Reviews// Calling All Cars (PS3 download)

Basically, you can steer and boost your motor; and fire or smash your weapons. First up: run your con down and pick him up. Chuck your con in an easy to reach venue of incarceration and you'll get one point, use a ramp or jump to get somewhere a bit harder and you'll get more, get them into the back of the moving paddy wagon or a helicopter and you'll get more still.

If one of the other cars manages to nab the villain first, you can either ram it to shake him loose, or attack him with either a rocket, a mallet or a magnet that'll drag the crook out of the other car.

I was reminded of the early days of top-down Micro Machines on the SEGA Mega Drive in terms of the sheer frantic fun of the gameplay mechanic. It's fast, manic and immensely absorbing.

The real good stuff, however, comes from the multiplayer options. Calling all Cars supports up to four players playing with split screen while offline, with full screen and split screen available online.

There is very little in this life that's more satisfying than nabbing your mate's crook just as he thinks he's about to drive into the back of a paddy wagon. Much trash talking ensued in the SPOnG office, and as testosterone levels rose to ratings unseen since Mel Gibson and Danny Glover last got together, the SPOnG office became rapidly unsuitable for the fairer sex, lest they become pregnant thanks to the sheer manliness of the air around us.

That's not to say, of course, that Calling all Cars is without its faults. The four maps up for grabs are somewhat limited. Individually, they're all well put together and good fun. What we'd really like to see, however, is more of the bloody things.

It's not so much of an issue in multiplayer mode, the satisfaction gained from mashing your mates and insulting their honour as you do it is enough to keep it entertaining. In the (misleadingly named) single player Tournament, however, the lack of maps gives the game a lack of depth.

Similarly, while the weapons are good fun, I couldn't help but feel that Jaffe et al could have come up with dozens of them to endlessly confound the other SPOnGers with.

The game can also get frustratingly fiddly in places. Some of the ramps, particularly the one in the first level, reminded some older SPOnGers of the frustration felt while trying to mount the rollercoaster in Clumsy Colin way back in 1985. Similarly, the enemy AI can be a bit too flawless. Human experience dictates that fixing the magnet on a moving car for long enough to extract a crook, but the AI manages to do it flawlessly and almost without fail, making for a few Sixaxis-wringing moments.

[i]Conclusion

Should you buy Calling all Cars? Hell yes. It's a good old-fashioned dash of gameplay-focused fun, with hours of trash talk to be had from the multiplayer. It's not perfect: the four maps on offer are a bit limited and the range of weapons could be better. But what we're talking about here is a downloadable game that'll set you back a few quid, not GTA IV. The long and the short of it is that you'll get plenty of bang for your buck.[/i]

SPOnG Score: 81%