Am I the only living creature which thought that Mucky Foot''s Urban Chaos was an incredible game? When it came out the graphics were top-notch. I hated the story, but the level design was solid, it had bucket-loads of style, the fighting system was fun and you got to climb up on top of huge buildings and look at all the people milling about below. Yet, I never saw any hype. The makers never even suggested they might make a sequel or something similar. Magazines liked it but no-one made any hustle or bustle. Am I just out of it? George D. Filiotis Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

And I thought I was the only one. To be honest, Symphonic, I thought it was a great game. Beautiful, original, fun, full of action and interesting things to do. I read the reviews (8.3 on Gamespot.com, 77% on Gamerankings.com), liked what I heard, and promptly got myself a copy on eBay.

I played it for quite some time, and wanted to be able to wholeheatedly recommend it to friends. I really wanted to like it - and I did, save for one thing: the control scheme. I'm sure you'd agree. It was very touchy, and therefore a bit difficult and haphazard to control. I believe W and S were forward and back, A and D were to turn the character in place, and the mouse was used to aim. Unfortunately, just tapping A or D would turn you a little TOO much, so that when you were running down the street and you needed to adjust your course slightly to one side or the other, you'd end up turning a lot. This would oftentimes end up in you running down the street in a drunken zig-zagging motion. This was particularly a problem when you were trying to run down a thug so you could jump kick him in the back of the head, and you'd need to accurately run right up behind him. Also, this became a problem with on the rooftops - it would get really frustrating trying to run along a ledge while looking for something. More often, you'd have to take a step or two, adjust your course, and repeat, until you finally got straight enough to run along without falling off (unfortunately, by that time, you'd have come to the end of that ledge and have to turn 90 degrees and start over). I'd fall off rooftops so often, I began to wish that the character was able to spin around, grab the ledge, and pull him/herself back up.

Another thing was that the camera was quite a distance away from the character. Granted, it made for an interesting visual effect, and afforded you complete control over where you wanted to go (at least it would have it the controls weren't so touchy). However, the camera was at an angle such that when you ran up to someone, it was difficult to tell if you were close enough to kick or punch (etc.) them. A little higher, and closer would have been nice.

Other than, however, I loved it. The moves of the characters were cool-looking (especially the jump, jump kick, ladder-climbing, and hand-walking along a powerline), the overall look of the people and the city were a delight to behold, the "live" city was a breath of fresh air (from the leaves blowing in the streets to the poor hapless pedestrians), and getting into a car and driving it was almost as much fun as Grand Theft Auto 3 is today. Urban Chaos definitely has a place on my list of games that "almost did everything right". I actually got quite a few very good ideas from this game.

(Oh yeah, by the way - awesome job on your Sword Time system. Very well thought out. You're definitely on to something.)

Edited by - redsix on January 9, 2002 3:39:02 PM

I thought the demo was pretty neat. Mind you I hardly ever buy games, but the demo was neat.

Moe''s site

It was.
Just missed a few key elements.
I think they we''re going for a younger audience when they should have aimed higer.

"There''s so much too do, and a lot of you are wasting time.
This is ART dagnammit! get creative or get buried."

quote: Original post by Muzikus
...Just missed a few key elements...

Muzikus: What elements did you have in mind?

If I were doing a re-make or a sequel what would you warn me not to do? Don''t bother mentioning the storyline, it clearly was in a state of want.

Redsix: Valid points, I''ll bear them in mind. I''m sorry you didn''t know about the camera controls (one of the F-keys would cycle through height/distance presets).

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

Hi, I like Urban Chaos a lot. I''s a great game and I hope that they will create a sequel. I don''t think that the story is very stupid--maybe not the wisiest. Do you know which engine they have used? madman