Emergency! EMERGENCY! Although in the age of cell phones and other gadgets no one yells that out anymore rather than call 911. But it is still and interesting concept. Emergency pretty much places you in the eyes and ears of an Emergency Dispatcher. Some bad stuff goes down in your fictional city and it is your job to send out the right emergency crews to do the job right. But it doesn’t end there; you will also have to make sure they do the job to the best of their abilities. Seeing as innocent (and very slow and dim-witted) lives are at stake here. You can't afford to mess up. It's a shame your biggest enemy happens to be incompetence in the workforce.
Graphics
For a top down RTS game like this the graphics are pretty decent. They obviously aren't shooting for hyper realism but then against the sprites don't look like they just stepped off of Cartoon Network. All of the people lack detail due to the sheer amount of what is going on, but the buildings, cars, and random catastrophes that do happen in the world are pretty detailed and do their job. The main problem here is that everything...and I mean EVERYTHING has this sort of slow choppy feeling to the animation. The cars sort of skip along the road and the human characters take very stilted steps. The whole game looks like it is running at half speed, which is sort of ruins the sense of emergency because no matter how fast you act, the action on screen will never match your frantic pace.
The DS's two screens could've been used to a better extent here, but instead they use the tried and true "Top screen has text, bottom screen has game play" method that I hate to see on DS games, at least make SOMETHING happen on there. A timer, a map, something interactive and not just a status screen. We have pause menus for that.
Game play
As your job as Dispatcher, you are tasked with making sure all of these rescues go right. You are in a race against time to get all of the survivors and victims to safety. You play the game in a standard "point and click" RTS style, you use the touch screen for all of the controls and you pretty much just touch your unit, tell it what to do, and it will do it. There are various types of units here so I am not going to explain each and every one, but seeing as you are dealing with Police, Firefighters, and Paramedics it should be fairly obvious what each one of them do for mankind. So it your stylus to poke and prod them to get on with it.
The game is a real time strategy puzzle game with a bit of a time trial as well. Not only do you need to get the rescuers on track, but you have to do it pretty fast as well. The main problem for the entire game is right here, though. As mentioned above with the graphics this game moves at a snails pace. All of the units move INSANELY slow and won't react nearly as fast as you want them to in the later stages of the game. Couple that with the fact that the time trial portion of the game is obscenely vague. You can complete the mission at the fastest time you can possibly do it, but you will still get docked points for things you have no idea what for. Seeing as medals on the various missions don't mean anything in the end this isn't a big fault, but it the slow pace of the game does make failing missions more of a lesson in futility rather than lack of skill.
This game is an RTS in the sense that well...your entire workforce is comprised of idiots. Now you are supposed to control their every single move, but even simple things like "Get away from the exploding car" or "Don't stand in that FIRE" seem to escape them as you will lose far more of your workforce to idiotic work related incidents like that. This sadly also applies to innocent bystanders as well, the game does have a way of dealing with and clearing out rubberneckers, but I hardly thing in real life you would have to tell someone to back away from the burning building that's 2 inches in front of them. So the game play is sound when it isn't frustrating, but some common sense built into the AI and a bit of speed could've gotten it to a higher scale on the 'best games you've never played' title.
Sound
This is a pretty low budget game all around, but you can really see it skimping the details when it comes to its sound design. The game has about three music tracks which it plays on a loop throughout the entire game, which will randomly shift to fit the mood (or sometimes will shift just for the sheer hell of it), BUT all of the units do have fully voice acted sounds and responses, although they are more recorded particularly well. They are still something that adds to the game play experience overall. But as far as everything else as far as sounds in the world go, despite there being sometimes catastrophic events going on, everyone seems to be eerily quiet as the rescue workers do their jobs. There's no screaming, or yelling...or anything. That does take you out of the experience a bit, but for a budget title like this the sound work is pretty decent for what it is.
Fun Factor
Once you get into the game, there is some fun to be had. If anything this does set the groundwork for a decent real-time strategy game for the DS. But the very vague ways to get high scores and the overall slow feel to the game sets take two steps back for all of its two steps forward. There are some leader boards online to be had, but they aren't nearly as competitive enough because no one knows how to GET a high score. You can play through a mission horribly slow just to get an idea of what you need to do, then replay the mission and hit every objective in order as fast as possible but your score still won't get high enough to earn you a gold medal. Also a lot of the problems present in missions are things you can't avoid.
I don't mean scripted events that are supposed to happen, I mean thing you simply cannot change the outcome of. This car is going to explode and kill a victim and your score will get docked for it, but there is no way to prevent it no matter how fast you go. But, if you don't attempt to save them in the first place your score will get docked for it. Sometimes some of these missions feel like a lose-lose situation. If it weren't for these instances you would have a pretty decent, if not flawed game on our hands. Instead it feels just flawed.
Lasting Appeal
You will replay a few missions in this game not out of wanting to relive the action, you will be desperately trying to fix or improve your earlier score. But for the game an s a whole I highly doubt you will be coming back for this one after you have finished it. Despite the fact that the game is short and can be played in bit-sized chunks, it just seems like in the end you will be too frustrated with the shortcomings to warrant another run through. Forrest fires, car accidents, and boat sinkings be damned. These idiots are just S.O.L.
The 411
What we have here is a game that everyone will probably pass on because it has "Shovelware" written all over it, but if you actually pick it up and play it there is some fun to be had. Although the fun will quickly wear off and leave you with a bitter "the computer cheats" feeling, it is still a right step in the direction of having a fully realized RTS on the Nintendo DS. If anything it might just give you a better (if not more action-packed) look at what goes into being an Emergency Dispatcher and their respective crews...or it just might be the best PSA about forest fires, safe driving, and not being an idiot ever.
Take your pick.
Graphics
6.0
Decent enough, but the animations are all kinds of choppy
Gameplay
6.5
It's fun to solve the missions, but you never really know how well you are doing until the end
Sound
3.0
The voice clips repeat just about as much as the music...which is often
Lasting Appeal
6.5
You'll replay levels a lot to get a better score if you can figure out what to do
Fun Factor
5.0
Once you get into the flow of things, you will start to have fun. But some levels are just too stacked against you.
