Emergency Mayhem Wii Review

Along with the little gem that is The Red Star, Emergency Mayhem is another survivor of the Acclaim tragedy, with the difference being that the game wasn’t really worth rescuing from the mangled wreckage of the company and resuscitated, though Codemasters have done just that and whilst it’s no disaster, Emergency Mayhem is hardly one of the Wii’s best.

Emergency Mayhem tasks you with controlling one of three emergency services (Police, fire and paramedics) and rushing to the scenes of accidents, crimes and whatnot, picking things up along the way. Navigation is initially done by following a huge green arrow (that can be hard to follow) but perhaps with time you’ll learn the layout of each area, making use of sneaky shortcuts to better get around each area.

Arriving at the scene of an emergency will activate a mini game, all of which make sensible use of the Wii’s motion sensing capabilities. As a fireman you might be twisting the remote around to turn off a fire hydrant for example, or moving it up and down to pump water to douse flames, whilst as the police, you may be defusing a bomb via the wii remotes pointer function or carefully guiding a fly out of the stomach of a guy, whilst playing as a paramedic. It all works efficiently enough, though the bite sized games themselves fail to really excite, just like the game as a whole really.

The driving parts are moderately fun, though the handling is unremarkable, in the way that it just isn’t as enjoyable as it could have been. There are some driving missions dotted around each area of the city too, which requires you to deliver fragile packages, being careful to not hit anything along the way. There are also simplistic A to B missions, timed missions, and tasks where you’re required to ram dumb criminals off the road. Unsurprisingly due to the average handling model, it’s hardly the most fun to be had with a game.

Other aches and pains (and perhaps in some cases, broken bones) of Emergency Mayhem, include the uninspired cartoon graphic style, that makes sure the game is almost devoid of soul as well as the annoying female dispatcher (that in a nice touch comes from the speaker of the Wii remote) who says silly, almost cringe worthy, quips (hasta la vista mayhem is just one awful example).

The games’ multiplayer options, whilst fun are like the rest of the package, average. Tournaments are available, but perhaps the most fun to be had is with the survival mode, purely to do with its slightly madcap nature that sees up to four players sharing a single remote and finding out who can survive the longest.

Emergency Mayhem, whilst not really truly bad in any one aspect, is an utterly unremarkable and soulless game, that is only really worth a play as a rental or once it hits the bargain bins (which can’t be too far away, surely) but otherwise there are better games to waste your life away with.