Pursuit Force & Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice
I am willing to bet my left arm (just Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa), that this wonderful PSP series was influenced by the Mad Max franchise. It has always been established as canon that before Max Rockatansky was the legendary Road Warrior, he worked on the MPF (or the Main Pursuit Force) as their lead patrolman and enforcer. Upon closer examination of the game’s storyline, it is undeniable to ignore the clear references and influences of the original Mad Max movie has on the game. Each one features similar motifs of the breakdown of society, the proliferation and rule of vehicular gangs, and the need for a new breed of dark, grim, and arguably merciless police unit necessary to keep the peace.
In Pursuit Force, released in the US in September 2006, a fictional American city called Capital City has been overrun by crime necessitating the implementation of a new, elite police unit called the Pursuit Force. As the team’s finest cop, you have to take down each of the five main gangs (the mafiosos of the Capelli Family, the paramilitary Warlords, the crime-hardened, psychotic, jailbreaks – the Convicts, the tech-savvy, all-female thieves’ guild – the Vixens, and the Yakuza gang – Killer 66) on foot, car, motorcycle, or police chopper through a variety of missions. It is noteworthy to mention that the characters and vehicles utilized by the Convicts share the same ramshackled, cobbled-together, cannibalized, insane punk-rock imagery of Lord Humungus’ dogs of war or Immortan Joe’s War Boys.
Pursuit Force is a surprisingly addicting, high-octane, supercharged vehicular combat game that deserves more praise and attention. The story’s setting, its denizens, scripting and dialogue convincingly puts you in the middle of a ’80s loose-cannon-cop-gone-wild cop movie archetype with a dash of ostentatious flair similar to Mad Max, The Warriors, and Escape from New York. Unlike other common vehicular combat elements that generally rely on outfitting vehicles with James Bond-like gadgets and weaponry, Pursuit Force‘s combat system is unique and refreshing in that it not only allows you to have shoot-outs with enemies while driving, BUT allows player to leap from vehicle to vehicle and violently commandeer it with everything from pistols, machine guns, and shotguns just like a War Boy.
It seems the developers of Pursuit Force forgot to include gunpowder-laden lances into your law enforcer toolkit…
Players both have a physical and a vehicle health bar; thus, commandeering enemy vehicles becomes necessary when your ride takes too much damage from gunfire or environmental damage. However, you will soon find yourself performing Spartan leaps left and right, holding onto the bonnet of enemy vehicles, shooting enemies point blank, throwing their carcasses out, and swinging yourself into the driver’s seat to continue the chase with reckless abandon. The game even allows you to perform slow-motion, bullet-time enemy ambushes where time slows down and you can shoot enemies out of vehicles mid-air so long as your Justice meter is full. There are subtle nuances to be appreciated such as button commands allowing a player to strafe, bob, and weave to avoid gunfire while holding onto the hood of a car or boat as you attempt to steal it.
The vehicular combat and intense high-speed chases of the game never feels stale or tiresome in that the game switches up gameplay styles by having you capture and kill criminals on foot, cars, motorcycles, and via police chopper. Furthermore, there is wide variety of mission types to change up pacing including escort missions, escape missions, and pursuit missions. In the 2008 sequel, Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice, along with new gangs, the ante is driven up with new vehicles (jet skis, hovercrafts, and motorcycles with side cars) in addition to boss battles where you fight gang leaders atop their special vehicles such as a firetruck, a hovercraft, a tank, a flying fortress, and a train.
If you need games filled with pure carmegeddon to hold you over until the much anticipated Mad Max video game comes out in September, then the Pursuit Force games is an absolute must-play.
