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Emergency Mayhem is first and foremost a mini-game mash up. It brings elements from the classic series, Crazy Taxi, together with the modern mini-game formula. The result? An awful game. Emergency Mayhem managed to keep us entertained for a maximum of five minutes. Following on from those precious five minutes was a downhill slope of mediocrity. The game’s main gist is you’re playing as the emergency services in a town aptly named Crisis City. You’ll run missions for the ambulance department, fire brigade and the police service. The mini-games in question depend on what service you’re controlling, but the differences between the games are barely noticeable.

We opted to begin with the police, purely on the fact that we wanted to mow down some bad guys and wreak some havoc. Then the controls reared their ugly head. B allows you to advance while A enables the break. You use the Nunchuck to steer, which prompted us to believe that placing brake on Z would have made much more sense. We know that the Wii isn’t exactly known for deliciously detailed graphics, but Emergency Mayhem is pretty grim. They’re comparable to the mid-PS2 era, with a look completely lacking any dazzle.

There are over 30 mini-games on offer (apparently) and we won’t bore you with a list. The problem is that you seem to be playing the same ones all the time. For example, in the ambulance you’re always flicking the Wiimote upwards on the sound of the beep of a heart monitor (supposedly keeping someone alive) or guiding a fly out of a dude’s body who has an extremely funky afro. If you’re acting under the guise of the Police you’ll be cutting wires on any TNT you come across (preventing an explosion), or joining wires to repair circuits. It gets repetitive, very quickly and you’ll soon grow tired on the same old games. There’s a bit of variation in the shape of ‘pick-up-and-drop-off’ missions, ala Crazy Taxi, but they still manage to be god awful. It’s pretty hard to displace the Crazy Taxi formula which has worked considerably well for many a year.

There’s a ‘career mode’ which supposedly indicated some developer input. You have a mayhem meter which is lowered by completing the above mini-games. Complete enough and you’re gifted a promotion, and then you repeat until you give up. It’s not a bad formula if one; the mini-games were fun to play, two the Crazy Taxi style games weren’t just the same drop off points, but for varying reasons.

For weak games we often recommend that it should rented, but that’s not even possible in Emergency Mayhem’s case. We’ve struggled to write about it as much as we’ve struggled to play through it. It’s not good and fails in nearly every respect. The only positive is that Emergency Mayhem is helping the community.

Score: 2/10

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