Gaming Target - Xbox: Armed and Dangerous

Written by Tim Stevens on January 19, 2004

Full Review: Crazy guns, lots of carnage, and a thoroughly unhealthy amount of tea.

Armed and Dangerous is one of those games that doesn't look particularly great, has a number of flaws and rough edges, but yet manages to be entertaining enough that you can't help but want to spend time with it. It's a little like that friend of yours who could stand to lose a few pounds, doesn't always smell the best, and tends to be too loud, but who always buys the most rounds at the bar and always manages to get the best tickets for the game. This is the game that won't win any awards for manners, but is great fun just the same.

Armed and Dangerous is the story of a small group of misunderstood renegade guys who an evil king and his evil minions are trying to catch. You, controlling the renegade group, must go up against the king's forces. There's more to the story, but it gets a little complicated and really it's not all that important. Suffice it to say you're in a squad-based action game featuring plenty of levels of goofy violence facing hordes and hordes of mindless grunts.

Your squad of renegades is composed of three main members and a short old blind guy. You control the leader of the group, Roman, and are able to give simple orders to your comrades, along the lines of "go over there" or "cover my ass". Rainbow Six it ain't, but this game is a lot less about strategy, and a lot more about shooting.

Each character has a standard weapon with unlimited ammo, but there are a few special weapons you'll pick up along the way. There are sniper rifles and machine guns, as well as grenades and the like. But, the game starts to get much more interesting when you get one of the very few oddball weapons this game has to offer. My personal favorite is the Land Shark Gun. It fires out a shark who swims through the dirt (only visible by his fin), leaping out and decimating an opponent like a scene out of Jaws. Another great one is the Topsy Turvy Bomb, which looks like a giant corkscrew that, when inserted into the ground, makes the entire world to turn upside-down, causing your foes to "fall" into the sky while you hang on for dear life. There are three other kooky weapons like this, which is an unfortunately small lot, and ammo for them tends to be sparse.

Levels themselves tend to be rather entertaining and quite large, and there are plenty of them. Most surround small towns or castles, complete with buildings, streets, and alleyways; all very scenic and quaint looking, for the most part. But, playing through them all, the game can get a bit tedious. Each level has a certain objective, which generally involves just killing lots of goons, but occasionally you'll need to rescue peasants or achieve one of two or three goals repeated over and over again throughout the game. If there were more new weapons to try out that might make up for the lack of variety in gameplay, but, alas, there are not.

Inserted between many of the game's levels, like sweet frosting in a cake, are a number of turret-based sections where you must guard something against massive numbers of enemy goons. Normally turret-based games get very tedious, but since we only find these turret sections mixed in with the normal levels, each one here is a real blast to play. There's just something very satisfying about mowing down wave after wave after wave of defenseless evil bad-guys that will bring a smile to your face.

Graphically, the game doesn't quite stack up, unfortunately. Textures are lacking detail and the game itself just looks very drab. While the levels are large and well detailed, the models for the characters, and especially the peasants, are very simplistic and poorly animated in the cut-scenes. The game has a visual style that goes well with its wacky sense of humor, but just needs more polish. On the audio front there's a very nice soundtrack to accompany the on-screen action, and a suitable complement of loud sound effects. Voice acting is generally on the good side, and the comedic sketches seen between levels are often laugh-out-loud funny, a rare thing in a videogame.