Bad Boys: Miami Takedown

Written by Chris Reiter  on November 01, 2004

Full Review: Question: How do you respond to someone when they tell you you're getting a copy of Bad Boys: Miami Takedown? Answer most commonly given: OH GOD!

Tweet

Comments

How do you make a Bad (Boys) movie franchise even worse? You develop a video game based on it a year after it has no presence on the market anymore. Bad Boys isn't actually an awful series, by the way. That was just a joke. Ha...ha? But, when you have one good movie, one average sequel, and one game created way past the point when one shouldn't be made, you have to consider something's wrong with this picture. My guess: the game. Why the game? Why Crave, why? Gone from one of the coolest action flicks now to a lame excuse to make a quick buck (yeah, right...about a buck), Bad Boys has come down with a serious case of suckiness. To prove my point, I'm not even going to write a good review about the game. No sir, I'm going to turn the tables on Crave and Empire and try to make the review as "bad" as this game really is. Because when it comes to Bad Boys, whatcha gonna do?

To find out just how bad a game Bad Boys is, I've conducted a thorough experiment. I asked myself, "How can you kill a game?" Forget about killing druggies with guns. I want to kill the game! I tried everything in my power to stop this game from living. I sneezed on it in hopes that it would catch a severe fever. Didn't work. I pushed it down the stairs. Again, this didn't work. I thunk to myself, "What could I possibly do to get rid of this shitty game?" Then it dawned on me. I would shoot it in the face with a pistol weapon. Unfortunately, my fake ID at the gun store didn't seem to work out like I had hoped it would. Apparently, when image of said person on card looks like someone of a completely different skin color, they boot your ass out of the store. Psh! What ever happened to the American right to impose (if there was one of those)? So anyway, it seems you can't kill a game, even one this rancid. It must have some kind of anti-killing force field that's impossible to penetrate or something. What was left for me to do then? The one thing I didn't want to do, which would be to review the game.

Remember how Will Smith was commenting on Dan Marino's stolen test-drive vehicle with hundreds of bullet holes puncturing its body in Bad Boys II? "If this were my car, I'd be pissed!" That's what playing Bad Boys: Miami Takedown is like. It's something someone would verbally abuse, keeping in mind the fact that if they had to play this game, they'd refuse to accept it no matter what the cause. Lucky them, they don't have to play Bad Boys, and I'm betting there's a one in a million chance that they'll ever play it either. I don't think anyone actually knows Bad Boys: Miami Takedown exists. Had Crave Entertainment not been so kind enough (or mean, depending on the way you look at it) to share a copy of its wonderfully "Bad" game, I wouldn't even know there was a third-person action shooter based on the Bad Boys movies myself. And yet, I suppose I'm glad it did happen, as it's funny but sad when you get to play games that are so laughably bad.

I'm not going to blame Bad Boys' intentional monstrousness because of who made it or how they made it, but because they did make it. Bad Boys' publishers Crave Entertainment and Empire Interactive, along with its developer Blitz Games, are the suits responsible for dumping this pile of garbage on store shelves. Guess what guys? I could've told you before you even starting working on the game that no one would want it, based on the franchise name alone. Next up, I shall blame Bad Boys for the first most reason why its gameplay is so aggravating to start with...being subjected to its lamebrain voice-overs. For people who have seen their share of Will Smith or Martin Lawrence movies, they know how these guys do it on camera. For gamers who would dare to sit there and actually listen to lifeless, monotone impostors of Will and Martin, I salute you. These dumb ass actors, whoever they might be, are like the worst performers I've ever heard in any video game. Take the most unfavorable choices in talent that very slightly (keyword: very) resemble Will and Martin, stick 'em in front of a microphone, and tell them to not only read fundamentally retarded lines, but to act like they're cheerful when doing so. Just to illustrate my point, the conversation between Mike and Marcus when Mike finds some grenades, he'll say "I love these things!" Then Marcus's woefully terrible retort kicks in with a little something like this, "What, the grenades? Or for them to blow your cohones off in the first place?" In worse scenarios, it's when either Mike or Marcus kneels down in a level (that for some unknown reason it's unacceptable to do so in the characters' opinion) you'll repeatedly hear terribly scripted lines like so, "Are you tired? Wantcha I get you a chair?" or "Hurry up man, it looks like you're about to take a crap!" Why must I be tortured so cruelly, God?

