Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice Review

This game was a pleasant surprise, this was yet another PS Premium Classic game and I wanted to try out since I got varying degrees of enjoyment out of the original game. The best way of describing Extreme Justice is that it's a much easier version and more story driven version of a game that had solid mechanics and mission structure.

I'll start with the story since Extreme Justice is much more story driven by comparison to the original game, there is many more characters, more voice acting and more cutscenes by comparison. I find the story to be kind of interesting in that while it adds more context to what the player is doing in the missions since there is now on overarching plot and as an excuse to add context to the gameplay, it isn't too bad. The actual story itself I can't help but find to be funny in how tropey and "cliched" it is. As an excuse to add context and if I don't think too hard, and the voice acting and general interactions with the characters save it from being overly repulsive but it just covers almost every trope if you are familar with this kind of story. It doesn't really mislead or do enough different or fleshed out enough to stand out from being an okay game story. You got almost every plot twist and trope in the book, a traiter, a bad guy group posing as the good guys, a botched undercover op, a character getting killed off or nearly dying to establish stakes, and episodic bad guys. As an excuse to give context for the action, Extreme Justice's story isn't horrible but when divorcing it from that said action I can't help but want to criticize it for being so typical, lacking in any form of fleshing out in terms of characters and plot and not enough misdirection to be geniunely interesting on its own. The fact that the protagonist hardly ever talks and only does it in select cutscenes makes it even harder to care about what is going since he is the leader of the team yet he is not even providing any geniune morale for the Pursuit Force team. His fiance dies and he still rarely talks and says anything.

Now the gameplay, everything that is good about the original game intact here minus the immense difficulty so if you didn't like the original game for hard the bosses were and crazy difficulty spikes and they were hard even with the Premium's rewind feature, you might like this game. Outside some of the annoying sniping missions and the penultimate level with managing the Chief's heart rate, everything in Extreme Justice is much easier.

I find this to be a good thing since I found the original game to be way too unfairly difficult during boss fights especially so I prefered the reduced difficulty, now the time limits are much less strict to complete missions, the Justice Meter can bring back more health when critical and you have an upgrade system. There are two difficult chases missions in the whole game one is where you have to escort the Chief in an ambulence and the other is a setpiece avoiding containmained water but neither reaches the difficulty of the first game.

Everything good about the original Pursuit Force's car chasing and vehicle gameplay is kept intact in Extreme Justice. So the satisfying gameplay of jumping on to cars and killing enemies while on them, avoiding traffic, and ramming into cars is still enjoyable to do in this game. Now with the ability to bring back more health with the Justice Meter and with time limits that are much more reasonable. 

Boss fights are overhauled now and are setpiece quick time event moments rather than chases with extremely tight timelimits. They might be arguably more basic that in the first game but I prefer them over the rage quitting bosses. 

However one aspect that I am mixed on is the game adding more "shooting" levels. The on rails turret levels are okay if rather one note since you are just holding one button and hoping the analog stick aiming is fast enough to destroy the designated targets in time. Being able to recover more health and firing rockets while having high justice does make these sections a little less one note since you can cause extra damage if you are playing well.

The on foot shooting levels are decent ways to change up the pace but I can picture some being turned off by the awful PSP aiming controls and the fact Sony never patched the PS5 version with traditional aiming controls like with Syphon Filter Dark Mirror but I was able to get used to this and the enemy AI is dumb and also isn't too aggressive to the point where the awkward aiming controls didn't get frustrating and the Justice Meter getting filled up after headshotting enemies made these sections more than bearable since I don't have to worry about being low on health and not having any medkits or have regen health and constantly hide behind cover, wait for a screen to stop turning red rinse and repeat, it's rather interesting that a game like doesn't use either system for it's on foot shootouts. The QTEs with close quarters can get irritating but they don't happen too often.

However my least favorite shooting section is by far the sniping missions which are just cumbersome. They require pin point aiming accuracy and they require you to do them with the PSP analog nub no less, and it's hard with the PS5 controller analog stick and also require to aim well when the vehicle is constantly moving while also making sure you take out the enemies in a certain order. These missions are by far the worst since they require you to do more than what analog aiming can even provide and I don't even hate analog stick aiming as much as others do. 

Overall, Extreme Justice is a solid sequel that you might dislike for the reduced difficulty but I didn't mind since I felt it's predecessor wasn't always fair in terms of difficulty.