N-Philes

Charlie's Angels

Posted by Archived.

Let's face it, there are certain games that should simply never have been made. And for some strange reason, usually an attempt to cash in on a popular franchise, they find their ways onto store shelves. Nobody should have been allowed to experience Pokemon Snap, Minority Report: Everybody Runs, and the Disney All-Star Sports line. Well, add Ubi Soft's Charlie's Angels to this distinguished list of ne'er-do-wells.

Story

Instead of basing itself on this summer's box office flop, Full Throttle, Charlie's Angels has a brand new storyline. Never fear, it's still your typical hackneyed Charlie's Angels plot. Some lunatic has stolen all of the world's great monuments! The Lincoln Memorial, Statue of Liberty, Arc de Triumph, Stonehenge, all gone. Who could possibly be behind this evil plot? David Copperfield? I do remember one time he made the Alamo disappear once. I wish, instead it's some random guy bent on world domination or something. The Angels are the only ones who possibly stop him, and the only way to do this is to punch and kick their way through several levels, including a couple of battles with George McFly, in order to get the world's monuments back.

Gameplay

Charlie's Angels is your standard beat ‘em up action romp. I used to love this genre, populated with such classics as Double Dragon, Battletoads, TMNT, and Golden Axe . I could just spend an entire day pushing A and B to my heart's content, hoping against to finally make it to boss. It was bloody fun and I relished every minute of it. In today's world of "saving" and "plotlines", these games have sort of lost their allure. It really is a shame because I love button mashing. Kick, kick, kick, punch! I seriously have a blast, even with atrocious games like this one. That seems overly nice of me, but I have to admit I did have fun with Charlie's Angels.

Each mission features two levels, divided into three sections where you control each of the three Angels. I could refer to them by their character names, but I still have a hard enough time remembering which one is Natalie (Diaz), Dylan (Barrymore), and Alex (Liu). One day that information may benefit me on Jeopardy, but for the time being, it's virtually useless. So I think I'll just stick with the actresses' names. When using Cameron Diaz, the most effective attack maneuver is to just mash the punch button. She's quick enough to get her fists of fury going, and her kicking is arguably best, as it can hit multiple bad guys at a time. You can also push either of the attack buttons three times to pull off a combo that pretty much makes everybody explode like the 150 Agent Smiths in The Matrix Reloaded. Lucy Liu, whom I renamed Lucy Liu-Bot in light of the Futurama episode, is fairly weak, but at least she's quick. She can't knock over the bad guys as easily as Cameron Diaz. But at least she's not as bad as Drew Barrymore. Oh man, she just sucks. She may be the strongest but she's also about as slow as molasses, as such, is fairly incapable of pulling off combos, which is where most of the damage comes from.

As for the missions themselves, you run around as the Angels and basically beat up anybody who stands in your way. Some of them carry weapons (knives, grenades, ninja stars, pipes, ski poles) that you can pick up and use against them. Unfortunately these weapons just slow you down and don't really deal much more damage that your fists. There's a really cool move where you jump and then kick and you slowly fall to the ground kicking. It looks cool and knocks off about half the health of your opponent. It just lacks practicality and is nearly impossible to pull off in a combat situation because of the sluggishness of the gameplay. The game's AI also plays dirty. Sometimes it hurls grenades at you, which are near impossible to avoid. The bad guys typically gang up on you in groups of three to five (five starts making the framerate drop). There's a targeting function, which entails pushing R and then Z to switch targets. This is actually way more trouble than it's worth, and I prefer just to punch and kick and hope I hit something. At the end of the second level of every mission, you fight a boss. Since there's no ganging up from multiple enemies, these boss levels are actually the easiest in the game. What this game really could have used is a multiplayer mode. Everybody knows that beat-em-ups are ten times better with a friend. Needless to say, it was omitted and I can't rightly see why.

Visuals

Hmmmm...where to begin? How about with the N64 quality graphics? With so many jaggies lurking around the background, I'm beginning to think the PSX probably could have done better. And don't you think it's funny how the games with the worst graphics always have slowdown? It's simply inexcusable.

In the first level, all of the Angels fight in all their bikini glory which makes me think that perhaps they were trying to capitalize on the Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball audience. This would be all well and good; the trouble is that the graphics suck. Remember how we used to ogle over Lara Croft? The Angels pretty much look like that, but in today's world of videogame beauties, this simply will not do. Cut-scenes have slightly better graphics and are at least devoid of jaggies. The Angels still look nothing like their real-life counterparts. Their mouths don't move and they have painted on clothes. But hey, at least it doesn't have compression artifacts! Woohoo.

Audio

Audibly this game doesn't get much better. Though the three Angels reprised their roles, they have the collective vocal acting ability of a brick. It's very stilted and makes me think that Diaz, Barrymore, and Liu just did it because they were under contractual obligation. They didn't care at all. Though that could be partially attributed to the writing.

In the actual game environment, each Angel has only one hitting sounds and another sound for when they're hit. Diaz's particularly annoys me. It is pretty much, "Hoooo." It gets annoying constantly hearing that. Every now and then, Barrymore will utter a, "And that's kicking your ass," an obvious homage to the same line in the first movie. Problem is that she says it very monotone with no excitement. I would have preferred a sound grab from the movie, at least.

This game gets an N-Philes score of F.

Okay, I will admit that I did have some fun with Charlie's Angels as I am a sucker for beat-em-up titles. The game is shoddily put together, graphically ugly, and sometimes difficult to play because of game mechanics and cheap AI. I honestly don't see why there would be enough demand for the Charlie's Angels videogame, but I can't recommend this game in any respect unless you're really into making fun of videogames. That at least made the journey somewhat more enjoyable.

Posted in: Reviews

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