xXx

The Good
There are many different games inspired by movies. Every time that one important film is going to be produced a game goes hand in hand with it and it's usually released in all the platforms available. Something curious happens with this kind of games. The best platforms, with better graphics and possibilities has the worst inspired by movies games with no doubt. There are many games in the older systems inspired by movies which are really good (not all of them, but we have many), but when they jumped to the 3D era something changed. 16-Bit systems has many games remarkable, but the next generations systems has no remarkable games inspired by movies.

xXx for GBA is a good action game, with no pretensions apart from entertainment. It's a really simple action game with nothing remarkable which works very well. It's not the best action game out there, but it's good anyway for spending some time without thinking how to solve puzzles or how to kill some enemies. You only start your game and start killing people, maybe looking for the mission objectives but just killing anything you see on your screen. You don't need to study your enemies and you don't have to kill them making special things (not even the big boss at the end of the game), you just press your trigger and your weapon will talk for you (and it won't say kind words), nothing more. As simple as funny.

There are two kind of games, the first one is an action game (with some platform elements) and the second one is a... race game? Well, maybe "race action game" is better, arcade racing or something like that. The first time that you face a level like this (mission 3 if I'm not wrong) you will pause, take the phone and call the one who sold you this game: "What the Hell? Why did you sell me Road Rash?". This levels are a clone of the popular (some time ago) Road Rash games. Anyway, they're funny and makes the game more dynamic. Now you don't have to kill enemies all the time just using your weapon... now you can face and kill them by pushing them to the traffic cars in the road (and it's rush hour!) or just kicking them out of the road. Be careful because they want to do exactly the same to you... What's really good is the fact that there is no time limit to finish this levels, you just depend on your fuel. You'll just need to take some fuel tanks during your ride and be care of your bike, nothing more.

You have many weapons, all of them really useful and you can use grenades too which are effective. The game is difficult and long enough (12 missions with 3 races), maybe you'll have to repeat some missions to finish the game, but nothing important. There are many enemies too, as well as mines, laser beams and other traps.

Music's good as well as FX, the pictures of the beginning and ending are originals, like a comic book or something, which makes the game more special.

The Bad
It's just an action game, nothing more. Don't expect anything of it.

There are some gameplay problems controlling X, one of them is a classic of this kind of games: The diagonal shoots. It's hard to shoot in diagonal in this game and you'll be killed many times because of that and turrets will be one of the strongest enemies in the game. Some enemies' shots are just impossible to evade, but there are some med-kits during the levels which will help you. Sometimes you'll be frustrated because X's hard to control, if you're shooting and you want to crouch, maybe he will just point down and nothing more, you have to stop shooting, press down and then start shooting again. It's not necessary to talk about how difficult could be to shoot to the diagonals down-right and down-left...

The game has 12 levels and 3 of them are racing levels but it could be a little repetitive. Levels aren't long, but it's the same all the time, killing enemies and taking objects/pushing switches from the beginning to its end. It's not replayable because you only have one difficult level and no extra things to do.

The Bottom Line
xXx's a good game but nothing more, combining a classic action game with some "bonus" levels like the Road Rash games. Take your weapon and prepare to face an irregular control system which is more fearsome than the enemies of the game. Finish it once and probably you'll forget it for the rest of your life, but it's not a waste of time.