"Bad
Boys: Miami Takedown is a tragedy no matter how you look at it."
Before
I criticize Bad Boys: Miami Takedown, I first want to discuss the impeccable
timing of the release date, which coincides with… I have no idea. The
movie came out over a year ago, the DVD has been out for the past five
or six months so the obvious time to release the game would be –
during a time that doesn’t coincide with any other Bad Boys products.
Not that this a highly critical mistake, it’s just that sometimes,
when a game is released alongside a film, the game might seem that much
better because of its tie-in to the movie. Bad Boys: Miami Takedown
makes all of the wrong moves from the very beginning and does little to
recover from its own takedown.
The
opening intro to the game had me believing that maybe there was some
hope of a decent game down the stretch. In the scene you hear a drug
lord talking with one of his pawns about taking down some TNT (Tactical
Narcotic Team) members.
After
that, not even cinematics can save the game. The first thing you’ll
notice about the game are the poor graphics. Details are hard to find
with almost every object as generic as the game itself. The characters
you’ll face have no distinction from one another except for the
clothes they wear. There are some signs of life in certain areas,
although the dull graphics put you out of the game fairly quickly. The
cop duo themselves have no likeness to their relative actor at all.
Either the artists were too busy “polishing” the graphics elsewhere,
or just didn’t have the rights to the actors. Either way there is no
excuse for the abysmal portrayal of the main characters.
As
if it couldn’t get any worse, Bad Boys: Miami Takedown keeps on
dishing out problems. The gameplay involves mostly running from wall to
wall hiding behind cover, than popping out and shooting any enemies in
sight. With gameplay this linear you’d think that this wouldn’t be
major problems – then again, its Bad Boys. The most evident of which
is because of an awkward animation. When your character has his back
against the wall, he can than choose to spin and face the front, or
simply back off. In the case of spinning towards the front, the camera
changes from the 3rd person to the 1st person
perspective and screws up everything. The aiming configuration is out of
whack, and every time you switch the perspectives, you’ll get a split
second animation that looks ridiculous.
Tying
in with the problematic gameplay is the lack of any intelligent AI. Most
of the time enemies will go and hide behind cover, whether it be a pool
table or a stone wall, but after that they just stop thinking. You can
walk up to one of the enemies and stand right next to him, without them
even noticing you’re there.
In
the sound and dialogue department, the team decided to fill it with
pointless obscenities. While the ESRB states that no one under 17 should
play this game, ERIC states that no one should play this game. The
language may become an issue for some, so take that into consideration
before playing around an adolescent. The sound effects of the guns and
ambiance is standard for the most part – nothing spectacular. The
voices of our two heroes are just as bad as their faces. There are no
resemblances to Martin Lawrence and Will Smith.
Bad
Boys: Miami Takedown is a tragedy no matter how you look at it. In this
day and age, where movie-licensed games are becoming stronger and
stronger each year, its disappointing to see a game like Miami Takedown
on store shelves. Even if you consider yourself a Bad Boys fan, keep
your money and spend it on the DVDs.