everyone's death, including your own. Background music is dull and derivative, thumping through a couple of four-beat techno loops over and over again for the duration of entire levels at a time. There are also a few standard sound effects like explosions and breaking glass, which often have trouble even synchronising properly with their respective event. All these less than impressive presentation techniques serve only to distract you from the core of the problem - the gameplay. Put bluntly, there isn't any.

This is a third person shooter with first person controls, so you instantly feel a bit silly running sideways all the time. Still, overall the controls aren't that bad (again, I've seen worse) but they're hardly going to dramatically improve your experience playing this game. There's nothing you won't have seen a thousand times before and what's worse is it doesn't actually have any method of targeting implemented at all. The basic point, then, is to run around shooting people. This, you would think, would be relatively simple and would rely solely on player skill. Naturally, it doesn't, instead relying on your ability to exploit the laughably stupid AI. For example, two soldiers might just have witnessed you killing their colleague and stealing his shotgun before diving for cover behind a conveniently placed sheet of metal. Their course of action in this situation is to run blindly at you, screaming loudly and flailing their weapons a bit, seemingly in the hope that you'll think they're mentally disturbed and lay your gun down out of sympathy. This makes them cannon fodder for your newly acquired shotgun, which you don't even have to aim. Just wave it in their rough general direction and start shooting. Job done.

You'd think this would make things ridiculously easy, but you'd be wrong. Rather than program intelligent enemy behaviour, the developers have apparently just decided to put lots of them in instead. The sheer weight of numbers on your enemy's side, coupled with the fact that it's nigh on impossible to tell where you're getting shot from, makes death a regular occurrence. 'Cheap' doesn't come close to covering it. And that's it. Really. Level after level of running, shooting and dying. You can eventually switch between characters, but they're all basically the same anyway. There's an arcade mode, which is identical to the main one but with a level select, as well as a multiplayer mode, but my friends would all get horribly offended if I asked them to play this.

I chose to review State of Emergency 2 because I have relatively happy memories of the original game. I cannot stress how important it is that no-one else make the same mistake. The two out of ten I'm awarding it is divided into one point for relatively competent graphics and another for retaining a character named 'Spanky' from the original. When that's the main redeeming feature of a game, it's not a State of Emergency. It's just in a bit of a state.

Reviewed by Zayne Finch for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).