Developed/Published by: Bigbig Studios / Sony Computer Entertainment
Released: November 18th, 2005
Completed: 24th May, 2014
Completion: Completed the career mode.
Trophies / Achievements: N/A

This was supposed to be a nice palate cleanser after Soul Sacrifice, which was, honestly, a bit of a mistake, as I went from one game that was an awful grind with a ludicrously hard final boss to a game with totally absurd difficulty spikes that made me want to chew my own face off.

Which is super sad because Pursuit Force could have been really cute and fun?

Basically, Pursuit Force is one of those games… well, look, it was developed by Bigbig Studios, one of those mid-sized developers that seemed to have been totally squeezed out in the modern industry. Remember mid-sized developers? They’d always make games like this: ambitious, 3D, sorta buggy and unpolished. Bigbig is dead now, because this sort of thing was unsustainable, apparently.

It’s a shame, because Pursuit Force has this scrappy charm. You’re part of the titular force, who for the most part drive their fancy vehicles really fast, then leap off them onto criminal vehicles, hang on for dear life and then shoot the drivers right in the face. They generally repeat this until they’ve got to the end of the level. It’s not sophisticated! But it feels super awesome to leap from vehicle to vehicle, which I don’t think very many games have done (I believe this is a thing you can do in Vin Diesel-em-up The Wheelman?) and it doesn’t actually get boring. They mix it up a bit (sometimes you have to stick to one vehicle, etc.) and I have to give them props for only putting in two “tail a vehicle” missions (though none would be better.)

Unfortunately, there are a million problems. Notably, vehicles handle poorly (with weird physics; I’d swear the motorcycle’s brakes are on the front wheel, which screws everything up) and there are odd bugs. Most missions don’t have any checkpoints, and they can be super long. And many missions require you play perfectly.

(To go into that in detail they require you play specifically perfectly. Some missions have such a tight time limit you can’t take time to avoid gunfire and just have to survive. Other missions have a tight time limit, but you need to avoid gunfire to not die. Some missions you can’t make the time limit without stealing cars, others you have to steal cars to make the time limit. The missions are weird “what does the designer want me to do?” puzzles, and not to get a gold medal or anything, just to survive. It’s overcooked.)

In fact, some missions are so hard I have to wonder if they even tested them because my wins felt like total flukes. I imagine they checked if you could finish them at all and said “good enough.” 

The most disappointing thing is that for the first few missions I really dug Pursuit Force. I was certain I was going to like it! And then I didn’t. The end.

Will I ever play it again? No.

Final Thought: Weirdly, about half the missions are boat missions. Someone on the team must have really liked boats! However, someone else on the team should have pointed out that boats are rubbish. 

Oh, and there are on-foot bits and turret sections that are crap too. They really went out of their way to seize failure from the jaws of victory, here.