Remember Chase HQ? Ever wondered what it might look like on Playstation 2? World Super Police is your answer.

Also known as Kousoku Kidoutai: World Super Police, this was developed by Jaleco of all studios. You play as the captain of an elite team of super cops who take down wanted criminals and terrorist organisations in both the United States and Japan.

Most missions have you chase down wanted suspects and apprehend them by any means necessary but World Super Police has a surprising amount of depth that betrays this simple premise. I like that you can alter the formation of your police cars on the fly. Each type of structure to your team has a tactical benefit furthermore, like Casiopea, which makes your squad ready themselves for combat.

There are a few roleplaying elements put into play in World Super Police too. Many scenarios will let you pick the appropriate cars and team mates for missions with some suited to defence, some suited to speed, some to attack, some allrounders and even weapon bonuses that help out during the game.

World Super Police will reward and likewise penalise players who do not make the most of these systems as missions will grade you on your performance and team mates, as well as cars, will be incapacitated if they take too much damage.

You can also improve your team through the, admittedly quite tedious, training modes which drill members of the World Super Police into improving their existing stats and ultimately being of better use throughout play.

I found World Super Police to be a surprisingly entertaining and engaging experience. It has a silly, although captivating story, building its own soap opera around the characters of Robert, Matsudaira and Alicia. The difficulty curve can be steep as the game never properly introduces you to its many features but with enough experimentation you willl always find what works best for your squad layout. There are some technical problems: The PAL 50Hz conversion is a rather poor, flickery mess, with noticeable borders on a Television screen. Despite using relatively simple, fieldrendered graphics, there are a few performance issues with World Super Police too. During action, it can crawl to only a dozen frames at a time when things get hairy onscreen.

The only aspects that really let this down though are the limitations of its presentation, with a really restricted user interface and not much in the way of cutscenes or cinematic flair outside of the opening and end sequences anyway. Given World Super Police is a budget PS2 release, these things can be forgiven. That said, whatever you do, don't play this using the English dub.

If you happen upon this one in the wild, give it a shot.

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Any copyrighted footage I use is covered under fair use laws, or more specifically those listed under Section 30(1) of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1989 and under section 107 of US Copyright Act 1976. This video exists purely for the purpose of research and criticism. I do not make a profit from any uploaded content, nor do I intend to. Thank you for watching.