Bad Boys - Miami Takedown

The best idea in this tie-in is that you are never alone in the room. Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett share every level, and the game is built so a second player can take one of them while the computer handles the other. That co-op structure is the one thing that makes the license feel purposeful rather than pasted on.

Miami Takedown arrived in 2004, loosely following the Bad Boys II era of the franchise, and it plays as a third-person shooter with a lock-on system, cover to hide behind and a steady supply of gunmen who stand where the designers put them. Environments lean on the bright, hard-edged look of the films, and the voice work and banter are there to remind you whose name is on the box. I would not call the shooting precise. Aiming is mostly a matter of holding the lock and letting the game do the arithmetic.

That is both its limit and its charm. Levels run in short, mission-like stretches, and the firefights are repetitive enough that you stop thinking about tactics fairly quickly. Played alone, it is an average, somewhat plodding action game with a famous pair of faces. Played with a friend on the couch, the repetition becomes background noise, and the cheerful bickering carries the session.

The PS2 was crowded with movie licenses in this period, and most of them were rushed out to meet a release window. This one is competent rather than inspired, which in that economy counts for something. It does not embarrass its source material, and it does not transcend it either.

What holds up is the idea of the partnership. Plenty of shooters of the time handed you a lone hero and a long corridor. This one, flawed as it is, remembers that the appeal of these characters was always the two of them, and it is at its best when two people are on the sofa playing along.