By Susie Vee

Somebody should call the paramedics for State of Emergency. The highly anticipated game was, it seems, born prematurely. Or maybe it was just a half-baked idea that was never carefully though through.

State of Emergency made it into the mainstream press last year, with stories connecting it to the anti-globalization riots in Seattle. What we ended up with, however, is an idea in search of a game.

Think of it as a whole game of the on-foot parts of Grand Theft Auto III. Unfortunately, it's not nearly as fun as that sounds. You get to run around several environments, punching and kicking cops and gang members in pursuit of a goal. Sometimes you have to steal or destroy something, sometimes you have to protect a person or place. In the end, the missions are all very similar in execution.

All the time, you're surrounded by literally hundreds of rioters, racing around. Some are looting stores, others seem to be just plain freaking out. In either case, it's an impressive use of technology, and the screen is always alive with action.

That's what makes the lack of interactivity so frustrating. Almost as frustrating as it would be to actually go to a mall and not be able to go into any of the stores. The environments are pretty but less than interactive (except for breaking windows and the like).

The missions are overly difficult in cheap ways, with targets walking one step out of bounds and you not being able to follow them, or swarms of bad guys coming at you while the camera spins around to face you.

And if you thought aiming a gun was hard in GTA3, forget about it here. Anything or anyone you shoot is purely a matter of luck.

We had such high hopes for SOE, and it had some great kick-ass female characters, too. But somebody should have left this one in the oven for another month or two.

SCORE: 5.5