Review
City Crisis is reminiscent of 1999's R/C Stunt Copter. Shiny's helicopter game was long on the realism of flying a radio-controlled helicopter, but dramatically short on action. The player basically flew around an arena, dodging goal posts inside a stadium and popping balloons. It narrowly avoided a perfect ten on the boredom meter.
Like Stunt Copter, City Crisis involves flying helicopters and completing a series of missions. Unfortunately, the two titles are also similar in that a significant portion of the gameplay is linear. Both games also involve doing things that quickly prove difficult to hold the player's attention.
For first-time players (and first-time helicopter pilots), the game includes some non-mission-oriented modes: Training and Time Attack. Taking time to complete the Training Mode is helpful, since piloting a helicopter is not as intuitive as other modes of transportation, though it's not nearly as harrowing as if the title of the game were, say, "Twisted Metal Helicopter."
The Time Attack mode is also fun for a short time, but it's the mission mode that beckons the veteran game player. You are given the chance to select from three different mission types: Rescue, Chase, and Final Rescue. One of the reasons it's important to go through Training is to test out the various choppers that are available. Naturally, other rides can be unlocked by playing well.
The rescue missions call for the player to put out fires and save civilians, all while a timer counts down. The chase missions have players assisting police units on the ground to chase down suspects. By flying well, it's possible to keep the suspects' car fixed in the helicopter's searchlight for the required amount of time.
Final Rescue is a mixture of the first two modes and puts the player's complete set of skills to the test. While the controls are fairly straightforward, cameras and depth perception can get in the way of a good time. To pilot the helicopter, the player uses the left analog stick to control forward, backward, left, and right. The right analog stick takes care of turning and altitude.
Because of the game's almost top-down perspective, you'll have a devil of a time recognizing when you're clearing a rooftop or intruding into someone's 23rd floor boardroom. As a player, you should get used to the fact that you're going to write off a fair number of choppers while you're getting the hang of any of the missions.
It takes less time than a quick spin around the city to realize this game probably has little chance to find an audience. Helicopter flying, while some people's dream, isn't as ubiquitous a thrill as, say, driving a car at some insane rate of speed or piloting an attack jet armed with screaming cannons and high explosive missiles. Being the good guy and saving innocent people, though noble and good, apparently isn't considered as much fun as being a twisted soul in search of revenge for past wrongs.
To succeed, City Crisis would have needed the best visuals, handling, and mission structure available -- and it has none of them. While it's not inconceivable that someone would find pleasure playing this game, the vast majority of the buying public should wait for Namco's Ace Combat 4.
Graphics 
Gran Turismo 3 A-spec and its ilk are showing players just what the PlayStation 2 is capable of doing. Unfortunately, City Crisis isn't worthy to hold Gran Turismo's lug nuts. While the city environments are large and varied, they are devoid of essential touches of humanity. For instance, there are animated sections, such as an amusement park with moving rides, but pedestrians are absent from the city's streets and there is a scarcity of traffic that is underwhelming.
City Crisis also suffers from a much more critical flaw: interlace flickering. This jitter is caused by conflict between the game's two display buffers. While it's fairly common in some PS2 games, especially launch titles like Ridge Racer V, most development teams labor long and hard to reduce or eliminate it. The fact that it still exists in spite of the game's absurdly simple geometry and texturing tells you that piloting a realistic helicopter is a fairly processor-intensive activity.
Sound
Unfortunately, audio usually lags behind the rest of development. In the case of City Crisis, that means that the audio engineers were left the tiniest scraps of processor and memory once the main game was finished using it. It shows. While the rotor blade sounds are adequate, most of the other sound effects and voice-overs are reminiscent of old arcade machines or perhaps the heyday of 16-bit consoles. Can you say Genesis?
Enjoyment 
Straight out of the box, City Crisis provides some thrills. The game's ample downside quickly brings on the chills. If the game's special effects were carried off with some attitude (as they were in Driver), you'd forgive some of the control problems.
Replay Value
Attempting to "get good" at piloting around the city while smashing into various buildings. Lack of serious variety in the single-player games, as well as no head-to-head component, causes much of the game's potential long-term interest to get swept up on the prop wash.
Documentation 
Hoping for a good documentation score to bring up a game's average is a bit like piling on extra credit because you know you bombed the mid-term and final exam. City Crisis' manual isn't the greatest story ever told, but it's more than good enough to explain what's going on here. What's funny is that the game's logo looks more like Crazy Taxi than something aimed for helicopter pilots, and the manual continues that trend by putting a border at the page bottoms that would look more at home on a '56 Chevy.
