I’m sure every one of us out there has woken up on the wrong side of the bed and the day just went down hill from there. Bad Day LA takes that to the extreme as you take the role of a homeless person named Anthony who is minding his business one morning while trying to cross a freeway. As he is making his way across traffic with his shopping cart, some terrorists in a jumbo jet loaded with unknown biological agents crash into a nearby overpass. From this point on, at 8am to 6pm, Anthony’s day and just about every single person in LA, embark on a very bad day. Bad Day LA comes from American McGee, the brain child behind Alice, the twisted take on Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland as well as some of the most memorable levels created for DOOM II, Quake and Quake 2. With some top notch titles involving his work under his belt, Bad Day LA was set to have some promise as a unique game, both visually and functionally.

As soon as the opening scene starts, you realize that this game may not be quite what you were expecting. Once the jet crashes into the over pass ahead of you on the freeway, you are set on your way to helping those in car accidents, on fire and those who have been turned into zombies (yep zombies) by the unknown chemicals. As you talk to certain people, you learn that you can heal others with bandages that you find, whack people and barriers with tire irons and you can use a fire extinguisher to put out fires – both on people and objects – and can even cure the zombies by giving them a little spritz of the foamy goodness from it. As you try to figure out what is happening, there are squirrels along the way that chitter out tips to give you a hand on your quest as well as friendly faces such as fire fighters and citizens that will help you and others. Soon enough, you find yourself facing off against terrorists and escorting a kid that continually pukes on everyone and everything.

From there on, you decide it’s time to get out of dodge and your goal is to get the hell out of L.A. The day gets even worse as you continue your quest, but you find more help along the way in the form of friends and weapons. Others that you find to help out in trying to get away from LA are a Mexican named Juan, a stumpy soldier loveably named Sergeant and a Brittney Spears wannabe named Beverly. Each of these will follow you as you meet them and you can switch between each depending on who you want to follow you, helping you on your quests. Some of the weapons you’ll stumble upon are an AK-47, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, flame thrower and nail clippers. Yes, nail clippers, which by all intents and purposes is a contemptuous jab at airlines fearing them as weapons. With all the high-end weaponry (nail clippers excluded) it makes you wonder if the game is just that ridiculous where a homeless person would be that familiar and proficient with all these weapons, but in time you learn not everything is as it seems. As you continue through gang wars, earthquakes, train wrecks, a tsunami, plane crashes and just about every other disaster you can think of, there are plenty of power ups and trinkets to help get you by. Big Gulps give you super health, porn magazines give you a permanent health increase, burgers give you limited health and dog poo lets you smear it on yourself so that people stay away from you. Feel free to read that last part again.

The dog poo power up and the nail clipper weapon are just the tip of the tasteless and over the top iceberg however. The dialogue of the game is some of the most crass you will come across. Racial slurs are spouted out as often as introductions at an AA meeting and digs at the US government are apparent from the get go - since Homeland Security is known as Homeland Control and their slogan is “be good sheeple”. Swearing and cussing is no more than an after thought considering most of the dialogue and just about every stereotype imaginable is represented for blacks, whites, Mexicans, and government agents. Aside from the boorish and callous conversations, the game play is just as coarse. As you make your way through the city, you have a threat advisory system which indicates your terror level. As you heal or hurt people, you will gain frownies or smilies depending on your actions. As you hurt or do wrong to people who are undeserving, you will gain frownies causing your threat level to rise and other people on the street will turn on you. You can counter this by healing people with your bandages, putting out fires, curing zombies, killing baddies or picking up an American flag.

Each level will have objectives that you need to complete which unwaveringly range from healing a certain number of people and killing a certain number of enemies. There are side quests along the way like rescuing “people” from burning homes or rescuing civilians that have gotten themselves in trouble, but the main objective of each level is to find a mode of transportation to get out of L.A. As you make your way through various sections of Los Angeles, each will have their own enemies and citizens ranging from gang members, terrorists, zombies, soldiers, bank robbers and worried parents. There really isn’t much in ways of variation to who you have to deal with, but the boss battles are as unique as the game is. The movie theater manager who has movie goers chained to the wall with their crimes scrawled below them stands out as one of the more humorous parts of the game and if it had maintained that level, the game would have been a little more tolerable. Some levels such as the airport are just useless to have included and really serve no purpose other than try and portray some absurd humor that falls short of its mark.

The graphics of the game are probably the most noticeable feature of the game. Being in a cel shaded design that isn’t a typical cartoonish style, it’s more a comical or drawn cel shading where characters look like blow up dolls rather then cel shaded conventional cartoons. It’s a love it or leave it design and some may be totally turned off by it and some may find its uniqueness commendable. Blood splatters are like blobs of goo as are bodies that gib into large chunks of meat. The entire game is done in that style, from the environments to the cutscenes and although it is a different visual style, unfortunately there is no option to change the resolution of the display, so it will look different to different people. The audio dialogue of the game is as up and down as the humor is. Most of the time the voiceovers are clear and crisp but once in a while, some voices sound like they were phoned in because the actor couldn’t make it to the studio.

Although it may seem cartoony and silly, the game is no walk in the park by any means. With a few difficulty settings to choose from, even the easiest setting will give you troubles sometimes. This is a trend through out the game, where it has its high and it has its lows, unfortunately the lows far out weigh the highs. The game can be completed in one sitting if you can bring yourself to sit in front of it for that long and for some reason, even though the game really is pretty short, the monotonous of it makes it drag on and on. Just when you think it’s over, another disaster strikes and off you go again. Thankfully it does eventually end but not before you slaughter countless gang members and kill or cure an ungodly amount of zombies. Bad Day LA is definitely not for everyone and could be far a few between for anyone. If the game added a little more side missions that weren’t so repetitive, a lot less curing zombies and healing folks, and toned down the stereotyping racial humor, the game could have been fun to take a run through. Unfortunately, it’s the exact opposite of that.