Armed and Dangerous Demo

Humor can be an important and defining element in video games, especially when it is done right and it greatly adds to the overall atmosphere. However, the rest of the gameplay must fall into line as well, otherwise the bad mechanics can hurt the experience and all the humor in the world would not be enough to keep the players engaged and immersed into the story.

A wacky main character and his partners go on a quest

Armed and Dangerous is a third-person action game that tries to make you laugh much more than it tries to be a successful title with strong gameplay mechanics. Hence, while you might find yourself giggling for the majority of the time, the action itself is very repetitive and boring, due to the fact that the enemies can basically spawn indefinitely unless you destroy the thing they come out of.

The story is centered around a man by the name Roman, who is also joined by a couple of wacky friends along the way, each one of whom is actively making witty remarks or dropping clever one-liners to keep a smile on your face. Moreover, they also participate in the many cutscenes scattered through the game, since they have a role to play in the overall story as well.

To keep in tune with the theme of the story, the game throws massive and weird enemies at you with every occasion, such as goliaths, giant evil robots and various other hilarious contraptions. On the other hand, you are equipped to handle them quite easily, given the fact that you can wield a huge weapon that shoots vicious sharks at anything standing in front of you. Hence, the two impossibilities cancel each other out and everything makes sense in the end.

Visually, the rusty graphics engine cannot exactly show its face on a modern computer monitor without looking hideous, mostly due to the fact that it only supports low resolutions and the already shaky-looking environments get stretched a lot to fit on HD screens. On the other hand, the voice acting is sublime and the rest of the technical aspects can still hold their own, which should count for something.

Even if Armed and Dangerous can get pretty difficult to stomach after the same sequences are basically replayed a bunch of times, the jokes never get old and the characters are indeed memorable. Thus, some of the gameplay mistakes can be forgiven, as long as you go into it with the right attitude.