Review
Played on: DuckStation
Released: 1999
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Even though the first G-Police is easily in my top ten for the PS1, I admittedly never played the sequel. I remember spotting it in a shop and was tempted, but back then my financial limits made me take hard choices. As such, I often skipped sequels and went for brand-new experiences. Because of this G-Police: Weapons of Justice never made it into my collection back then.
At a later point, probably in the 2010’s, I picked up a copy on eBay but sadly it lay untouched in my collection until this year. Having decided to replay the first game with the DuckStation emulator, review here, I jumped straight into the sequel afterwards. Keeping up the momentum and having the gameplay mechanics fresh in my head.
With drastic cutbacks in draw distance and confusing change of button placement, my first impression was not overly positive. However, I kept going and suddenly it clicked, offering some unique and original missions.
Let's take a look at what sadly became the last G-Police ever made!
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Having ended the influence of powerful companies on the colony cities in the first game, main protagonist Slater is faced with having to clear up the aftermath of powerful gangs taking to arms in the streets of Callisto. In an attempt to swiftly end these uprisings, the army is also deployed to keep control of the streets. This again leads to some tense moments of power struggles as the story unfolds.
Although GP: WOJ perhaps doesn't have the weight and unexpected turns of the first game’s plot, it brings you through a far more varied set of missions and vehicles at your disposal. It helps keep almost every mission unique without resulting in multiple missions being basically the same concept which the original suffered from.
Better still, instead of just flying the Havoc gunship there's an armoured police car, a two-legged mech and even outer space missions in spaceship. The latter I speculate is powered by Psygnosis’ Colony Wars engine; it reminds me a lot of it visually and in gameplay for those specific missions. Which is a cool ending and gameplay variety to the playthrough! If you're curious about Colony Wars, I reviewed it a while back here!
The police car gives a unique, low-down, view of speeding through the streets with massive high-rise buildings surrounding you, but the star of the show is the two-legged mech. Unexpectedly, it’s an extremely fun vehicle to control. It has incredibly powerful main guns, as well as an ability to jump far up into the sky and float down slowly.
All this vehicle variety really adds up to make the variety surpass the original, and with some unique mission objectives I ended up really enjoying myself. Perhaps more so than replaying the original. Then again, if you’re here for flight action, then these land vehicles perhaps are nothing more than a distraction from what you want.
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There are some obvious changes in the controls that need mentioning; I found the change of button layout confusing when coming directly over from the first game, which I've had at my fingertips since the 90’s. I simply had to opt to remap the buttons in the emulator. An option I highly recommend from the pause menu is cruise control; it allows the gunship and vehicle to continue at your set speed without having to constantly keep adjusting it. This was default in the original.
Smaller details like the right stick being used to turn the pilots head around the cockpit have sadly been removed. Although I didn't use much, it was a neat extra detail. The radar works vastly different; it auto locks on enemies and points you in the general direction of objectives you're flying towards, but not the exact spot. It takes a couple of missions to get used to but works fine.
We need to talk about the visuals though, if you recall the first game had graphical sliders to increase draw distance and field of view, with the flipside being how it affected framerate. A bonus playing it on DuckStation, where you could lock the game to 60fps.
This sequel has a 30fps lock and no visual options, which to be honest was extremely rare on consoles back then anyhow. In an attempt at adding more detail while keeping it running steadily, massive cutbacks to the draw distance have been made. To the point of where I can’t remember, off the top of my head, many other titles from this era having such a short draw distance.
The result is speeding through a city of blackness, only to see the closest streets and buildings visible. To aid the player from crashing into stuff all the time, they’ve added in green wireframes of buildings in the distance before actually rendering them. Allowing the player to see where buildings will appear. Even though the first game had a limited draw distance, this sequel is an eye sore of cutbacks, to the borderline of killing gameplay enjoyment. I got used to it but it’s such a massive sacrifice where you end up looking at a black backdrop of green wireframes most of your playthrough.
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At the end of the day, it’s a little sad knowing this was the end of the franchise, there were rumours of a PlayStation 2 sequel at one point, but it never went into development. With the massive cutbacks on draw distance in Weapons of Justice, it dampens the overall impression of what could've been the better game compared to the first. There’s a scale of weights to consider here; the technical limitations versus the variety and many innovative ideas for the G-Police experience.
If you can overcome its visual shortcomings, literally the draw distance, get used to its controls, then this is a hidden gem when it comes to variety in missions, objectives and awesome vehicles to battle it out in. It really is a great experience for fans of the original once your eyes get past the extremely limited view distance.
While I still feel the story was better presented and more interesting in the first game, this sequel improves the gameplay and repetitive feeling it suffered from. I regret not giving it a chance back in the PS1 days, but then again, I did now and I’m happy to have experienced innovations in this short-lived franchise!
