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Bad Boys: Miami Takedown
review
archive
game: Bad Boys: Miami Takedown
one star
posted by: Matt James
publisher: Crave Entertainment Empire Interactive
developer: Blitz Games
ESRB rating: M (Mature)
platform:
keywords:
date posted: 12:00 AM Sat Nov 20th, 2004
last revision: 12:00 AM Sat Nov 20th, 2004



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Bad Boys: Miami Takedown is actually a natural extension of the Bad Boys franchise. In the way that Bad Boys 2 was an unnecessary and poorly made attempt to capitalize on the success of a movie that was never that great to begin with, Miami Takedown is an unnecessary and ugly attempt to capitalize on the success of those movies. Few licensed games manage to capture the spirit of its source material. Not Miami Takedown. It is brimming with the Bad Boy spirit of excessive swearing, bone headed violence, low brow humor, and being thrown together for an easy buck. It's about time that developers pay close attention to what they are adapting and truly expand upon the original experience. Cheers to Blitz Games for giving us a Bad Boys game that is as easy for me to not play as it was for me to not watch Bad Boys 2.

 

I assume the reason Martin Lawrence and Will Smith couldn't do the voice over work themselves is because they are busy. (Hopefully somewhere with Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, rearranging expletives and explosives into Bad Boys 3!) So it is good that they found a pair of voice actors that are so neutral that you can't tell which one is supposed to be which. Of course this wouldn't work if there was anything in the graphics to distinguish between the two. Oddly enough, for a moment I thought I might be able to pick out which one was which through the characterization. Silly me. At one point Markus and Mike checkout a fine ass honey (as beautifully rendered at they are, let me tell you). One of them sets out to hit on her. I think that maybe in the first movie Martin Lawrence's character might have had a wife. So if I assume the one doing the hitting on is Will Smith's Character, whom I think is Mike, then?oh crap. In the next cut scene I lost track of which one was which again. Seriously, isn't Will Smith a foot taller than Martin Lawrence? Don't they kind of look nothing alike? The character models suck. Oh and the fine ass honey, not fine at all. The princess in Super Mario Bros. was hotter.

 

In keeping with Bad Boys tradition, Miami Takedown is loaded with movie cliches. My personal favorite is the feature where you shoot guns from your enemies hands. Come on guys, did video games really need to be infused with the most tired of action movie cliches? Sure, it was cool forty years ago when Clint Eastwood did it in A Fist Full Of Dollars but today it is just lame. Besides, in a game where the only objective is to kill everything that moves, why would I bother to shoot the gun from an enemy's hands when I could shoot him in the head? A person can have a hundred guns in his hands but can't do a thing without a brain. Except create a Bad Boys movie/game. I do have to say when presented with this feature in the training mode it did give me my biggest laugh of the entire Bad Boys franchise.

 

Bad Boys does sport a Killswitch like duck and cover system. I had big hopes for this (once again, silly me) since I enjoyed Killswitch so much. Fortunately they did it in a way that was nearly useless and totally uninspiring. Most of the time I got shot anyway and I would just give up and play kamikaze. The game isn't that tough so I could just walk right through for the most part. Except for the super human bosses, that is. It seems odd, even in the Bad Boys universe, that there are people that can take dozens and dozens of shots before retiring. One or four bullets, sure, but twenty?

 

You can blow the crap out of your environment. I went through one level and trashed every single toilet. I even found some health in one. I know there is a joke there, something about never putting anything you find in a seedy men's room into your body, but I just can't quite mine it out. But I did sort of enjoy shooting those toilets, some lights, a fire extinguisher (that created an interestingly fiery explosion), and a few other things sitting on counters through out the game. Look, I did find something positive to say. Not even in a sarcastic way. You didn't think I was gonna do it, did ya?

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There is some decent rap music in the game but unfortunately it cuts out when it is time for action. It kind of felt like they did everything they could to keep me from getting into this game. Music can be the most important tool for getting someone involved in a game. A mediocre game with the right music can draw you in the way so many games can't. If they would have spent more time with the audio of this game it is possible that it might have been bumped up into that mediocre yet at least playable status. But that might have taken time and care and this game was made for a quick buck.

 

How can I say this best? Don't buy this game. Not even for Christmas, for your brother. I know you hate him but if you spend money on this game you'll just encourage them to make more. If you're real bored, rent it. It is kind of funny if you remove yourself from it and just observe its horrible beauty. If you're a big Bad Boys fan, and thus have spent this entire review hating my guts, then you still probably want to skip this game. If the movies stand on anything it is the strength of the leads (how strong they really are is debatable, but enough for now) and this game doesn't have them. Bad Boys Miami Takedown lacks so many things, it probably wouldn't matter anyway. The audio is bad, the graphics are poor, the gameplay is lame, and the story is laughable. But what this game really lacks is a reason for being.


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