Many years ago we saw a TV show that included a piece about someone who had tried to jump over a fence, but had slipped and got a spike impaled through the bottom of their mouth. It’s haunted our dreams ever since, so we’re inclined to run a mile from any game that features the emergency services (while taking great care not to trip over anything, of course).
Fortunately, the incidents you’ll be called to in Emergency Mayhem are mainly more madcap than medical. Instead of cutting people from mangled cars in motorway pile-ups while trying to keep their organs on the inside, you’ll be rounding up marauding monkeys with a banana gun and escorting penguins to safety. Cray-zee!
The game takes place in a city that’s falling apart at the seams, and you have to take charge of the police force, fire brigade and ambulance service. You’ll respond to each emergency call by stepping into the appropriate vehicle and negotiating a route through the streets (or finding shortcuts through sewers and subways) to the designated trouble spot. Time is most definitely of the essence: drive too slowly and it’ll be (game) over before you get there.
Tearing around in fire engines and cop cars sounds like fun but is fairly generic stuff (Crazy Taxi springs to mind). However, when you arrive at the scene you’ll be challenged to a minigame. Here Mayhem aims to make full use of the Wii’s capabilities, with your controller being used to mimic everything from a hydrant-turning wrench to a fire hose, and, er, a banana-shooting gun. It might have been easier if they’d just called in Jack Bauer, but hey ho.
Feb 22, 2008
