G-Police
G-Police was yet another game my brother brought home, seemingly chosen by the case alone. With that in mind, it still turned out to be a pretty awesome and unique title. In G-Police you pay the role of a pilot in control of a futuristic V-TOL Havoc gunship used to assist in policing colonies in space. The game has you flying inside a city under a dome, compete with your usual cyberpunk 90's, Bladerunner influenced style.
Taking advantage of the new PlayStation dual-analog controller, G-Police handled perfectly. This really was one of those few new games on the 32-bit systems that proved having 7+ buttons can be to your advantage.
G-Police wasn't easy and my brother played it way more than I did so I never got very far. From what I've read it does have a decent story, but I never experienced much of any of it. The missions were great though and to be honest, if this game were to be rebuilt ground up with no other changes than the visuals, I'd buy it on the spot. It was dark and fullfilled that want to fly a helicopter (or similar) deep in a populated cityscape. 3 axis combat was handled well, never feeling like a chore to force your craft to attack below or above you and darting in and about skyscrapers, under bridges and through tunnels worked as well as you'd hoped at the time.
G-Police's biggest downfall was simply that it tried to do more than the PC's and consoles were capable of pushing at the time. In order to keep the game from being unplayably choppy, view distances were reduced to the point where it was distracting. You could make a minor adjustment to it, at the risk of slowing the framerate, but it didn't help much. In the end it felt dark, like a lot of PS1 games at the time with their pitch black horizons.
And yet, the game pushed some serious mood. Everything had a dirty future sci-fi style, towering dark buildings and future traffic flying about in street-like patterns.
The more I think about this game the more I'd love to see it remade. With all that the game engines are capable of now, all the atmospheric effects could really push this game to where it should have been a dozen years ago. I'm trying to think of any game that has been released recently that is similar in style, but I can't think of anything. Then again, I'm here at work late again and my mind isn't all quite there.
G-Police was yet another game my brother brought home, seemingly chosen by the case alone. With that in mind, it still turned out to be a pretty awesome and unique title. In G-Police you pay the role of a pilot in control of a futuristic V-TOL Havoc gunship used to assist in policing colonies in space. The game has you flying inside a city under a dome, compete with your usual cyberpunk 90's, Bladerunner influenced style. Taking advantage of the new PlayStation dual-analog controller, G-Police handled perfectly. This really was one of those few new games on the 32-bit systems that proved having 7+ buttons can be to your advantage.
G-Police's biggest downfall was simply that it tried to do more than the PC's and consoles were capable of pushing at the time. In order to keep the game from being unplayably choppy, view distances were reduced to the point where it was distracting. You could make a minor adjustment to it, at the risk of slowing the framerate, but it didn't help much. In the end it felt dark, like a lot of PS1 games at the time with their pitch black horizons. And yet, the game pushed some serious mood. Everything had a dirty future sci-fi style, towering dark buildings and future traffic flying about in street-like patterns.
The more I think about this game the more I'd love to see it remade. With all that the game engines are capable of now, all the atmospheric effects could really push this game to where it should have been a dozen years ago. I'm trying to think of any game that has been released recently that is similar in style, but I can't think of anything. Then again, I'm here at work late again and my mind isn't all quite there.
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