Armed and Dangerous Xbox Review

"A good old fashioned challenging shooter, with FMV cut scenes that I actually wanted to watch."

I just finished playing through Armed and Dangerous on the Xbox.

A good old fashioned challenging shooter, with FMV cut scenes that I actually wanted to watch.

The levels are fairly short, some you can run through in 10 minutes, others half an hour or so. But some of them will take quite a few tries to actually complete.

Save points are represented by pubs where you can also pick up new weapons and load up on more ammo. You will also deplete the pub health if you wander in close to death. I don't know what happens if you do actually deplete the pub health, I never tried.

I normally skip FMV in modern games as it takes up too much of my time and adds no value. In Armed and Dangerous it is actually funny and I sat through it without complaint. I was actually annoyed at myself as I missed a couple of cut scenes by accidentally pressing start - I had to jump back to the options menu to watch them.

Some of the reviews suggest that the graphics aren't very good. I thought they were just fine and I had no problems with them and thought the whole game hung together well. I didn't encounter any gameplay bugs.

• metacritic reviews
• ign review

There were a few levels where I did have to consult this walkthrough, because they were annoyingly impossible. But most of the levels you can work through quite happily on your own.

You can gain an idea of the gameplay from youtube.

If you want an idea of the cut scenes then you can find those on YouTube, but I wouldn't watch it all as allowing them to creep up on you after completing a level provides a reassuringly silly form of validation.

You can pick up Armed and Dangerous on Amazon and Ebay pretty cheaply, I encourage you to do so.

Hints:

• Use the options to invert the controls
• If you see one of the hexagonal buildings, kill it, since it is a grunt garrison and they respawn
• Take the side paths when you see them
• Don't worry about your companions dying - they come back on the next level
• Use the rocket launcher to spot enemies in the distance, and take them out early
• When you find a gun emplacement, use it to shoot out the distance and try and take out a lot of later enemies early.
• If a sniper starts shooting at you when you are in a gun emplacement, get out quick and either kill them, or stop using the gun.
• If you have already saved at a pub and healed there, try not to wander back in on low health. All that will happen is that you save the game on a low health - far better to restart at the last save.
• Don't panic. You can usually clear the level by working through meticulously.
• Strafe frequently, you can avoid a lot of shots that way.
• If you run low on health and don't think, you can go forwards, try backtracking - you might find some health power-ups lying around. But you might also find some grunts coming in from the rear that you can kill and pick up health from them.
• Do walk around the back of buildings as you can find the tokens and rocket power ups that way.
• Surprisingly the tall towers and flying things don't need big weapons to kill them, sometimes the machine gun is a perfect weapon to use on them.
• If the grunts are in gun emplacements pointing away from you, ignore them. They won't come out, and they can't kill you. But you might be able to come back later and kill them for a much needed health pack.
• If you have the choice between rockets and sniper rifle, take the rockets because they will zoom in on snipers faster than you trying to shoot them.
• On the last level, the pub closest to the final bosses runs out of ammo pretty fast, so when you have the jetpack, just jump/fly back to the previous pub which doesn't run out of ammo.
• Use the secondary weapon often.