When Codemasters announced Emergency Mayhem, the press release was rather intriguing. In the game you choose a police car, fire truck, or ambulance and drive around reducing the ‘mayhem’ by completing objectives, like putting out fires or rescuing someone who is dying. Doesn’t that sound like a fun game? If you grew up on the TV Show “Emergency,” or even “Third Watch,” this sounds like a game made for you.
Unfortunately a press release doesn’t make a game, and that’s certainly the case here. You only have two modes: career or party (when you finish the game, you will get a key to the city and roam as you wish). Party mode is full of mini games for up to four players, while the career mode divides the city into four precincts. Within each precinct are the three vehicles/professions: fire, police and ambulance.
The city’s “mayhem” bar is full and you have a time limit to reduce said mayhem by completing missions or by collecting icons that lower the meter. You find missions by driving around and finding the icon for your profession. Ironically, a fire icon means it’s a fire dept mini game. Yes, this is actually a front for more Wii mini games. Surprise!
You’ll have to do things like hold the Wiimote horizontally and ‘pump’ the water to put out the fire, or deliver something from point A to point B in a quick amount of time without damaging the goods. Given the genre and the idea, it could be something to live with even though it’s a mini game collection. However, it fails miserably: first, the driving challenges are insanely easy; my 7-year old was able to beat the missions and he’s not a very good driver. The ‘big clock’ which is the overriding mission factor (making you reduce mayhem in the city) is easily adjusted by collecting time bonus icons which are located throughout the city like 10 point dots in Pac-Man.
The mini-games have some of the worst controls seen with a Wiimote. One mini game requires you to contain the water leak on the fire hydrant – which you do by ‘cranking’ the Wiimote. The problem is that your cranking doesn’t seem to register all the time –while other times it seems to work double time! These mini games are timed, so sometimes you’ll have it completed in record time, other times you’ll lose, even though you’re doing exactly the same thing at the same time with the Wiimote!
Part of the beauty of a game such as this is your ability to turn on the siren to clear traffic; however in this game it works like a ‘power-up’ and your time to use it is limited – just like in real life, eh? Of course, there are also icons aplenty to keep your siren meter full – so what is the point of having it timed when you can always find icons? Really, it beats me.
While there is plenty of traffic to navigate through, most of the roads are pretty straight forward; it’s not as if you’ll need a map to get from point A to point B. The ‘goal arrow’ appears at the top of the screen; while it’s not as annoying as the one in a game like Lair on the PS3, it quite often works as a compass and forgets that you can’t get there from here because there’s a building in the way, making it rather frustrating.
