| Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Bigbig Studios |
| Publisher(s) | SCEE, SCEA |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation Portable |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Car combat, Action |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, Multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | |
| Media/distribution | UMD, DVD |
| System requirements | |
Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice is the sequel to Pursuit Force developed by Bigbig Studios. This game is available for the PlayStation Portable. A PS2 version was announced, but never released.[2]
Contents |
The player controls the Pursuit Force Commander of a special unit of the police known as the Pursuit Force, your job, to take down the biggest gangs at large in the USA: The Syndicate: British bank robbers, The Raiders: professional pirates with a focus on stealing cargo, Viper Squad: a corrupt police division [3], and the returning gangs of The Warlords and The Convicts[4], from the original Pursuit Force game. Your objective is to eliminate the 'boss' of each gang, using any means necessary.
The game takes place 2 years after the events in the 1st game, a wedding of the commander and fellow team mate Sarah Hunter is attended, which is then destroyed by the Convicts, who have escaped from prison once again to come and take revenge on the Pursuit Force. Shortly afterwards, a police chase commences.
Shortly after stopping the convicts, Pursuit Force is about to apprehend Billy Wilde when a new police task force called Viper Squad appears to handle the situation themselves. Realizing they are unable to do much with Viper Squad, they return to handling cases which results in the arrival of the Syndicate as well as the Raiders. During a crime with the Raiders and Warlords, the Warlord's lieutenant kills Sarah, leaving the Commander in much grief.
Pursuit Force goes back to piecing together parts of the puzzle as they rescue nuclear physicist Dr. Pertwee as well as finding out why the criminals are cooperating. During a mission on attacking the Syndicate, they find out the Syndicate Lieutenant is in fact a MI:5 spy named Lucy, adding more to the complication of affairs as she is attempting to find who is carrying a majority of the nuclear weapons. It seems that the Convicts, Syndicate, and Raiders are merely the deliverers of the nuclear cargo, as it is the Warlords who intended with their own reasons to launch nukes at Capitol City. The weaker gang's leaders are summarily defeated and just as it seems like most of the case is closed, a mole destroys the Pursuit force headquarters and injures chief.
As they try to figure out who is the mole of the Pursuit Force, it seems all fingers are pointed at the Recruits. To add to the matters, a new unamed masked gang begins terrorizing the city. Adding more to the issue, it is only after battling the Warlord General that it is revealed to be the Viper Squad Commander Decker responsible for the entire plot, while the Warlords have gone rouge already, Viper Squad intend to start a fascist police state in Capital City and have begun a campaign of terror on the innocents. During the President's visit to the city, his Viper convoy begins to attack him and the masked gang is revealed to have actually been members of Viper.
To add to the matters, it is revealed that Ashley was the mole of the team (she is the explosives and marksman expert of the team, Preach was a heavy weapons specialist and Gage was the Driver, so she was the only one capable of setting up charges). Also, at the summit, she may have intimidated the Mayor while the Commander was covering her from Convicts). A battle on the Viper copter leads to the death of the mole but Preach is still questionably missing from the squad. However worse fears are put aside as it is revealed Preach is fighting the Vipers with the cops until the team reunites. A fight at the hospital forces the Vipers to withdraw in their mobile headquarters and a final battle against Decker in a powered armor and his EFS protected car ends the Vipers once and for all.
The ending results in a ceremony where the Pursuit Force is congratulated for their effort, however the Chief and commander are nowhere to be found. They are shown paying their last respects to Sarah at her grave, as they killed the man responsible for it all. The commander leaves without his badge and gun, implying he is quitting, but the chief says that he will be back.
The player controls the Commander of a special section of the police known as the Pursuit Force, to combat the cities gangs. The player can fight adversaries in cars, motorbikes, helicopters and boats as well as on the bonnet (USA: Hood) of cars and on foot. The player has to battle against five gangs across a vast fictional state (Capital State, featuring Capital City) in America. There are also several other features such as multiplayer levels for both PSP (Ad hoc mode) and PS2, challenge modes that include driving around certain vehicles without crashing, new Pursuit Force shop where you can buy certain things such as game art, videos and cheats.
Improvements over this game's sequel include new gangs of The Syndicate, Raiders and Viper Squad, more playable characters and multiplayer content and new vehicles (including a jet ski, hovercraft and motorcycle with a sidecar) as well as new boss vehicles including a tank, train and wings of a plane. Extreme Justice also has cross-platform save games, allowing players to transfer save positions between the PSP and PS2 versions. This means that the player can complete a certain level on his PSP and continue on the PS2 where he left off on the PSP. However, the PS2 version has not been released, thus making this option unusable.
The Cop (the player's character, who in this game was promoted to 'The Commander'), the Chief, and Sarah Hunter (a helicopter pilot) return in this game, but the Pursuit Force has added a few new members in this game. 'Gage' is a supporting driver, 'Preach' is a gunner and 'Ashley' who is an agile jumper. They each help out in many of the missions during the game. During the course of the game, Sarah is killed by Yuri 'The Fury' Andreov, and is replaced by Lucy (a helicopter pilot and temporarily chief) originally from the Syndicate but reveals herself as a MI5 agent and joins Pursuit Force. Doctor Pertwee, a nuclear physicist that was kidnapped by the convicts and rescued later, becomes the Science Specialist designing new weapons, cars, and more. Also during the course of the game Ashley bombs Pursuit Force HQ and goes toward the corrupt police force Viper Squad.
PlayStation the Official Magazine claims it to be "one of our top PSP games." They also give it 4.5 stars out of 5 in their February '08 issue. The game received generally positive reviews, noting its mild improvement over its predecessor and featuring more forgiving difficulty level. Gamestats quote the game to have an average ranking of 7.7.[5]