No jury in the world would convict me

It’s over. It’s done. Bad Boys has eaten the bomb. Satan’s plans have failed, and I have emerged unscathed. Well…at least physically.

You know those fantastic games where you get so into the story and gameplay that by the time you get to the end of the character’s arduous journey, you feel such a sense of accomplishment for having guided your avatar safely through the pits of hell? I mean, down to your last scraps of ammo, armor gone, health waning, and you take that crowbar and deal the deathblow to the 10-story beast that nightmares are made from. You may throw down the controller and cheer. You may sit back and revel in an amazing cutscene or credit sequence. You feel joy and satisfaction (unless the game in question is Halo 2 [just gonna keep beating that dead horse until Halo 3 comes out]).

But what about the character? His task is complete, but he cannot celebrate. He has been to the very brink, and been given reprieve thanks to your skills, but at what cost? All he can do, is walk away slowly, knowing that everyone and everything he has ever cared about is dead and gone. There is no place for him left in the world he just saved, and so he resigns himself to just walk away from it all, a tear trickling down his cheek, a shell of the man he once was. I can sympathize. I’ve played Bad Boys: Miami Takedown.

Let’s break it down real quick…

• Bad Boys is a game that was supposed to be released as a marketing tie-in with the release of Bad Boys II on DVD. It actually came out nearly a year later, blowing its chance of quick profit by association.
• Bad Boys is a movie-based game that failed to include the likenesses or voices of the actors from the movies. This includes a voice actor who sounds more like Joe Pesci than Joey Pants as the captain. I suppose they got the outfits right, at least.

• Bad Boys is a 3rd-person duck-and-cover shooter similar to 007: Everything or Nothing or Dead to Rights except without the “Lock-on” feature that makes those games action-packed, fast moving, and mostly enjoyable. The manual aiming in this game is a nearly unending exercise in frustration.

Those are just some highlights, but I will put forth my 2 most telling experiences with the game. Firstly, at what felt like the halfway point in the game, I decided that I wanted to know just how much I had left to endure. I looked online for a FAQ, level guide, or walkthrough with no interest in getting any hints, aside from how much left. You see, in various places you’ll find varying descriptions for the game as containing 13 levels or 15 levels. You know what I found? Nothing! Not one FAQ, not one walkthrough. Nothing more than a cheat code for infinite ammo (which was never a problem) turned up in all my searches. Nobody had bothered to write a single document about Bad Boys except for the scathing reviews I kept turning up. Hell, even Minesweeper and Notepad have FAQ’s that people write for shits & giggles, but nobody will touch this game with a 10 foot pole. Not a good sign.

Moving on, resigned to play until it finally ended, I found that in order to proceed I had to work outside of the intended play mechanics. The controls are so broken that the cover point play style is more likely to get you killed than running around in the open. I did find that if you duck behind a low object without engaging the cover point, you can continue to aim your crosshairs, then pop up, shoot, and pop back down quickly without getting hit. In this fashion, you methodically make your way through the game one guy at a time, taking roughly 30 seconds per guy to line up your shot thanks to the horrendous analog control. Tedious does not begin to describe it.

I have survived Secret Satan 2005, but a little piece of me may have died inside. There is nothing left to do but to walk away. Perhaps, in time, titles like Chaos Theory, Brothers in Arms, and Fable will heal those wounds.

Perhaps….