Armed and Dangerous (2003)

Beat on Normal as free from xbox gold. It was surprising that it was not free to keep since it was for the original xbox. This game was comedy gold, with hilarious dialogue, story and characters. Good old UK humor, and some excellent Celtic music. The gameplay was fun. At first I tried to hang back in cover, zoom in and manually aim, but the proper way to play was to strafe and let the aim assist do most of the work. All enemy projectiles could be dodged, which was why moving was so good. I found the 2 companions to be of little use though because they did not dodge and thus tended to die. I told them to stand guard while I soloed everything. Sometimes I had them move up to cover my rear because enemies seemed to occasionally spawn from no where, and especially to prevent enemies from getting back on turrets. Some levels had alarms that caused infinite enemy spawns from all directions, which forced aggressive tactics to destroy it. Most levels had bunkers that spawned enemies but I was not sure if it was infinite or not. Either way I destroyed them with grenades. The regular enemies were not much threat and did minimal damage if I failed to dodge. Of those, the assault rifle + grenades guys were the most dangerous. Later there were jet pack guys, snipers, and rocket launcher guys. The 1st time I died was to the gun turrets, because they actually did significant damage and their explosive splash damage was difficult to avoid. They were best killed with heavy weapons while the big robot enemies could only be harmed with explosives.

My ideal weapons set up was; assault rifle (lots of ammo for mowing down mooks while having decent range), sniper rifle (even though the ammo count was abysmal) and rocket launcher for auto homing long range big damage. The basic rifle had infinite ammo and a little better range than the AR, but I did not find either to be necessary. The grenade launcher was a solid heavy weapon but lacked the range and auto aim of rockets. The shark launcher was very unexpected and did not fit in with the other weapons; it created an actual shark that swam through the ground to eat enemies. Hilarious, and a good way to take out gun turrets. Sticky grenades were useful for destroying things that bullets could not damage, though I almost never used them against regular enemies. The other grenades were of dubious use. Never tried the punch one or upside down one, the black hole didn't seem that effective, and the traitor was fun at the end of the penultimate level where I made the giant robots kill each other.

Enemies seemed to randomly drop health and ammo, and both allies and enemies could use health packs (though I don't think they did any pathing to get the healing). I liked how ammo pickups went directly into the current clip so I could use them tactically to avoid having to reload. Health was more important as I needed a constant supply to stay alive despite how incompetent the enemies were. The robot ally could brew tea that restored health, which I believe he only did when the player was severely wounded. No idea if there were any limits on that but it was great incentive to keep him alive. Taverns had a stockpile of health, restored ammo, stored excess guns, and saved the game, so securing them was of critical importance. It was a great compromise between checkpoint saves and manual save any time; often times I backtracked to save when the enemies were dangerous. Most levels were straightforward linear affairs while others were more open ended and required destroying certain targets or rescuing civilians. A couple had generous time limits. Some featured a jetpack and basic platforming. Then there were base defense shooting gallery levels, which included the final level. It was a little disappointing that there were no boss fights. The base defense levels showcased the absolutely ludicrous amount of troops the bad guys had, and were not difficult. I failed the final level a few times, not because I let too many enemies through but because I died from getting shot (since there was no moving). I beat it by stopping zooming in so the auto aim took effect, sweeping around more to get the few that stood still to shoot me, and getting the health dropped from planes. It was weird how there were planes here but nowhere else in the game. At first I thought they were enemy bombers and shot at them, but they just dropped supplies. The enemy actually used zeppelins but not in the shooting gallery levels for some reason. I failed the zeppelin level many times; the one where I had to defend a town from troops paradropped in from those zeppelins. I did see the machine gun turrets and knew how easily they shot down the air ships but for some reason I kept trying to get then with the AR and killing the troops. A look online said to camp near the tavern to abuse it for infinite rockets and use the nearby machine gun. The level was ridiculously easy that way. I did find about half of the collectibles and had access to 2 bonus missions. 1 was defending a house against huge numbers of enemies. I tried it once and failed; not my idea of a good level. The gauntlet level was a mostly open arena with huge amounts of enemies. I could not survive very long and only tried a couple of times. There was a jetpack that I did not make it to. The only way I can see to beat that would be to find or carve out a safe spot, then methodically take out the rest.

This was a fun shooter with good mechanics and a bonkers atmosphere that made for numerous laugh out loud moments. The level objectives did get a little repetitive though and could have used greater variety. In particular there were too many rescue, destroy houses and shooting gallery missions. I could see playing again on higher difficultly and possibly even without aim assist.

8.0/10

It's definitely odd, but not odd enough to comment too much, it just lands on that weird sweet spot of early 2000 game that is low budget and isn't going out to accomplish that much besides be another arcade shooter so I guess I can't write too much about it, think of that one late PS1 game that is just a isometric shooter done by a very small developer team and is often not talked about at all. It being "the most third person shooter third person shooter there is" could be enough motivation for anyone who somehow played every single third person shooter and is looking for more.

I'd call it awfully generic and inoffensive, but it's art department and it's quirkiness would like to say otherwise, the cutscenes feel like softer more British takes of Xavier: Renegade Angel, I often forget that good voice acting was hard to find around this time so it deserves a compliment as well, yes it is an arcadey third person shooter but some weapons are wacky, like a gun that shoots a shark, a bomb that flips the entire map upside down, and much more. I understand how that If you grew up with this game, chances are it is a classic, but if you were to play it today, it's just really ok at best. Think Monty Python, and how we only remember the good sketches, but how there were a lot of hit or miss sketches too that nobody talks of.

It suffers from early 2000 map design in which it wants to show how big it's map is (like Halo) but the movement speed of the characters often does not go well with how much you have to traverse, later on you get a jetpack that glides with wings that is kinda fun for a bit but doesn't entirely fix this issue. This game being out around 2003 and also available on XBOX, still having a smooth frame rate definitely makes it feel more special, this is gonna sound like a weird compliment but if a game has an optimization that ranges from "I cannot tell if this is a 2000 windows 98 game or a 2014 unity game" that means it's well optimized enough to not age in the technical department, what this game excels in is it's simplicity, it doesn't try to do much besides run good and have basic third person shooting gameplay.

Technical specialties include physics, destructible environments, un-technical specialties include: gameplay being a bit repetitive, sometimes they take away weapons from you which is a bit lame because honestly sometimes you can only progress and do damage to structures and enemies with explosive type weapons that you need to find first every stage. Oh and all items, items you need to progress, often are dictated by random drops that you can't seem to predict.

Weirdly enough this is one of the few oldschool games that makes you wish it did have regenerative health, a controversial design idea, the reason I feel it would be needed is because the bigger the maps become, the more spacious it becomes to find health, health is randomly dropped, there is no logic to when health is dropped, sometimes they give you a lot of it when your health is full and then when you really need it, you can't seem to find an enemy, and when you do, it rarely drops health.

Even though many people do love this game for it's simplicity, I don't see or seek much from it in the end, it has some flaws, it's a very turn off your brain kind of game and the low budget taking the piss cutscenes best exemplify that, this isn't the game that cares that much (even if some map design does shine a lot of effort), so really as far as I can see it, this game could have been one of those games you rented for your xbox when it came out, maybe you'd vaguely remember it being the silliest game you've played and that's how it would stick with you. I could also see this as a shared memory, whenever you get bored about the generic mission you've been playing for too long you just pass the controller to your friend.