Category: PS & PC Games → Bad boys 2 for PC,(rip)

Although we've had a recent spate of pretty good games based on big Hollywood productions, there are still people pumping out mediocrity on thin budgets

Unfortunately, good things tend cost a lot of money. Even then, however, sturdy game design can shine through underwhelming production values. The Command & Conquer and Blizzard games aren't particularly known for their cutting-edge visuals, but they excel in addictiveness and replayability. Bad Boys II reminds us of what Hollywood has been doing with gaming for years, with only a few notable exceptions rising out of the murk--Escape from Butcher Bay, Spiderman 2, GoldenEye--and those are all console titles. PC doesn't get much love in this department. The original movie, officially, cost a little under $20 million, not including marketing. The sequel eight years later had a marketing budget twice that of the original production budget. So I know these people aren't strapped for cash.

The first thing you'll notice about BB2 is that Marcus Bennet and Mike Lowry don't look or sound anything like Martin Lawrence or Will Smith. The dialogue has the right feel--quick, smirky, sarcastic--and they deliver the lines pretty well across the board, but Empire could have picked a couple guys that at least tried to sound like their film counterparts, as Fox Interactive did with the Die Hard Trilogy several years back…another console title. Sigh. Anyways, this is a road bump that can be overcome, as long as the road is worth driving on. It's not. Yeah, I'll just get that out of the way.

It isn't that the game is kinda boring, or mediocre visually and gameply-wise. There are Problems. The AI is nearly nonexistent, instead relying on basic location triggers and a few rote tactics. One consists of standing in the middle of the room and shooting at you. The other consists of crouching behind an obstacle for a few seconds, then standing up and shooting at you. Your tactics will almost never require nothing more than walking up to the trigger point, then backing away and picking them off at medium to long range.