Previews

Behind the scenes

Creators of the soon-to-be-released Pursuit Force reveal their movie inspirations

Behind the scenes
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PSP
| Pursuit Force

Cars, guns, cops, burning rubber, handbrake turns, motorbikes, helicopter gunships... when it comes to games, these are a few of our favourite things. And as it happens, there’s a game that will fulfil all our needs.

Called Pursuit Force , it was originally going to be a PSP launch title but publisher Sony pulled its release back to give it more time. Tagged by its creators, UK-studio BigBig, as Burnout and GTA meets R-Type and Time Crisis, you take to the mean streets as a rookie cop chasing down road gangs by either shooting them at distance from your cop-car or - and this is more like it -getting up close, jumping on their vehicles and taking them out up close and personal - and then nicking their vehicle and heading onto the next.

According to an interview with the game’s designers over at Edge Online (read the full slab at www.edge-online.co.uk), one of the biggest influences on the game have been films.

“We've taken a heavy dose of Hollywood inspiration from day one,” they say “Car chases through city streets, firing weapons from vehicles, hanging onto the side of a truck whilst being shot at by the driver, leaping from one vehicle to another, a driver and a passenger fighting each other. These are all the kind of things that would be really hard to do in real life but appear to be second nature to the characters in the films.”

Key films include the Indiana Jones trilogy, particularly Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy is fighting on the truck, which helped create some of the main gameplay such as jumping and fighting on vehicles as well as getting the game camera to move around the action dynamically.

The James Bond films are another major influence, notably in terms of the vehicle designs for exotic, contemporary and what BigBig calls unlikely-looking vehicles.

“They have had a heavy influence on the mechanical design of our specifically-tailored boss vehicles, which in most cases sport an arsenal of internal and external weapons and are designed to instil a feeling of danger and amazement in the player when they initially appear,” they say.

The final key series is Lethal Weapon. “These helped us in terms of the comical aspects of the game, specifically the relationship between the Chief and the Cop. Again we think that it is more fun for the player to be at the centre of the action - it's all about immersion for us as game players and this is one of the most important aspects we have kept in mind during the game’s production.”

Still being over-revved and tuned up, Pursuit Force is due for an October release.

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.