From time to time a developer will decide it's a great idea to attempt to cash in on a popular movie franchise and release a complete pile of garbage. Bad Boys: Miami Takedown is a perfect example of such an occurance. Bad Boys isn't just bad, it's horrendous. While the game attained a rating of M, due to its excessive amount of "mature" content, it is much more deserving of a C for crap.

Miami Takedown begins with a poorly put together cutscene that clearly demonstrates the game's graphical inability and goes something like this: a drug lord threatening one of his Russian companions due to his failure (thanks to the fantastic law-enforcement team known as TNT). Due to the top notch cinematography and convincing voice acting, it's very clear that this drug lord means business. (Note: It is assumed that early-Nintendo 64 graphics and high-school quality voice acting are convincing to you.) After this short and non-informative scene, you witness a team of TNT members driving up toward a cafe, where one exits to make an order. Moments later in an overwhelming scene of excitement and tension, the car explodes and two thugs decide to make off with the partner of the recently deceased TNT member.

This is where you, the bad, bad boys come in. Merely seconds after this goes down, the Chief of TNT has Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett on the call. After a quick round of (assumedly) teleportation, you're ready to raise the roof as Mike. It might appear to you that the introduction to this game is a wee bit incoherent. Rest assured, it's not just the introduction - nearly all of the storyline is completely incoherent. Your characters are essentially teleported from level to level with no real in-between to explain why you're there or what's happening. Occasionally you'll be given a simple line of text like "stop the bank heist" or what have you.

Once you get over the fact that the story is completely incoherent and retarded, you find your self playing the game. Game play in Bad Boys is fairly generic. Actually, let's go ahead and devolve that one more level and say it's sub-generic. The objective of this game is to move from room to room and shoot every generic thug in sight while fighting the poorly controlling characters, Mike and Marcus. In theory, the game offers abilities that increase the depth such as rolling and ducking for cover, but in reality these are entirely useless. The AI is so incredibly dumb it renders these features entirely useless. Their actions are limited to sitting behind "cover" and occasionally coming out and shooting. This is assuming they have cover, if they don't, they'll just mindlessly stand there and fire. The game is much less bothersome if you simply charge in to the room and blast everyone.

Speaking of blasting, there are various weapon types to be found in Bad Boys, ranging from the pistol to the sub machine gun. Players can only wield two weapons at any given time, resulting questionable gun-placement. When Mike or Marcus pick up a secondary gun (pistol is always available with infinite ammo), it becomes default. However, you can switch back to your pistol at any time by using the Y button.

This results in the character (Mike or Marcus, can't really tell them apart) in using what is presumably super glue to stick it to the back of his wifebeater. There's no holster, no strap. It just magically attaches itself to the shirt. Other problems include the lack of spread for the shotgun. If your targeting reticule isn't directly located on the enemy, good luck hitting him with the shotgun. Combined with the time between shots and this weapon is entirely useless.

As touched upon earlier in this review, the graphical capabilities of Bad Boys: Miami Takedown make full use of X Box hardware and rival such milestone achievements as Quest 64, complete with low-res textures and blurry visibility. The lack of detail makes both Marcus and Mike look very similar, with their clothes being the only real differentiation. De-emphasized (non-main) character models are even worse, if one could imagine such a thing.

And if Marcus and Mike looking just alike wasn't enough, they sound just alike, too! Yes indeed, the voice acting of Miami Takedown likely rivals that of home videos one makes as a child with their siblings. But that's not all! These Martin Lawrence and Will Smith impersonators fling the lewd language like no tomorrow. In fact, the player will be hard pressed to avoid a curse word in, at the very least, a 30 second play length.

As if the poor quality of the voice acting wasn't enough, the constant existence of it is very obnoxious. Marcus and Mike seemingly have something to say every time something happens (pick up a health kit, kill a guy, get shot, get a new weapon, miss a guy, blow up a tv, etc). There truly is no end to the constant stream of bad jokes, one liners, and commentary that is offered. Even worse, a majority of it is not unique material - the player will often find themselves listening to the same joke several times in one session. Within the first two levels I experienced the same (not funny) Haitian joke three times. That's three times too many for me.

To put it simply, it's nearly impossible to enjoy Bad Boys: Miami Takedown without being completely naive. The presentation, game play, and voice acting are all about 10 years behind, it's a sad state of affairs. This is what you get that obnoxious son-in-law for Christmas as punishment in disguise. Keep far away from Bad Boys at all costs.