Bad Boys: Miami Takedown (PlayStation 2) review "It doesn't take long to realize that Bad Boys is no mere game, but an abomination. "

EmP: August 02, 2006 (09:05 AM)
"Know what sucks? Bad Boys II. I DARE someone to buy and review the game."

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LastHero: August 02, 2006 (10:21 AM)
"If you're talking about the Bad Boys II videogame, I'll take that dare."

It's like Jackass. Only instead of hitting myself in the nuts or beating up my dad, I played a bad game.

Actually, that's not 100% fair; at a glance Bad Boys: Miami Takedown seems like your average 3rd-person shooter. The game controls like any other in the genre; the slow rotation is an occasional problem, but the lock-on feature makes up for it and there's rarely any reason to turn around, anyway. The story is just some trite tale about a new drug on the streets and some dealings with the Russian mob, but it's not like the Bad Boy movies are known for their riveting plots.

That's only at a glance, though. It doesn't take long to realize that Bad Boys is no mere game, but an abomination.

The first thing you'll notice is that, despite Will Smith's and Martin Lawrence's presence on the cover, the characters you play as do not look, sound, or even act like their movie counterparts. This would normally be a blessing; Smith's a mediocre actor and Lawrence hasn't been funny since…ever. But the stand-ins are infinitely more annoying. They talk about shooting each other in the groin. They curse constantly and exploit a variety of African-American clichés. They engage in the most witless of witty banter:

Mike: Aw man, I got shot by a Russian! That puts the cap on a truly shitty day!
Marcus: But you're not wearing a cap.

…and they just won't shut up. Every other mobster you kill dies with a pithy remark. They throw a grenade and they discuss the beauty of explosives. They get shot and they bitch. It's a constant stream of idiocy, and it bores into your brain; each phrase is funny in a stupid way the first time you hear it, but asinine from then on out.

But the game doesn't rest with your ears; it has to assault your vision, too. Characters in Bad Boys look like they're made of play-dough and they move like it, too. When Marcus and Mike kick down a door – and you will be kicking down many doors – it looks more like a GI Joe with Kung Fu action that anything a human might do. You can tell the developers tried to make their world detailed; almost everything can be blown to pieces. But True Crimes does the same thing. So does Grand Theft Auto. So does every half-decent shooter on the shelves, but they tend to do it with graphics that don't look like a bunch of lego blocks.

Bad Boys keeps falling down, down, down, with some of dumbest enemies ever encountered. Common sense tells people that cardboard boxes and barrels full of gasoline don't make good cover in a gunfight, but none of the mobsters have common sense. They run straight towards you, only firing when you're in the right range, as if begging you to end their misery. They'll take cover behind tables, only it's not really cover since the table is small and their entire upper body is a clear target. They'll stand around idle if you're outside their attack range and they'll never wise up, no matter how many holes you shoot in them. Killing them should be easy.

Should. Maybe it's because they're so dumb that pain doesn't register, but the average kill takes a ridiculous amount of firepower. The average mobster takes six or seven shots before he keels, and even headshots lack stopping power. This wouldn't be such a big problem if you actually had some decent firepower, but since enemy weapons mysteriously disappear when you kill the enemy, that's a dilemma. The only way to acquire new weapons is by disarming the mobsters.

Try using a pistol to shoot an AK-47 out of some guy's hand. You may make the shot, but only after half of your health is drained away.

To top it off, Bad Boys has the habit of not even loading, as if the PS2 can sense what a horrible game it's about to run. Even when it does run, standing it for longer than thirty minutes is near-impossible. It makes you think about all the better games you could be playing and you realize there's nothing to stop you, so you quit. Why torture yourself?

Staff review by Zack Little (August 07, 2006) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.