Bad Boys: Miami Takedown ($15)
I admit it, I liked the movie Bad Boys II. I found it delightfully humorous while fulfilling my daily recommended allowance of explosions. When I had heard of this game a year back or so, however, I knew that this wasn't going to be one of those that I go out and buy on the first day of it's release. You see, when you are buying a moviegame, you are almost always in for a crapshoot. For every Spiderman 2, there is a Shrek Swamp Cart Speedway, for every Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, there is a Fight Club fighting game. I have been burned by moviegames in the past (Enter the Matrix was the last one; it was fun, but not $55 fun), and having learned my lesson, I waited. I waited so long to play this one, it completely fell off my radar until a conversation with the Two Dans brought it back to mind.
"Worst game of 2004," they said.
"Ring me up!" I cried.
And that was the most enjoyable part of my experience with this game so far. Granted, I only played for three hours, so maybe it gets better later on. Most likely not.
This game fucking sucked.
The cover, at least is pretty cool. You have Martin Lawrence and Will Smith looking pretty badass, walking away from an explosion. So imagine my surprise when I pop in the disc and the character models for those two look only slightly similar to the source material. And it is very damn obvious that neither Will nor Martin did any voice work for the game, let alone anyone who could actually act. My little brother would have been more convincing than who ever played the sociopathic lady helecopter pilot/murderess.
There is a little tutorial level, a plain vanilla police station shooting range, that introduces you to controls that feel both loose and sluggish at the same time. I kind of liked the guy who berates you when you screw up at the range (I'm not exactly sure who he was, or how he fit in the story, because it was about this time that my eyes start to glaze over), but maybe that is just a testament to my masochistic side.
There is only one gameplay gimmick, and it is used over and over and over. If you don't want to die, you have to take cover behind pillers, cars, dumpsters, anything and everything. While realistic, and cool in concept, this is the tragic flaw to the game, the one thing I could not forgive. The system they use for taking cover was so broken, that for the first two hours I played, I thought that it had to be part of the game design. For example, if you fire your pistol while you arn't behind cover, you can squeeze a clip off as fast as you can push the button, but behind cover, it is painfully slower, exposing you to enemy fire, which will kill you. With the shotgun, itis much the same. Pop out, shoot, and then you have to pump in another shell before you can return to cover, all the while getting shot by the three generic enemies you see repeated over and over throughout the game. The cover system also dramatically slows the game down to a crawl, making it less than action filled. It turns into a game where you either hide behind shit (like they want you to) and die, or you run around shooting everything and everyone you can, say balls to the cover, and die.
Unless you are in a boss battle, your punshiment for death is to start the entire stage over again. From the begining. Let me draw an analogy. Lets say that you are riding in a car reading a book, and everytime you lose your place, you have to start from the beginning of the chapter again. That isn't so bad when it is a great book, but Miami Takedown is the 2005 US Tax Code of videogames.
The sound, for the most part, is okay. Things go boom nicely, and the background music was pleasant, unobtrusive and ultimately forgetable. I did notice, and I am not sure if this is just my disc, but all the voices had a stutter, like my disc was skipping. When I took the disc out, there wern't any acratches or dirt or anything, and it was just the voices, not any of the other audio.
Finally, a few assorted gripes. The boss characters are as uninspired as the generic henchmen characters. The two I saw, a shotgun toting Denis Rodman ripoff and a helicopter were pathetic. The banter between Quasi- Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is fun for five minutes, and then you wish you can turn it off. There is no jump button. I wanted to jump over shit, and there was no jump button. Out of the four weapon types (gripe within a gripe: THERE WERE ONLY FOUR WEAPON TYPES), the pistol that you start out with was the most useful.
So, was this game worth the $15 I paid for it? No. Did I have at least a little fun? Not with this game, no. Would I recomend that anyone give this as a gift? Only if you hate them.
"Worst game of 2004," they said.
"Ring me up!" I cried.
And that was the most enjoyable part of my experience with this game so far. Granted, I only played for three hours, so maybe it gets better later on. Most likely not.
This game fucking sucked.
The cover, at least is pretty cool. You have Martin Lawrence and Will Smith looking pretty badass, walking away from an explosion. So imagine my surprise when I pop in the disc and the character models for those two look only slightly similar to the source material. And it is very damn obvious that neither Will nor Martin did any voice work for the game, let alone anyone who could actually act. My little brother would have been more convincing than who ever played the sociopathic lady helecopter pilot/murderess.
There is a little tutorial level, a plain vanilla police station shooting range, that introduces you to controls that feel both loose and sluggish at the same time. I kind of liked the guy who berates you when you screw up at the range (I'm not exactly sure who he was, or how he fit in the story, because it was about this time that my eyes start to glaze over), but maybe that is just a testament to my masochistic side.
There is only one gameplay gimmick, and it is used over and over and over. If you don't want to die, you have to take cover behind pillers, cars, dumpsters, anything and everything. While realistic, and cool in concept, this is the tragic flaw to the game, the one thing I could not forgive. The system they use for taking cover was so broken, that for the first two hours I played, I thought that it had to be part of the game design. For example, if you fire your pistol while you arn't behind cover, you can squeeze a clip off as fast as you can push the button, but behind cover, it is painfully slower, exposing you to enemy fire, which will kill you. With the shotgun, itis much the same. Pop out, shoot, and then you have to pump in another shell before you can return to cover, all the while getting shot by the three generic enemies you see repeated over and over throughout the game. The cover system also dramatically slows the game down to a crawl, making it less than action filled. It turns into a game where you either hide behind shit (like they want you to) and die, or you run around shooting everything and everyone you can, say balls to the cover, and die.
Unless you are in a boss battle, your punshiment for death is to start the entire stage over again. From the begining. Let me draw an analogy. Lets say that you are riding in a car reading a book, and everytime you lose your place, you have to start from the beginning of the chapter again. That isn't so bad when it is a great book, but Miami Takedown is the 2005 US Tax Code of videogames.
The sound, for the most part, is okay. Things go boom nicely, and the background music was pleasant, unobtrusive and ultimately forgetable. I did notice, and I am not sure if this is just my disc, but all the voices had a stutter, like my disc was skipping. When I took the disc out, there wern't any acratches or dirt or anything, and it was just the voices, not any of the other audio.
Finally, a few assorted gripes. The boss characters are as uninspired as the generic henchmen characters. The two I saw, a shotgun toting Denis Rodman ripoff and a helicopter were pathetic. The banter between Quasi- Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is fun for five minutes, and then you wish you can turn it off. There is no jump button. I wanted to jump over shit, and there was no jump button. Out of the four weapon types (gripe within a gripe: THERE WERE ONLY FOUR WEAPON TYPES), the pistol that you start out with was the most useful.
So, was this game worth the $15 I paid for it? No. Did I have at least a little fun? Not with this game, no. Would I recomend that anyone give this as a gift? Only if you hate them.
posted by Darkradish at 2:39 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home