LucasArts announces Armed & Dangerous

It's been a while since LucasArts made a truly funny game (the last one was probably Grim Fandango), but it's good to see they haven't lost their desire to do so. Their latest attempt is an off-the-wall comedy shooter developed in conjunction with Giants developer Planet Moon for Xbox and PC. "Based on a true story", apparently, Armed & Dangerous is "a blast-happy action game about a smack-talking group of gun-toting rebels, a ridiculously impossible quest, and weapons that cause really, really big explosions."

Played in the first person (by the looks of it), A&Ders take on the role of Roman, a "cockney criminal mastermind" and leader of a ragtag group of accidental heroes known as the Lionhearts. Robin Hood wannabes the Lionhearts are comprised of Jonesy (a Scottish mole miner and demolition expert, described as acerbic, bitter, sarcastic and loyal), Q1-11 (an upper class, debonair eliminator droid and the group's muscle, er, thing, who attained self-awareness through his love of tea), and Rexus (a seer and sage who was reduced to a stinky unpleasant wreck of a man by tragic head trauma).

Roman and his crew are actually out on a mission to steal the Book of Rule (the world of Milola's most prized artefact), and are instead unwittingly drawn into a rebellion against its tyrannical ruler, King Forge, whose rule the book can undo. Journeying through the recently war-ravaged world's three countries (Midden, Forge and Armortia), the group will take on 21 missions set in five different environments (icy/snowy regions, mountains, woods, cliffs) fighting against half-man, half-animal Grunts, psychopathic eliminator druids, wall-smashing Goliaths, evil monks and wild twiglets (um). Their pains will be greatly eased by a collection of weapons to shame the average FPS, including the multiple death-dealing Cyclops Sniper Rifle, the four-way Vindaloo Rocket Launcher, and bombs of the Sticky and Topsy-Turvy variety. What's a Topsy-Turvy bomb? Well, it turns the world upside down momentarily.

It's going to take quite some doing to turn this Saturday morning cartoon of an idea into the kind of hilarious adventure we've long been yearning for LucasArts to produce, but as they say, if anyone can do it...

Jiminy! We also have some screenshots.