PSP Month: Pursuit Force

Game: Pursuit Force
Console: Sony Playstation Portable
Developer: Bigbig Studios
Release Date: 7th March 2006

Pursuit Force is a fairly unique action game for the PSP allowing players to take on the role of a special forces police agent, attempting to shut down five of the most dangerous gangs in the city. There are 6 missions per gang, for a total of 30 with later missions unlocked through ranking up in earlier ones. Gameplay missions mostly consist of chasing other vehicles on a boat, motorcycle or in a car, jumping from vehicle to vehicle and shooting gang members in order to neutralise them.

There's not a lot of difference between gameplay in boats and cars, although they handle a little differently. Gameplay is significantly more fun in cars than boats. Missions get a little longer as the game goes on, but there are no checkpoints, so failure means starting from the beginning. This is an issue as things are pretty hard from thestart, so with later missions it can be frustrating to say the least. The story behind missions are also limited by the gameplay and usually reduced to 'This gang is attacking something or someone, you've got to help".

Graphically the game isn't bad on the PSP but it's nowhere near the level of the best games for the console. The HUD is a little cluttered with the lawfulness meter in the bottom right, car and player health in the bottom left, a map in the top left, subtitles at the top, an objective counter in the top right, weapon and ammo info at the side and various targeting symbols on screen. The voice acting isn't bad and there's some humour in some of the missions.

Overall Pursuit Force is a lot of the same thing, and the game only really gets harder as it goes on, rather than any more interesting. It's a good concept for a game and the gameplay itself works well, there's just not enough variety to keep players pushing on through the difficulty wall, and not enough story to keep players interested in progressing.

Rating: 60/100
Grade: D