If you think British football fans are rowdy when their team loses, you've seen nothing yet. Urban Chaos: Riot Response's brutal, cold-hearted violence and bad language makes GTA seem like a Disney game. We can tell you right now, this is definitely not one for the kids.

No, Urban Chaos is a proper no messing first-person shooter. You work for the police - but there's no paperwork to fill out or rights to read here. Large gangs of masked, murderous psychos (called Burners) are causing havoc on the streets, lobbing Molotov cocktails all over the place, setting fire to buildings and generally swearing a lot and causing trouble. These scumbags need to be taught a harsh lesson in justice, and you're the policeman who gets to pull the trigger...

Urban Chaos's hard-hitting, face-smashing brutality is so much fun it will please even the Grand Theft Auto generation of gamers, who prefer to shoot at the Five-O rather than join them. You're not just any old cop on the beat, though. You're a member of a zero-tolerance justice squad named T-Zero. The kind of macho specialist unit that gets called out to clean up the mess when the brown stuff hits the fan. Urban Chaos is all about using hefty guns, and more uniquely, your trusty riot shield, to splatter punk brains over walls. The word 'Chaos' in the title is most fitting.

As is the word 'Urban'. The opening scene sets the tone perfectly for the rest of this manic game. Dozens of Burner gang members are attacking a police station, and T-Zero is called in to help. The scene opens with two crazed rioters sprinting down the street clutching bloody meat cleavers. Suddenly the T-Zero van bursts onto the scene, crushing two Burners and skidding to a halt outside the station. Your view jumps to the eyes of your player in the back of the van, and you see one of your partners kick open the van doors before emerging into a scene of utter madness.

Evil punks are everywhere, climbing over walls and running over cars, hollering the S-word. And sometimes even the F-word! As parked patrol cars get raked with bullets, Molotovs are flying in every direction - bursting into flames as they hit the ground, shaking the whole screen violently and leaving you dazzled. In the background, entire residential blocks are ablaze, with flames roaring out of the windows and smoke billowing into the air. You barely get a chance to take it all in when suddenly, a dumpster truck crashes through a wall, exploding and killing three cops. That's just the first mission.

The textures are blurry and the 3D models lack detail, sure, but it's the sheer volume of pandemonium that makes this game look so amazing. It's the kind of on-screen bedlam that will give you a genuine kick of adrenaline. Itll make you squeeze the trigger harder than you usually do, and grit your teeth aggressively as your bullets batter anything that moves. And that's the moment you realise that this isn't Black. Your overexcitement will get the better of you, and careless run-and-gun tactics will result in death every time. The Burners are everywhere, so you've got to pick your cover spots, watch your back and, most importantly, use your riot shield.

It's easy to not bother with the shield at first. After all, taking cover behind objects in the environment is a skill you've honed to perfection over years of FPS gaming, so why bother with a shield? It's almost cheating. But you'll soon learn to love it, and use it regularly. Holding the Left trigger brings it up, guarding you from bullets, axes, petrol bombs and whatever else enemies hurl your way.

It's see-through too, so you can block an attack then whip out your gun and put a bullet in his head. Not only is the shield a defensive tool, but also a brutal melee weapon. If a smelly punk gets too close for comfort you can tap the Right trigger to wreck his face-bones, leaving a satisfying bloodstain on your shield. The shield can also be used in more innovative ways - to protect against explosions as you navigate through a burning building, or to get past a jet of flames coming from a crack in a gas pipe by holding it towards them as you pass. Later, you can upgrade to a new shield that's lighter and a more effective melee weapon, but you'll have to complete special objectives to unlock it.

Optional mini objectives are not uncommon in shooters. But when all you get is a few lousy extra per cent on your "game complete" score or a crap developer video, they're hardly worth the hassle. Urban Chaos has some of the coolest unlockables you could hope for, though, which tie into a clever upgrading system that makes you a more lethal killer as you progress. Simple side-objectives like getting 20 headshots or making five non-lethal arrests with your stun-gun will earn you medals. These medals unlock much-needed upgrades, such as increased weapon power, stronger body armour and loads more. Some upgrades will even change the way you play the game, like the long-range stun-gun which makes non-lethal arrests easier and saves ammo.

You're sometimes given the optional objective of bringing in a gang leader alive. If you do, police will get intel from him which opens new bonus levels - or Emergency Missions. These Emergency Missions are more than just a bit on the side - completing them unlocks new weapons that you'll be able to use from that moment on.

All this upgrading and the clever unlocking system makes Urban Chaos somewhat like an RPG, in the sense that the more effort you put into it, the more you get out of it. You can ignore all the bonus objectives if you want, but if you want to blag those shiny new guns, you'll have to try hard to complete everything, which adds massively to the game's replay value.

But Urban Chaos seeks to ensure that you stay hooked to its gory violence for months after you've finished the main campaign, with some really cool team-based multiplayer action. Players can split into two teams - one playing as T-Zero and the other as Burners - and compete in good guys vs bad guys gameplay scenarios. In one, T-Zero players have to defend an armoured truck that the Burners team are out to destroy before the time limit. And a king-of-the-hill-type mode sees both teams competing to control a specific location for a set amount of time.

But our favourite is the Counter-Strike-style hostage game where the T-Zero team have to sneak or shoot their way into a Burner-controlled building and escort three Al-controlled hostages to safety. The urban levels are well designed, with multiple routes in and out of bases, and there are heaps of potential strategies you can adopt. It's a shame there's no split-screen multiplayer, but we can't wait to see what this is like over Xbox Live in May. You can read our Live review in Issue 57.

We were getting worried about Urban Chaos - with long delays and numerous name changes, you can only fear the worst. But now the finished game is finally here, and Rocksteady Studios has turned out a highly polished title. The missions, although basic in design, play incredibly well, with plenty of variety from one stage to the next. One minute you're fighting to retake control of a police station under siege, the next you're rescuing civilians from a burning office block, or rushing to save a VIP hostage from a horrific gang execution.

The clever incorporation of valuable unlockables tied to bonus objectives really gets you playing missions properly, too. You won't just sprint through it like you would with most shooters, because you'll want to earn those big guns, and you'll need that stronger armour. It also adds a great sense of progression, as you see the fruits of your extra efforts come into effect and feel proud of the super-soldier you've created.

Package all this with the solid multiplayer and you've got one superb shooter on your hands. Being a new, unrecognised franchise could prevent Urban Chaos from getting the recognition it deserves - a situation not exactly helped by the three name changes it went through during development. But as a dedicated reader of OXM you're lucky enough to know all about this gem of a shooter, so get out there a give it a go. You won't be disappointed.

1. If you like a good meaty slice of videogame violence, you won't get much more brutal than this.
2. Challenging gameplay, innovative side missions and varied gameplay that feels fresh all the way to the end.
3. A fantastic upgrade system gets you playing the extra missions through to unlock the gear.
4. The brilliant multiplayer system - it's just like Counter Strike, which is always a good thing.

1. The blurry textures, muted colours and basic 3D models could have been done better on Xbox.

A no-nonsense shooter that combines brutal violence and utter pandemonium with clever and varied mission objectives.