Crime Life: Gang Wars (Xbox, 2005)

So there I was walking down the street on my way to the mall, right, when I made brief eye contact with a homeless man named Crazy Nik. He caught my attention by using a Magical Traffic Cone as a megaphone; I'm no magician scientist, so I didn't object to its magical capabilities. As I turned, disengaging my eyes from his, an astonishing thing happened – Crazy Nik's Magical Traffic Cone transformed into a slick black steed! He galloped after me on this new metamorphosis, shouting, "Sir Henryald! Sir Henryald of the Berndabaum Faces! You have come back, sir!" Crazy Nik assured me that he would follow me anywhere, guarding me with his life. Thus began our journey together.

Throughout all the trials and tribulations we faced, Crazy Nik was my one true confidant. He was always there when I needed to clear a room with abnormally offensive body odor, and the guy had a seemingly endless supply of mustard packets. When we arrived at the mall, our differences suddenly revealed themselves; I don't have anything against picking through the garbage for pickles, but it's not something that I would do when Gamestop is across the plaza. We grew apart as each hour passed until finally we decided that the relationship was not meant to last and went our separate ways. Creative differences, he called it. Whatever the reason may be, I will never forget Crazy Nik and His Magical Traffic Cone.

The moral of the story I just shared with you is this: Even if you have a crazed, abnormally smelling bum that sings David Bowie songs as each of the seven dwarves while wantonly throwing mustard packets at passersby following you around, you will still be more accepted than if you openly admitted to playing Crime Life: Gang Wars.

To save you the sheer torture of actually holding the case, I will explain the basic premise of the game: You play as Tre, a racially confused new recruit in a gang called the "Outlawz", who must make a name for himself by getting in organized fights and being generally mischievous. Your rival gang named the "Headhunterz", headed by members of the rap group D-12, needs to be taught a lesson, and with the help of an expertly-designed four button combat system, you can do just that! That is, if you don't mind the graphics, which look marginally better than the vomit in 1999's 007: Tomorrow Never Dies.

This is no joke - every cutscene is prerendered, the graphics are intentionally blurry to compensate for atrocious character design, and it straight up looks like a PlayStation port. I was also not impressed with the combination of two attack buttons, one blocking button, and one button that builds up the adrenaline meter, which allows for a moronic instant kill (i.e. when you have a machete, you pick someone up over your head and poke them with it). I did mention that you do other mischievious things, which is true. There's no point in listin them, however, since they all end up in a huge gang fight; how can robbing a jewelry store get you in a bout of fisticuffs with ten enemies?

When the best thing in a video game is a poor soundtrack filled with garage sounding European hip-hop, it makes me wonder what orange net shirt-wearing David Hasselhoff fanatic watched the Swiss equivalent of Maury and decided to base a game on one of the guests. Do yourself a favor and get a restraining order on anyone who recommends this; chances are that if they enjoy it, they will also enjoy peeling off your face.