Price: £34.99 Players: 1 Widescreen: Yes Online: No Multiplayer between PSPs: No Pursuit Force is a relentless and brilliantly realised driving/shooting game for the Sony PSP that gets about as close to a handheld console version of Burnout as you can. You're a cop with no name who has to chase after and arrest (ie. gun down and turf them out of their cars) one car full of bad guys after another with a signature move that will be come apparent shortly. The first level lets you meet the Capelli family, a bunch of mobsters who are after you since Leone, one of their own, has ratted on them and you need to get them to the airport as fast as possible without being intercepted. Halfway there and a 2-minute clock appears so the pressure is on to help him make that plane. Hang on... 2 minutes? Doesn't he need to be there two hours before check-in like every other airport? ;) With a police chase in cars, speedboats and helicopters, it's like a combination of the old Chase HQ and Spy Hunter, but a lot better. And you'll find out why in the speedboat level which is the first chance you'll get at being able to leap from one vehcile to another. Basically, drive up close to a baddie speedboat, press jump and it'll automatically (and in a quite cool fashion) make you up leap in the air onto their boat. Kill the passenger shooting at you, then the driver and take over the boat. Keep doing this as you approach your destination and until you wipe out all the enemy boats. It sounds difficult before you try it, but it comes across as quite natural and very effective once you get used to it. Of course, you can just shoot from your boat at theirs, like you did in the first level with a car, but it's more fun to jump about sometimes. What is a little bit hard to get the hang of is when you're almost falling off a car and learning how to climb back onto it. It *is* possible, just not particularly intuitive.

Then, near the start, there's also the Warlords set of levels which begins with a bunch of deranged army types who've stolen a load of nerve gas and you have to retrieve the barrels by leaping from car to car, overpowering the drivers and their trigger-happy passengers, to stop them before they can take the chemical weapons outside of the city limits. Come to think of it, perhaps this is actually how the driving levels in 24: The Game should've taken place? Drive well without hitting normal cars and buses and your 'boost' bar, for want of a better term but you'll know what I mean, will increase. When it's full, pressing 'triangle' will replenish yours and your car's "health" so you'll actually have a chance to complete the level. If you do hit normal vehicles then the bar will decrease so it's in your best interests to drive fast AND careful... if that's possible. Completing missions means unlocking bonus routes and vehicles for the time trial level, as well as being promoted up the police ranks so you can embark upon further missions that require such status. There's also additional fun to be unlocked with behind-the-scenes development stills and movies.

Pursuit Force has very fast and fluid movement of graphics with great atmospheric action music as you race along. However, despite this being exceptional adrenaline-pumping entertainment, one thing that is bloody annoying is the lack of 'checkpoints' within a level. After the first few levels, they have more than one set of goals to achieve and if you get killed at any point during these then you have to redo the whole level. They really should've allowed us to just get back to the start of that segment. This can be very offputting, especially when you get capped by an end-of-level baddie who disregards the fact that you have some health left and just offs you with a single shot, exclaiming, "You'll die when I say!" Grrrrrrr! Also, turning almost-90o corners isn't easy at breakneck speed as the cars don't feel like they'll take it and if you hit it with anything less than an intention to turn the right way then you end up facing the wrong way, as it tells you, and you may as well start the level again given the time you'll lose attempting a three-point turn to get right again. But does all this make me want to give up and throw my PSP across the room? Does it hell, it makes me want to select 'Try Again' and get my heart racing once again. Dammit, this is one of the most addictive games of the year so far!

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2006.