Armed & Dangerous Review

Have you any idea who Icarus was and how he ended up?

Keep 'em coming, there's enough lead here for everyone!

Visually, Armed and Dangerous supports all the latest bells and whistles that should make an action fan's eyes flicker. Although the engine seems to be a heavily modified version of the Kabuto code, the designers have done an excellent job of making sure it doesn't lag behind any of today's top titles. Armed and Dangerous uses the power of the Havok physics engine, as well as some very nifty pixel-shader and bump mapping effects. The shadows look nice and detailed and the weather effects look amazing, thanks partly to the abovementioned physics engine that makes the raindrops fall depending of the direction your character is moving in. The art design of the game's main protagonists is very expressive; it brings a lot of human emotion and it makes the most out of the available number of polygons. On the other hand, the artists have failed to provide sufficient assortment in terms of map design.

The musical score and the sound effects are both top-notch, and that especially goes for the fantastic voice acting. Hell, great skits wouldn't be all that good without some great art design and of course, voice acting. The musical score is upbeat, atmospheric and perfectly fitting for this title.

The game's interface and camera are simple and highly intuitive - just excellently suited for the mouse and keyboard combo.

You could say that A&D has done most of the things right, apart from the core gameplay obviously. Though I liked the humor and cut-scenes a lot, I never cared too much for the in game action. It lacks more variety and more of that Planet Moon Studios trademark originality. I just felt like A&D was in many ways a dumbed down version of Giants. Lack of multiplayer and the relatively short single-player certainly don't do much good for the game's replay value, so the decision on whether or not you should buy Armed and Dangerous depends greatly on how much you like the style of humor that oozes from every pore of this title. That's pretty much the thing that kept me going throughout the game - whizzing through the action to get to the next awesome cut-scene.