XXX: State of the Union is yet another movie-licensed mobile game that outdoes its source material in the entertainment department. In this case, however, that isn't saying much. In State of the Union, you control Darius Stone, the new clandestine "XXX" agent (sent on a top secret mission in lieu of Vin Diesel's XXX) played by Ice Cube. In spite of its dependence on a terrible franchise and some minor control problems, the gameplay is not that bad, and it's pretty faithful to the mind-set of the film--to whatever extent that is possible.
In State of the Union, you navigate XXX through a 2D side-scrolling environment, largely composed of warehouses, to defeat a villain named Bama who aims to infiltrate the Capitol in Washington, DC. Along the way, you collect an assortment of weapons, health, ammunition, armor, and keycards, and you encounter moving platforms and walkways. Most of the gameplay consists of simple platforming over boxes and stacks of tires, shooting generic thugs along the way. On each level, you're typically looking for a keycard to unlock the next area, but on occasion your goal is more specific--like hacking a computer system to reveal Bama's evil intentions. All of these events are context sensitive, so you need only to press the action button to initiate any kind of interaction.
The game is technically 2.5D, meaning that you can maneuver up and down within the screen, but most of the progression takes place from left to right. Moving within your depth field is important, because it allows you to position yourself appropriately among boxes so that you can jump between them. Since you can only jump up to the height of a single box, and you can't jump in more than two directions, there is exactly one path that you can take on any given portion of the level. The rigidity of the controls, as well as the general feel of executing jumps (XXX has a very lateral jump, which often means you have to back away from a box a bit in order to hurdle it), hinders the game quite a bit. Although there's nothing inherently wrong with the scheme, the clunky controls make the platforming tiresome. This is compounded by having to manually switch between weapons when you run out of ammunition, which often eats up valuable time that would have been better spent killing bad guys.
There are quite a few weapons to pick up throughout the game (including a shotgun, Uzi, flamethrower, and rocket launcher), and plenty of ammunition, as long as you're not playing on the most difficult level. This works well, because your ammunition runs out fairly quickly. A problem arises when you have to switch between weapons, especially since you can't do it while moving. An effective quickswitch method, or the ability to default to the weapon with the most ammo, would have made for a considerable improvement. Thankfully, the game targets enemies for you and generally picks out the one who poses the greatest threat. You can remove yourself from their sight and switch weapons if necessary, but unless you're fighting three or more at a time, the enemies don't do that much damage.
The visuals portray a fairly accurate likeness to the movie's characters. For instance, the tiny avatar seems to embody Darius' sneer, even if he moves with much less grace than a top secret FBI agent would. Even though the environments don't vary much and don't really evoke the warehouse atmosphere, they are, at the very least, alive with exploding barrels and moving conveyer belts. As you tear through people with your various weapons, you'll encounter different sound effects for each one, which is a nice touch, even if all of the sounds are scratchy and subpar. The front-end music could have easily been used for a porn soundtrack, which could be an understandable mix-up resulting from the game's racy title.
However, there is little that is sexy about this XXX. He's more laughable than sinister, especially when he shouts insults at dying enemies, such as "I run the lead!" While it's not a terrible action game, the license gives XXX little to work with, and there are a few control annoyances that will pop up now and then. If you're one of the movie's very few fans, you might enjoy this one for a few hours. Otherwise, look elsewhere.
