"Truly lethal"

First of all, let me state that I have never been a huge fan of the Lethal Weapon series. As a matter of fact, I hated all of them except maybe the fourth one, but that's probably because Jet Li is the bad guy in it. Those movies where cops amazingly have the time to talk about trivial matters while a psychopath is firing at them are just plain idiotic and fail to grab my almighty attention. Besides, I prefer when the bad guys win and that never happened in most movies I saw. But then, I haven't really seen a lot of movies either.

Anyway, my hate for the Lethal Weapon movies didn't prevent me from getting the game. I don't know, I was probably expecting that for once, the so-called producers would make a good game out of a movie. Of course, I could also have expected President Bush to become a pop singer while I was at it. Because, you see, Lethal Weapon, the game, is a complete waste of both money and time. Sure, it's not as bad as say, E.T. (which easily ranks among the worst NES titles of all time and it's not even due to lack of competition), but it's still a crappy title which will make you want to kill Gibson and Glover.

Lethal Weapon is not-so-surprisingly a beat/shoot-em-all title. Most of the time, you can toggle between your pistol and your fists. The pistol however uses ammunition. And ammunition is not infinite such that, if you let loose on the trigger, you will have to rely on your fists alone at one point. In addition, you can also pick up grenades before they explode and use them yourself. Don't ask me how the hell that is possible, just play the game and see for yourself. Of course, playing the game is also lethal to your grey cells but you asked for it !

Both Gibson and Glover appear in the game. To switch between them, all you need to do is approach the left edge of the screen until the cop you are currently controlling is out of view. He will then leave and be replaced by the other dude who was busy eating donuts and scratching his balls beforehand. Now, what is the purpose of this switching feature if both characters play alike ? Both use pistols if they have enough ammunition and both are equally crappy to control. The only change is that their life gauges are not shared and toggling between them at the right instant will allow you to survive but that isn't even necessary since the game is pathetically easy. The first time I played it, I changed characters only twice and that was just because I accidentally backtracked until Gibson or Glover disappeared.

Lethal Weapon is also easy, way too easy. There is no challenge whatsoever to the game. Most of the levels consist of shooting at mere puppets or unloading a couple of rounds in their already lifeless corpses. Each enemy has an AI of approximately 0.17 and takes 119.83 seconds to retaliate. Which, of course, is more than enough to allow you to unload your whole pistol while reading the first chapter of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Anyway, that only concerns most enemies. Because, you see, the producers though Gibson and Glover could handle everything and thought hard to make the game somewhat difficult. To no avail.

Half-way through any level, a helicopter suddenly appears and starts throwing bombs at you among other lousy bullets. You find out you cannot aim at it with your gun, so you are left to look for another way to defeat it since running away does not work (which is surprising because it does against the typical bad guys that abound in every freaking level). Putting your pistol aside, you realize you are left to rely on your fists only. Like Gray Fox would say, ''Only a fool trusts his life to a weapon !''. And he is right, Mr. Gray, and even more so when the said helicopter is destroyed in a single blow whereby you just jump and kick it. Yeah, talk about challenge ! Solid Snake would have loved to live in this world !

Moreover, this game is ugly. Just plain ugly ! Backgrounds consist of a few colors swapped together with a complete lack of details while the characters themselves strangely resemble puppets. The only thing that visually differentiates Gibson and Glover is the skin color. The side-scrolling beat-em-all is also unable to feature big opponents, only the lower part of the aforementioned helicopters is visible. As for bosses, well they are just palette swaps of normal opponents with a few tweaks thrown in to try and fool you. Hopefully, you're not that dumb.

As for sound, a few annoying themes try to add to the atmosphere of the game and obviously, this is a complete failure. They never suit the game and, instead, irritate you as the later levels do tend to get long. Sound effects comprise merely of gun-shots and weird sounds when any enemy dies but these can barely be heard which is really a good thing as there is nothing memorable in this title.

You know what ? Lethal Weapon is complete garbage. The only gamers who may get a kick out of it are the hardcore series fans but even to those, it is actually a weak way to try and get more money from some movies which were never interesting to begin with. For your own sake, leave this game alone ! Even Home Alone is better than this pile of junk (and that's mainly because it can a be tough game, something which Lethal Weapon does not even get close to).

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 07/04/02, Updated 11/09/02