Armed and Dangerous: The Sort of Comedy I Would Have Written In High School

Shooting games are a mixed bag. Cheap and generic, most of the time, it’s rare to find one that truly stands out the way Halo did, or… nope, Halo’s the only one that stands out as unique for me. But look, I’m a JRPG fan, running and gunning aren’t my thing. I’m pro 2A, but firearms are my wife’s thing. I like swords. But throw in some ridiculous, deliberately bad writing, a story that mocks everything and everyone mercilessly and doesn’t apologize or care at all if you’re offended? I’m so there!!!

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, Lucasfilm was owned by itself and had a side division called Lucasarts. Lucasarts did many great Star Wars games, but also had a wicked sense of humor, and enjoyed making great comedy games like Escape from Monkey Island. This is one of those silly games. The story revolves around a trio of rogues on a quest to find the Book of Rules, hoping that they can use it to make a profit. Needless to say, they end up discovering that they are prophesied messianic figures whom the Book of Rules promised would save the kingdom from the evil king and his idiot son. If only the Book of Rules hadn’t been turned into the book of Basket Weaving, turning the church leadership into the world’s greatest basket weavers.

 

So of course the heroes go on an epic quest to recapture the Book and transform it back from the Book of Basket Weaving to the book of Rules. And that journey plays out the way you’d expect it to. They go to jungles, and cities, get lost in the desert, drink their own urine, and eat their companions, only to discover there was actually a thriving town just beyond the dune they were on… literally just a few feet away… like you do. They recruit the king’s idiot son, like you do, and discover the power of circumcision, like you do. This is absolutely the sort of stuff I’d have written in high school, and I love it.

 

Sometimes comedy works when it is so over the top, crazy and bad it just comes together even when it

Yes, there is a shark cannon.

probably shouldn’t. As I played this game I found myself laughing constantly. It’s been a while since I’ve experienced a no bars held comedy like this. I wish I could say the comedy was in service of a larger point, the way that Conker’s Bad Fur Day ended up as a cautionary tale of the dangers of selfishness, or the way that South Park teaches Libertarian concepts of Liberty and tolerance, and non-aggression through its over-the-top silliness. But Armed and Dangerous has no point. It is silly for silliness’s sake, and that might not make it brilliant, but it does make it charming, and hilarious.

 

It also makes it not a game you should let your kids play. A lot of the jokes are very inappropriate for younger audiences, and also my Dad, who was aghast over half the game, and didn’t get the other half. But it is a game built from the ground up for Generation X sensibilities, and someone born in the last year of Generation X… I can recommend this goofy game for anyone my age or older… but not the boomers because my Dad just didn’t get it. Apparently, nonsense is just too silly for some people.

 

I played it on current Gen hardware, the Xbox Series X does upscale the in-engine graphics quite a bit, and it runs at a super sleek frame rate. The game’s in-engine graphics are not spectacular, but the upscale is nice. Sadly, the pre-rendered cut scenes are really bad. To be fair the game is pretty old. Still, the silliness of the game makes it easy to overlook the dated graphics. Luckily the game, while a straightforward third-person shooter, is pretty fun. It’s just blowing stuff up recklessly. The environment is destructible too… from an era before games like Battlefield would perfect destructible environments... But it’s not a game that does anything special from a gameplay standpoint. It’s short, sweet… it has no point… and its fun, and funny. Certainly not a game to play while your kids are in the room, but especially if you’ve been missing the Zucker Bros style of satirical silliness, it’s worth the $10 to fire this one up, and prepare to laugh, between eye rolls. Just don’t expect the same level of polish as something like Conker’s Bad Fur Day.

 

3/5