Emergency Mayhem Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 9th May 2008

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Mayhem breaks out on the Wii.

Emergency Mayhem Details:

	Action
	Nintendo Wii
	Codemasters
	Codemasters

12+

Out Now

N/A

When crisis breaks out the best thing to do is leave it to the pros, the emergency services. This is exactly what Codemasters latest offering for the Wii does, giving you the chance to take the helm of the three emergency services to solve the problems of a mayhem hit city.

From the outset it’s obvious that Emergency Mayhem is targeted at a younger audience. The game puts you in the role of three emergency services, Police, Fire and Ambulance as mayhem has broken out in Crisis City. You have to drive your vehicle from the respective service to mayhem spots in the city and sort out the problems that are plaguing the streets.

In Emergency Mayhem you have to complete a series of missions for each of the emergency services within a specific precinct, each time you successfully complete a mission you reduce the mayhem meter for the emergency service you are playing as. However, you only have a short time to restore peace so good driving skills are essential but don’t fret as completing challenges gives you a time boost in your quest to stop mayhem.

Missions are found by driving around the streets and are marked by a series of coloured rings that indicate the type of mission you will have to undertake, delivery, timed, delicate and special. Some of the missions require you to travel from point A to point B within a set amount of time or without obtaining too much damage as you race to deliver some delicate cargo. Some of the games missions also launch a mini game that include things such as repairing traffic lights, disarming bombs or guiding flies out of peoples guts! The mini games are fairly fun but can become a little repetitive as they are often repeated several times within a precinct.

Once you have completed all of the missions for one of the services you will earn a promotion and unlock a new precinct for you to reduce mayhem in, missions are all pretty much the same in each of the areas, however new missions and mini games are unlocked each time you earn a promotion so there is a little variety.

As you drive around the streets you’ll be able to gather a number of power-ups, these give you a siren bonus, add a time bonus and reduce mayhem a little. Sirens in Emergency Mayhem come in useful when you need to get somewhere quickly prompting traffic to move out of your way. However, they only last a few minutes before needing to be recharged so have to be used sparingly.

Emergency Mayhem makes use of both the Wii remote and nunchuck and the game controls have been well thought out and are very responsive so there are no issues as in some other driving games on the Wii. Most of the driving controls are handled by the nunchuck so movement is accurate whilst mini games make good use of the Wii’s motion sensing capabilities.

As well as the single player mode, Emergency Mayhem also includes a party and versus mode. In the games versus mode players can play the mini games to see who can achieve the best score. This can be played as either a single game or a tournament of five rounds.

The party mode features Challenge and Survival game types. The challenge games are a simple affair and require players to try and achieve the top score. The Survival game is played in rounds using the mini games, the player with the lowest score at the end of each round is eliminated and obviously the last player standing wins. The games multiplayer aspect can be pretty fun to play, and does add a little replay value to the game.

Overall the game is pretty fun to play, some of the games challenges are a little on the easy side whilst some will provide a better challenge, also prolonged play can become a little repetitive as there’s not a lot of variation in the gameplay and having to complete the same mini games over and over can lose its appeal after a period of time.

Visually the game looks pretty good, it has a fun look to it, and the game is bright and colourful with big chucky looking vehicles. The city’s citizens run around frantically screaming and waving their arms in the air as mayhem erupts around them.

Sound in the game is ok, if not a little annoying. It has been done in arcade style and for the most part fits the title perfectly. The only annoying thing about it is the voice of the dispatcher that screams at you when you do something good or when you fail a mission!

Overall Emergency Mayhem provides a pretty fun playing experience despite the fairly repetitive gameplay, it won’t appeal to older gamers but kids should enjoy trying to restore order to Crisis City and it should stop them creating mayhem of their own for a while.