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Req.: P4 1Ghz, 256MB RAM, 32MB video Card Reviewed On: Athlon xp 2600+ (2.13 GHz), 512 Meg RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro | |||
Intro What does a bandana-wearing mercenary; a Scottish mole man; a tea-drinking Roman robot; a blind, cross-dressing sage; and a group of gardeners turned commandos have in common? Well nothing actually, unless you count their common appearance in Planet Moon's newest title Armed & Dangerous. Gameplay: 6/10 Like that other Planet Moon game (Giants: Citizen Kabuto) Armed & Dangerous features a great, humor-laden plot featuring a handful of memorable characters in the land of Majorca. First, there's a prophecy about a book, The Book of Rule to be specific. As it turns out, the Majorcan Prophecy states that four heroes will use the Book of Rule to usurp the throne and King Forge. Naturally King Forge wants to retain his throne, so he finds the Book of Rule and attempts to decode it. Unfortunately, the book has been encoded so that, rather than talking about rules and whatnot, the book reads only of basket-weaving. However worthless basket-weaving knowledge may be, the King decides to hang onto the book. Well as time rolls on, a small group of bandits and thieves meet up in prison, escape, and decide to band together and humiliate the King by sneaking into his compound and stealing the Book of Rule - hence beginning the adventure. You play as Roman, one of the prison-breaking thieves who call themselves the Lionhearts. Together with the tea-drinking robot Q, the Scottish mole man Jonesy, and the ugly, blind, runtish, sage Rexus, Roman leads the rag-tag group of adventurers through the King's territory on a quest to steal The Book of Rules and ultimately, free the land of the King's rule. The story of Armed & Dangerous really is the best part. It's funny, actually it's very funny. Jokes about cross dressing, the French, kissing foreigners, and orcish princes are all here, told with impeccable voice acting and timing commonly reserved for the big screen. The story is so good, in fact, that gamers will find themselves disappointed at the very low-level compression used for the cutscenes, making them rather pixilated and unnecessarily splotchy. But story or not, there is an actual game hidden in this game. As Roman, you lead Q and Jonesy in a run 'n gun 3rd person adventure across the lands of Majorca in pursuit of The Book of Rule. Simply put, the game lets you shoot stuff - but outside. The levels in Armed & Dangerous take place in large outdoor environments that crawl with the King's soldiers, all on a quest to stop Roman and company from acquiring The Book of Rule. Missions have varying objectives, from rescuing peasants, to destroying objects, or just getting from point A to point B without being killed. Unfortunately, these missions boil down to the same thing: kill, kill, kill. Despite the varying objectives, levels tend to unravel in the same way: walk for a bit, kill a wave of enemies, walk for a bit more, kill the next wave, repeat until cutscene - making for a very repetitive killing experience. There are also several defend-the-base levels, wherein Roman will man a turret/mortar and attempt to shoot down the incoming troops before they can successfully capture the base. To help break up the monotony, the game features a wide array of diverse and, um, interesting weapons to use. There's the standard fare, namely a machine gun, sniper rifle, and rocket launcher, but they are also mixed in with some especially unique weapons, like the land shark gun, which shoots a giant shark that homes in on enemies and chomps away. Similarly minded weapons include the topsy-turvy bomb that turns the world upside down with the exception of you and your mates, and the world's smallest black hole that sucks in all surrounding enemies. Unfortunately these novelty weapons do little in the midst of an all out gun brawl, and players will find themselves sticking with the machine gun and stock grenades more often than not. In the end, I was a bit disappointed at the lack of weapon choices - the novelty weapons are funny, but ineffective and small in number. Additionally, Roman can only carry 3 guns at a time, so after the necessary machine gun, sniper rifle, and rocket launcher are selected, there's really no room or reason to have any other guns. Luckily, in the face of overwhelming odds, Roman has help in the form of his two assistants: Q, the autonomous and polite robot, and Jonesy, the impolite Scot with the mouth of a sailor. These two assistants follow Roman and help him gun down the baddies. There are a couple of key commands that order them to either defend Roman or defend the area, but like most squad games, your teammates are rather ineffectual. Instead, enemy soldiers always focus their fire on Roman while the teammates fire weak shots from bad vantage points. Often times, Roman's team will get caught in the geography and be unable to reassemble, while other times, they simply won't attempt to dodge a mortar shell or grenade, taking them out of commission for the round. The
enemy AI, however, is rather impressive. Once fired upon, a group of enemies will
quickly disperse, hide, and attempt to flank Roman. Enemy snipers have a reasonably
long shooting distance, but not unfairly so. But then there's the odd spawning.
Not only is the enemy spawning impossible to detect, but often times, players
will venture back in the search of power-ups or ammo to find enemies where they
had previously been cleared. Sometimes these spawns will happen after Roman has
cleared a section, only to be shot in the back by a previously-didn't-exist sniper.
It's confusing, and only adds to the already challenging gameplay. On its default
difficulty, Armed & Dangerous can be a bit tough. To combat this, the
developer claims that a well thought out strategic approach is the best way to
handle the difficulty, but I found that strafing, holding down shoot, and using
power ups and the health and ammo restoring pubs scattered about are the best
ways to beat any level. And that's exactly how I beat every level. Once players
memorize sniper locations, turret placements, and pub locations, it's actually
quite easy to beat a level, meaning that expert players will breeze through Armed
& Dangerous' missions in a weekend. To help this short play time, there
are several unlockables - levels, modes, cheats, etc. - that are unlocked via
tokens scattered across the lands of Majorca. They do little to up replayability,
but, damn, I always like a big head mode. Graphics: 6/10 The Bad: The
cutscenes are uglier than a three-legged dog with leprosy. The compression used
by the video in the game is roughly equivalent to Internet video, what with the
pixilation and crappy artifacting - terrible, just terrible. And finally, the
repetitiveness that plagues the gameplay also plagues the graphics. Enemies and
buildings are repeated throughout the game, giving every mission the feeling and
aesthetic of the prior mission. In fact, there are really only two kinds of enemy
soldiers - brown and black, just with different weapons. Sound: 8/10 Overall:
6/10 [ top ] |
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