Friday 9 August 2019

Charlie's Angels - Playstation 2


Charlie's Angels (2003) for PlayStation 2 (or GameCube) is a game that I for the longest time avoided despite me generally keeping an eye out for video games with female protagonists since it's notorious for being one of the worst games ever made and I'd rather not fill up my library with shovelware. That is until I saw Angry Video Game Nerd Episode 153 and didn't really understand what was supposed to be so bad about the game in the first place. Heck even the Nerd's rage felt forced compared to what was actually shown on the screen. The Metacritic score of the game stands at 23/100, which in an industry where everything below 70 is "bad", I interpret as "game is literally unplayable". So imagine my surprise when out of curiosity I did end up buying the game and it turned out that I liked it.

Now I like a lot of things that are considered bad so it doesn't exactly surprise me when I end up enjoying something generally deemed awful (short list, I like the Street Fighter movie, Batman & Robin, Duke Nukem Forever and Metroid: Other M). However that probably means I'm not exactly in a place to recommend it to anyone else, but I will say that its bad reputation might have been overly exacerbated due to being a tie-in to a goofy movie series with an already less-than-excellent reputation. I mean a few critics went as low as giving the game a 0/10. Seriously? Heck, I would have already awarded the game a 2/10 simply for the title screen opening up with Get Free by The Vines because that is one kickass opening song. However instead of a recommendation consider this an argument to have the game moved slightly more into "more okay than expected" territory.

Graphically it looks okay by PlayStation 2 standards. The levels look good and solid, if sometimes a bit uninspired. The quality of the character models fluctuates. Every level has the Angels in different costumes and some of them haven't been polished as well as others. Cameron Diaz/Natalie's model in the first level is one of the worst ones with a lighting issue on her hair making it look like she has a massive bald spot, which is especially unfortunate since she's the first in-game character we see and we see her up close (although I don't know what was going on in the AVGN episode because her face didn't look nearly that distorted on the PS2 version. Maybe it's worse on GameCube or it might have been an emulation bug). Otherwise the models tend to look fine though.
The gameplay is very straightforward. Each level consists of the three Angels having to fight their way to a specific target. When they reach the end, or when they require a door to be opened to proceed, control switches to a different Angel (which can also be done manually though is not really needed) until all three are where they need to be. Along the way you have to fight groups of (named) enemies to progress. All three of them have visually distinct fighting styles, but mechanically they control the same. You learn a couple combos and throws, and as you fight a bar fills up that gives you a special move which slows enemies down (which is apparently called "Angel Enhanced Time"). You can pick up a variety of dropped weapons such as knives, baseball bats, shovels and even grenades, and there's healing items and extra lives hidden in breakable crates ... It's Streets of Rage, it's just 3D Streets of Rage. It's not buggy, frustratingly difficult or hard to figure out, it's simply a barebones-but-solid 3D brawler.

The game does have an annoying camera that jumps around at times and which can't be manually moved. Also invisible walls provide a very restrictive playing area (even blocking off areas you previously could go), but the only reason to actually explore a level is to find CDs and memory sticks that unlock hardly-compelling images from the production of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003), which Google images and IMDB would provide in better quality should you be in anyway interested. Ultimately the biggest problem with this game is that by 2003 standards it was simply outdated. It doesn't push any boundaries and certainly can't be held in the same category as say Primal (2003), Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001) or Grand Theft Auto III (2001), it's simply a 3D version of Street of Rage with the then current cast of Charlie's Angels and surprisingly alright when approached as that. Not something you'd want to have spent 60€ new on, but as cheap second hand game I honestly can't consider this a blight upon my collection anymore.

It actually reminds me of another movie tie-in game. Sucker Punch back in 2011 had a promotional hack-and-slash video game on its website called Sucker Punch Annihilation where you could pick one of the five girls and had to fight through waves of enemies in one of three levels based on the movie's fantasy sections. I also ended up liking it despite its simplicity, primarily because the scoring system and leaderboards made it highly replayable. Unfortunately the game has since been taken offline, but there's YouTube (there's a bunch of reuploads but it's hell to get any of those to work on modern browsers).

In conclusion, Charlie's Angels is by no means a hidden gem of its generation, but surprisingly more "alright" and fun than I was led to believe.

5 comments:

  1. Classic action adventure detective espionage melodrama TV series aired on ABC Network from 1976-81 for six seasons in reruns to Youtube Channel and in syndication worldwide.

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  5. CT Towers the fictional organization was founded by Charles Townsend an American businessman and philanthropist the head of the detective organization based in Los Angeles California USA.

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