s tears of laughter rolled down my cheeks and my gut began to ache from the hilarity that had just unfolded onscreen, I found myself sizing up the brilliance that had been attributed to Armed and Dangerous’ script. Very rarely do you hear video game critics talk about the writing in a title, but this little-known title had me wondering if the cast of Monty Python had reunited to write a video game.
At the beginning of Armed and Dangerous, the words "Based on a true story…" appear just as a robot wearing a cape and a talking mole run across the screen. You can’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of it. As the story unfolds, the laughs just get bigger. Developer Planet Moon Studios even goes out of its way to poke fun at publisher LucasArts. Several scenes from the Star Wars films are tapped for all they are worth, and are used to deliver unforgettable, laugh-out-loud entertainment.
It’s not that bad of a game, either. I won’t go as far to say that it will leave you frothing at the mouth for more, but it is amusing nonetheless. It’s a run-and-gun third-person shooter developed in a similar vein to Planet Moon’s previous work, Giants: Citizen Kabuto.
As a whole, there really isn’t much to this title’s gameplay package. You’re basically asked to eliminate any threat that you come across. Every once in a while you may find yourself escorting hapless civilians, or mounting a wall-based turret in a Helm’s Deep-like battle where you must protect a stronghold from hundreds of advancing soldiers. The controls are simple, yet the firefights are frenzied and the difficulty level is balanced perfectly.
Sticking to its comedic guns, many of the weapons that you wield are incredibly inventive, and will surely bring a smile to your face. There’s the Land Shark Gun, which, as you can imagine, sends a shark into the ground that launches out beneath your foe and devours them. There’s also a handy little doodad called the Topsy Turvy Bomb that flips the world upside down once inserted into the ground. Anyone who is not holding onto something falls down (or is it up?) into the sky. Deactivating it sends them hurtling back down to the ground. You’ll also wield Guy Fawkes Traitor Bombs, the Vindaloo Rocket Launcher, a Cyclops Sniper Rifle, and will eventually wrap your hands around the World’s Smallest Black Hole.
While the graphics leave much to be desired and the quality of the CG cutscenes is crude at best, Armed and Dangerous is in the most side-splitting of ways, pure comic genius. In the grand scheme of things, it may be a fairly generic shooter, but with Planet Moon going to great lengths to ensure that the experience is lively and fun every step of the way, it becomes something far greater.