Bad Boys: Miami Takedown
features Will Smith and Martin Lawrence on its cover. It's obviously a shot from the
action film sequel, and it gives fans of the movie false hope. There is nothing here that
has anything to do with the movies, including the actors. It's close enough to false advertising that someone could write up a lawsuit and win against publisher Crave Interactive. This abysmal 3rd person action title is right down there with some of the absolute worst games of this generation, burying it in company with Drake and the 99 Dragons, Charlie's Angels, and Sneakers.
This is a hard game to even comprehend. This was probably supposed to be a movie tie-in at some point, but after the finished product arrived, it landed on store shelves as a budget title. The targeting system is awful, and since the only way to achieve any sort of accuracy is with the automatic version, it should not point to someone's chest every time. You'll constantly suffer a barrage of gunshot wounds because it either didn't lock on, the aiming reticule moves too quickly, or you can't see the enemy shooting at you (they have the ability to shoot through walls).
Takedown is a single player affair, though both characters are present in the missions. Your AI controlled partner could not be any dumber, standing around taking bullets to the head because he's performed a pre-scripted move. The voice-overs, which don't sound anything like the big name actors, are grating. The M rating on the cover is earned through the violence, though it's more deserving because of the inept vulgar toilet humor that passes as comedy here.
The camera is everywhere, spinning, rotating, and flipping at
random, rendering the game unplayable at more than a few spots. The game offers cover at
specific spots from which you can shoot from, supposedly in safety. You can do this by
pressing square, but doing so may send the character to a different location in the same
area than the one you're looking for (and possibly right in front of gunfire). Cinematics
are as bland as the graphics engine, a small upgrade from some late PS One releases. If anything goes right for this, it's the damage modeling. There's very little here that can't be destroyed, and it's satisfying to break anything in the environment. It's also possible to shoot an inanimate object without wasting countless rounds of ammo, unlike the games main threat.
This is one of those games that fails to appeal to anybody. Fans of the movie will hate the lack of actor voice-overs. Fans of third-person action will hate the camera and control issues. Fans of video games in general will be wise to skip it in the first place.
