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Pursuit Force 2 for PSP announced

And like all good sequels, it's partnered by a subtitle: Extreme Justice

Pursuit Force 2 for PSP announced

Perfection is overrated. In fact, some of our favourite PSP titles are far from perfect. Titles such as BigBig's Pursuit Force (original pictured), for instance.

One of the earlier titles to emerge after the PSP's UK launch, it stood out amongst an already worrying number of PlayStation 2 conversions (or should that be subversions?) as something different – a very brash, very bright and certainly very fresh young thing.

Although the ability to jump between moving vehicles was most welcome, there was nothing singularly spectacular about the game, which involved chasing and gunning down criminals – and there were other issues too, as we noted in our review. Still, it was a lot of fun and hanged together very well in a good cop, bad cop kind of way.

We haven't seen much like it since. Yet just as we were about to hand our badge in and retire from the video game police, along comes news, sirens blazing, of a sequel destined for a summer 2007 European release.

As you'd expect, Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice is bigger and better. You now get to toy with a wider range of vehicles, such as a helicopter, a hovercraft, jet-skis, and a bike and sidecar combo, while those you're able to jump between now include trains, tanks, and aeroplanes.

Second time round, the Pursuit Force team has grown to accommodate another four recruits: Ash (special ops), Gage (high-speed support), Preach (heavy assault) and the less exotically named Sarah (air support). And you'll need their support as two new ruthless gangs have set up shop in Capital City – The Raiders (ambush specialists) and The Syndicate (bank robbers of the highest calibre) – not to mention the rival 'extreme' arm of the police force known as Viper division you'll also have to contend with.

Other potential improvements include a revised Justice Bar to help even the score and four-player Wi-Fi support, a feature sorely missed on Pursuit Force's first patrol. (The game is also coming to PS2, although there is currently no indication of crossover functionality between the two versions – not that we've been particularly impressed with efforts to date, anyway.)

That's it for now, but we've already drawn up a list of suspects with whom we'd like a word. As soon as we get anything out of them, such as screenshots, expect to be able to read about it here.

Joao Diniz Sanches
Joao Diniz Sanches
With three boys under the age of 10, former Edge editor Joao has given up his dream of making it to F1 and instead spends his time being shot at with Nerf darts. When in work mode, he looks after editorial projects associated with the Pocket Gamer and Steel Media brands.