G R A P H I C S
Horrible, horrendous, disgusting, apalling, offensive; all these words can be used to describe the Charlie's Angels game on GameCube. These graphics are worse than some N64 games. It really is almost dissing every next-gen system it made its way onto. I mean, this is really just POOR. The animation is just awful - I would be die of laughter if I ever saw anyone running this way. Not only does it look rediculously unrealistic, it's choppy and spastic. Your character turns around immediately without actually turning around. The lighting effects don't exist, aside from some so-called "particle effects" that show up when you perform a combo. The shadows are just darker shades of the same color pasted onto the texture itself; there aren't really any actual shadow effects here. Textures are just huge pixels shoved together and pasted onto the cliff, floor, wall, or whatever else they felt needed some covering. In addition to being just plain ugly, the textures are blurry and the objects they cover are chunky and have sharp edges. The angels just look atrocious. Their hair is just an object glued to their head, and there are sections of it you can see through... which, if you look at anyone's hair, doesn't happen too often. Honestly, I really don't see how these graphics could be much worse unless they didn't exist.

G A M E P L A Y
Have you ever played those games where it's just all the action repeated over and over and over? Where you're doing the same exact thing through the whole game? Where there's no plot? Well, if you've played Charlie's Angels, you've played one of those games. The plot is non-existant. It's just a string of random terrorist attacks you need to stop, or people you need to find. When you finish the level, the game doesn't show you how you complete the mission, obtain the data, leave the level, or anything important like that. You just appear back in a room where a Bernie Mac-wannabe, the three angels, and Charlie's voice reside (one of them through a speaker). Of course, this isn't nearly the worst part of the gameplay. You can have a horrible plot and a great game. Or a great plot and a horrible game. This is neither of these two options -- it' both a horrible plot and a horrible game. This gameplay is just rediculously repetitive. You run around, hit an invisible wall, find the guy you need to fight, beat him up with a kick, kick, puch, kick, punch, punch, and you move on to the next little arena surrounded by invisible walls. Want to go back? Realized you left a +1 life item back there? That's too bad. You can't go back any farther than your most recent fighting arena-thing. Which is incredibly annoying. But aside from that, this gameplay is the same thing over and over. There's nothing you can do except kick, punch, perform "combos," and that's about it. It seems they spent most of their time coming up with names for the baddies, which displays at the bottom right of the screen. The bad guys are also way out of context, mostly. For example, you often see sailors, repairmen, army officials and more all fighting against you at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The items you pick up also don't make any sense. Picking up a CD, a cupcake, and many more things, all give you more life, and most don't have anything to do with food or anything that would make any sense giving you health. There are plenty of other annoyances as well, such as ladders that are insanely long, take forever, and could be much, much shorter. You don't want to buy this game.

C O N T R O L
You're probably expecting that this is one of those games where you can't move the camera. And one of those games where the C-Stick does nothing. Well, you're right once again. There's absolutely no camera control, and it seems the developers have chosen just about the worst camera angle possible in just about every situation. In todays gaming, there's no excuse not to have camera controls. At all. They're pretty much necessary these days. Other than that, the controls aren't all that bad, although they're not very good either. The button assignments make sense -- A is action, B is jump, X is kick and Y is punch. However, the actions are chunky and the controls are sometimes unresponsive. When you press A to pick up a knife or wrench that someone has dropped, the angel doesn't always respond. Especially when an enemy is near you, picking up the weapon just isn't possible. And there's no reason for this. (By the way, when you do succeed in picking up an item, the angel never reaches in the right place for it. I've seen her plant her hand about 2 feet away from the item and it just appears in her hand when she stands up.) There's also the complaint that the control is too insensitive. The angels only have 2 speeds - walk and run - and this is another thing that is just too primitive for today's games. There's no reason not to have many more levels of speed than this. The most annoying thing here is the absence of the camera, which is inexcusable. It was just faster to make this cheap game without one.

S O U N D
The sound in this game happens to be one of the best things about it. But then again, that isn't saying very much at all. There are voice-overs in he game, and suprisingly enough, they're actually performed by the actresses who played the angels themselves (who would be Drew Barrmore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz). There are cut-scenes in the game which involve conversations by them, but they only have one or two lines during actual gameplay. And they get repetitive. The sounds that come out of the angels (as in the grunts, ows, oofs, etc) sound nothing like the actresses. The makers obviously added some unofficially angel sounds later. The music in the game isn't bad, and each angel has their own track that loops continuously (Dylan's is the best). When the track ends, there is silence for about 2-3 seconds. It's a poor job of merging the beginning with the end. In addition, there's so much repetition here (only 3 songs throughout the whole game) that you get tired of all of them within about 15 minutes. The sound effects aren't great. Again, the problem here is repetition. For wrenches and knives and poles, there's only one clanking sound.

O V E R A L L
Don't buy this game. Don't rent it. Make your friend rent it and either laugh, cry, or puke at how sad this game is. Ubi Soft should be ashamed. I don't think this game can really count against them. In my opinion every game company gets 3 bad movie-into-crapgame games, so this is #1 for Ubi. (Unless I've missed another one from them...)

S C O R E
Graphics - 1.2
Gameplay - 2.3
Control - 3.9
Sound - 4.7
Overall - 3.0