by: Derek Pettinelli

July 28, 2006

With the life of the Xbox cut so tragically short, this leaves any post-360 game in a conundrum of sorts and unfortunately in many cases, doomed to obscurity. Backwards compatibility with the Xbox 360 hasn’t been too spectacular, with most new games being incompatible until some time after release, if they are made BC at all. Well, the Xbox isn’t quite dead yet and titles like Urban Chaos reinforce the fact that the big black box has some more life left in it.

Urban Chaos: Riot Response is the first game from Rocksteady Studios and it’s an FPS that puts you in the role of Nick Mason, the newest silent protagonist to shoot his way onto the Xbox. As Nick Mason, you’re a former soldier who’s now a part of T-Zero, a special group that (you guessed it) is used for riot control. Well, the city has been overrun by a crazed gang of arsonists called The Burners and it’s up to you to put a stop to their fiery escapades.

As Nick Mason, you play through a variety of missions throughout the gang-ravaged city. While you won’t be doing much of responding to riots, you will be doing a lot of shooting and this is where the game shines. The shooting is hands down the best part of the game, it just “feels” great, no matter which gun you’re using. Shotguns have a strong kickback and they’ll sometimes send your foes flying backwards. There’s no auto-aim to dumb down Urban Chaos and even without it, you’ll be pulling off many headshots, due to the impressive accuracy of the weapons.

Pulling off headshots is something that you’ll want to do as well, because each level offers you a medal for getting a certain number of headshots, with medals also being awarded for KO’ing enemies, finding gang evidence and capturing the gang leader alive. The more medals you get, the more goodies you get and unlike other games, these unlockable items are actually beneficial. Weapon and armor upgrades are just some of the items that you will be able to unlock as you go along.