Unwanted banter like this is most atrocious when you're forced into a level where both cops split up. Sometimes Detectives Lowrey and Burnett are together, where instead of actually having the AI do the shooting with you, it's programmed to shoot very little if at all. But that's a different story. I'm talking about the way in which when the separation session takes place, you'll often have to listen to the same stupid remarks from the other partner as they radio in. I don't understand why these two would want to continue conversing with one another using the same lame phrases, and doing so in stealth modes where enemies evidently can't hear them, but should. I bet they wouldn't even need to use guns to get rid of the bad guys if the bad guys were actually able to listen to their frightening dialogue. On top of all this, some parts of the game feature story sequences where spoken lines skip like a music CD would. But then, the jittery sentences in this made-for-game chapter of Mike's and Marcus's lives about taking down yet another drug kingpin who wants revenge on TNT (Tactical Narcotics Team -- the partners' special unit) when his money is confiscated by them, aren't going to affect all two of you playing the game.

Getting back to the gameplay subject, I bet you're thirsting to know what kind of an action game Bad Boys is, HUH? Well, too bad! I've got to talk about it anyway. Bad Boys' premise is straight and simple: kill all bad men in one section after the next using bad cops to get this done. Just picture Time Crisis as a third-person shooter (instead of lightgun-based) with distinct points where you can hide behind objects, like walls, pillars, crates, etc., and you're on your way to figuring out how the mechanics of its levels work. From these marker locations, you can lean out and fire from doorways, through windows, and such. Thugs will assemble around hiding spots of their own, and lean out just like you can -- which is really the main highlight of Bad Boys if there is any, because enemies don't always stick to the same spot. A lot of times though, the AI is just as intelligent as a tin can. They'll disappear behind an object where they don't think you'll actually hit them from a cornered angle, even though you can, and other times you can even pick off enemies from distant reaches even before you've reached the next sector in which to tackle these duds. Besides the boneheads, there's a boss encounter at the close of a couple stages as well, where the action between you and some gang leader or a helicopter for example, at least intensifies with more unpredictable behaviors.

Progress throughout Bad Boys' levels is done by way of switching between the Bad Boys couple, where in one level you'll play as Mike, the next as Marcus, and so on and so forth. Each detective carries their own type of handgun, but can pick up any additional weapon from fallen enemies as long as you're able to shoot the weapon from their hand (which is possible). Shotguns and uzis are usually the type of artillery that the enemy's got packing, which these guns in themselves are more powerful than the weak handguns used as your default weapon. Grenades, health, and flak jackets (which shield you until their amount of armor is fully depleted) are other attainable necessities that are in extremely short supply throughout the game's evolving stages. This is another one of the most annoying aspects of Bad Boys, as you're expected to live through robotic controls and large rooms full of 10 or more bad guys in each section that can easily hit you when you're slowly ducking back and forth from behind cover, with just one or two health packs available to you in the entire stage. Secret items like drug money and -- wait for it -- drugs themselves are another searchable aspect within every level as well. Locating these particulars though only gives entry to worthless mug shots of random thugs or extra training missions for the game's tutorial, which are both wastes of time to even bother with.

You heard the sound was bad, you heard the gameplay was bad, but how bad would Bad Boys be if its graphics weren't also bad? Not very. As expected, Bad Boys on the visual front is anything but worth noting. Why I have to even blab about its appalling usage of a below average display is beyond me. Do you want to encounter unattractive guys with guns in unrefined settings such as alleyways, rooftops, and gang hideouts? Do you want pathetic excuses for saturated characters that just barely resemble their movie counterparts? Of course not. Why do so many developers forget that the reason it's called a next-gen console is because you can take such aspects to the "next level." Rather than doing that here, Blitz Games has molded Bad Boys in such a shoddy direction that you'll feel like you're playing a PlayStation title instead of one for the PlayStation 2. At least there are a few elements that give the game a little interest, such as destructible items you can shoot your way through and blood and bullet holes that spray and splatter across differential objects in the environments.