World's Scariest Police Chases (PSOne)
All of the action of law enforcement without the legitimacy of Cops, that in a nutshell is World's Scariest Police Chases the show. Most of the action of Driver without the high production value of Driver 2, this pretty much sums up what you'll get with WSPC. While its not a blatant Driver clone, you can easily see its influence, not in the mission layouts, but also the visual style and gameplay..
WSPC isn't an outright copycat or Driver, there are some differences between the two stylistically and gameplay wise. First off, in WSPC there's no central story that guides all of the action; the missions themselves are random events that are independent of each other. WSPC is more of an arcade racer when compared to the intricate physics of Driver. Whether this is is a positive or negative is up to you. One unique element of WSPC is that fact that you can shoot your fire arms out of the window of your cop car to stop the perp or to scare him into giving up. In Driver, you were technically the "good guys" but you were above the law. In WSPC, you are the law, so there are no screw-ups allowed.
With that in mind, I found some very disconcerting inconsistensies. Yes, you play as the police; you arrest drunk drivers and track down bad guys, but it doesn't matter how many civilian car wrecks that you manage to create doing it. I remember once hitting 20 cars before I was able to bring a drunk driver to justice. Also bewildering is the fact that you can't discharge your weapons at all in some missions or you fail, but in patrol mode you can go as far as shooting every civilian in sight and not even get reprimanded (very satisfying by the way).
The game follows the format as the televisio show. The narrator of the show, Retired Sheriff John Burnell, narrates the game. They even go as far as to put the disclaimer "due to the graphic natur of this game player discretion is advised," a play on the actual disclaimer on the television show. Yeah, I know it's not much, but it's the details that count.
In the graphics deparment, WSPC doesn't excel. The graphics are reminiscent of Driver, but they're not a far cry off from Driver 2. It is also plagued with the same draw-it problem of the Driver series. The interface, 1-ups its contemporaries in the fact that this is the first game that actually gives you a good idea of where you're going. Between the green arrow at the top of the screen and an intuative map, there shouldn't be very much guessing about where you have to go next.
Gamplay varies mission to mission á la Driver. The first few missions are a training mode, that gets you aquainted with the car (and gives the developers a way to have more missions). The next missions range from stopping inebriated drivers, and busting up drug dealers, to escorting an ambulance to the hospital. Most missions are easier said than done.
The Bottom Line: WSPC is more challenging than I once believed it to be, it's also much better than I thought it was going to be. I'd still reccomend Driver over WSPC, but at least it gives it a run for its money.
OVERALL: 7.1/10
