123. City Crisis (Syscom, Playstation 2, 2001)

City Crisis is is a game that casts you in the role of a rescue helicopter pilot. You fly around a city fighting fires, rescuing people, and occasionally assisting with police chases. The game has a mission based structure, though there are only 7 missions, so the whole game can be beaten in an hour or two.

5 of these are rescue missions that involve fighting fires and saving civilians. Fighting fires is accomplished by spraying them with water, or using some kind of homing water missiles that are replenished by picking up more people in danger. It really does feel like this might have started as an attack helicopter game, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. A later stage actually has you putting out a fire and rescuing people from another helicopter that is midair and that was a really cool setpiece.

Rescuing those in need is done by a button press that lowers a tiny rescue worker from a rope down to the ground. This part of the game is a lot of fun requires real precision flying, and it ends up feeling like a hybrid of a helicopter game and one of those fishing games with the magnets:

The other mission types are chase missions where you are assisting police by following a wanted vehicle around the city. The helicopter is controlled on the forward & backwards axis with the left stick, and turning/changing altitude with the right stick. City Crisis is score-based, and in this mode, you only get points by staying low and close to the car you're chasing. Once I got used to it, racing between skyscrapers felt great, and the controls are pretty smooth, even if I did blow myself up a couple times.

This is why I love the Playstation 2, there are so many of these cool smaller experiences that feel like they would never have been made on another console. It also helps that the music slaps and has a good amount of variety (there was even some decent metal) but it all works to get you pumped for saving people.

5/5, another example of a PS2 game that's not afraid to be weird (and it's not even THAT weird)