Calling All Cars! (PlayStation 3)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.7 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Greg Mueller
• Reviewed on: 04/27/2007
• Released on: 05/10/2007
• Originally published on GameSpot: Calling All Cars! (PlayStation 3) Review

If nothing else, Calling All Cars! earns the exclamation point in its name. It's a chaotic and fast paced game of capture-the-criminal that's easy to pick up and play. The game is fun in spurts, especially with friends, but with a dearth of content and a simplistic design, it won't keep you occupied for very long.

Calling All Cars! is a downloadable game for the PlayStation 3 in which you play as a member of a police force who has to capture escaped criminals. The game plays similarly to capture the flag. There are up to four players competing to catch a criminal and deliver him back to jail to earn points. By default, each round lasts for five minutes, and the player with the most points at the end of the round is the winner.

The game is simple, but it's not easy. If any of your opponents hit or attack you, you'll lose the prisoner?and your opponents will hit and attack you constantly. You earn points based on where you deliver the criminal, with more difficult deliveries offering more points. In most maps, the target is a jailhouse with three delivery areas, some of which require you to do things like drive up a narrow ramp or jump off a moving train. Sometimes you'll even have to deliver a criminal to a moving target, such as a paddy wagon or helicopter. This can be extremely difficult because most matches quickly deteriorate into a melee of cars bumping and smashing into one another while the poor prisoner trades hands like a hot potato. You'll very rarely have control of the prisoner for more than two or three seconds at a time, and more often than not, scoring is a matter of luck rather than skill. You can pick up weapons to give yourself an advantage, but there are only three different weapons in the game, and they're uneccessary because bumping into an enemy is easier and just as effective as hitting him with a hammer or shooting him with a missile.

Calling All Cars! can be played single-player, but it's clearly meant to be a multiplayer game. If you're stuck playing solo, you're given a choice of a single match or a tournament. The tournament is just a series of four matches, and you have to take first on a map to progress to the next. With four maps, it will only take you 20 minutes to see almost everything there is to see in the game. There are a few unlockable vehicles, but all the cars and trucks seem to behave exactly the same, so the differences are purely cosmetic.

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