Planet Moon Studios Armed and Dangerous proudly proclaims on the back of the game box "There's no kill, like overkill" - and this game certainly does allow you to indulge in overkill by the bucket load, providing you with an array of weapons that you won't find anywhere else, and a seemingly limitless supply of ammo for your gun - firing indiscriminately is positively encouraged by the ludicrous amount of ammo at your disposal.

But Why? Why do you have all these weapons, why do you want to go on a killing spree that leaves a body count that Max Payne himself would struggle to compete with? To summarise the entire story here would be impossible, but it is nice to see such an effort put into the prologue of a game - to be brief, you and your small group of oddball friends are out to steal the Book of Rule from the King of Forge, in an attempt to further humiliate the King - however, things are never quite that simple?

The weapons on offer in this game are incredibly good fun - a personal favourite of mine is the Land Shark Gun - which is both humorous to watch, and lethally efficient - also available are self-targeting vidaloo rockets, and a rather nifty personal Mortar. The selection of bombs on offer is equally as impressive, be it the sticky bombs (which once thrown, stick to what they hit, regardless of how fast they run), the Topsy Turvy bomb, the Guy Fawkes Traitor Bomb - or my favourite the World's Smallest Black Hole, activate this one and watch as all the nearby enemies are sucked up by a black hole that comes handily packaged in a small cardboard box.

You're plied with all the above manner of weapons because you're completely out-numbered by the Kings forces, this is far worse than your standard hero to enemy ratio - the majority of the levels in Armed and Dangerous are crawling with men who are all too eager to put you in all kinds of pain - no real problem on the normal difficulty level, as charging towards an army of soldiers with your machine gun blazing, while flinging sticky bombs into the fray will more than likely result in a lot of dead enemies, and a barely scratched Roman - try the exact same thing on the next difficulty level however (aptly named 'Over The Top') and you will find yourself in a whole world of trouble, as the enemies can take a lot more punishment before keeling over.

Armed and Dangerous contains more than its fair share of humor, and although your companions retorts whilst in the midst of a battle may wear thin, a sizeable chunk of the in-game humor is well written and performed perfectly, especially some of the later cut scenes, which provide some of the most entertaining moments of the game

A third person shooter is nothing new, and neither is one featuring useless companions, whose sole purpose in the game is to add extras for the cut scenes - their contributions to the in-game fighting is rather poor to say the least (although Q has the redeeming feature of offering out tea shaped health packs when you need them most), but what is special about this game is in the way that it manages to stamp its own personality onto the genre - make no mistake, this isn't another game that has to rely on past wars for inspiration, but one that creates a whole world of it's own

Sadly, for all the originality and flair on display here (which are two things lacking from far too many games of late) Armed and Dangerous falls just short of being a must-have game, graphically the game appears unpolished, and although the backdrops may have been simplified to allow for the hordes of enemies to charge at you without slow down, the same reason can not be applied to the cut scenes, which have a distinct unfinished edge to their graphics. Also, your objectives from level to level vary little after you've completed the first few, meaning that although the locations may change, you'll quickly become tired of repeating the same tasks - making this quirky, original and humor filled title become dull and tired, with the cut scenes being the only incentive to see the game through to its end.
  • User Specs

  • Windows: XP Home
    AMD Athlon 3000XP
    1 GB RAM
    GeForce FX5900 Ultra
  • Minimum Specs

  • Windows
    98/ME/2000/XP
    Processor: 800 MHz
    256 MB RAM
    2.4 GB Hard Drive space
    NVIDIA GeForce" or ATI Radeon"  7000 or higher
    4x CD, sound card & 
    speakers/headphones

Logo sourced from lucasarts.com
  • GameRating (out of 5):
  • Setup
  • Graphics
  • Sound
  • Gameplay
  • Longevity
  • Boo!
  • Total

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  • Reviewed by: The Ghost of Inept Pig