I've never been one to deny that a good amount of what tickles my funny bone generally registers below the line of decency and intelligence. I have a college degree - I can laugh at anything I damn well please! (Sound logic, right?) That means Jackass falls right into my wheelhouse, as its mix of stupidity, pain and pranks has always had me in stitches - be it the TV show, movies or various spin-offs. But a videogame - somehow, that just doesn't sound all that, well, amusing; and, for the most part, it isn't. Lacking the teeth-gritting pain and idiotic spontaneity of the show, Jackass: the Game quickly burns down to a decent, but ultimately forgettable, clump of mini-games that fail to capture or epitomize what made the franchise as popular as still is today.

That's not to say that Jackass the Game is a bad game though - far from it. Each of the mini-games, which bounce around from painful to moronic in concept, have enough playability to hold the attention span of most players for at least a few tries. The presentation is more than acceptable, with detailed character models (environments could have used the same eye for detail), a licensed soundtrack mostly made up of the skate punk and random oddities the series is known for and amusing FMV (the ending video is absolutely hilarious, if not totally disgusting). Most of the main stars of the show were on hand to lend their voices to the cut scenes, though the in-game voices at times seem to be, strangely enough, recast. The premise of the game, which has players filming scenes for the next season of Jackass, is an excellent idea to develop a Jackass game around and one of the only ones that doesn't cause immediate moans and groans from all that hear about it.

But when it came to executing what sounded good on in pre-production, somewhere along the way developers Sidhe Interactive fell off track. Start with the premise - putting together your own Jackass episodes is one of the best ideas you could come up with when it comes to making a videogame based on this license. Yet, the main mode of single player - story mode - has very little to do with that, despite what any of the cut scenes and answering machine messages say. By 'filming,' the game actually means playing through a cadre of mini-games and saving the replays (or in some cases the last portion of a replay) to edit into an 'episode' of Jackass outside of story mode, in a completely optional portion of the game and only if you own the PSP version. What seems to have been an integral part of the gameplay at some point ends up as nothing more than a slightly intriguing extra.

Now, if the mini-games provided more than a few tries worth of entertainment then this blow to playability might not feel as harsh. However, while each of the thirty-five mini-games has been soundly developed, featuring solid (though at times loose) controls, clear objectives and lowbrow humor, there is just something missing. For starters, the difficulty bar is set as low as Wee-man is tall, making it possible to achieve all the objectives in most of the mini-games in a few tries, even the more difficult versions in Challenge mode. Then there are the repeating game types, which result in far too many games landing into the 'racing' category. Finally, if you think of these mini-games in the sense of "if these were actually show bits, would I want to watch them?" the answer is far too often a disappointing "no." If Jackass was a show about rolling down hills in different climates and surfaces, with a sprinkling of rooftop racing, it wouldn't have lasted long enough for anyone to even think of making it into a game. Where is overflowing amount of wanton violence, moral debauchery and expelling of bodily fluids the series was built upon?

When it comes to lasting appeal, your choice of system can greatly affect your choice, as each has their own features or lack thereof. In a puzzling move, the PSP version of the game ends up having the more robust package of options, as it not only has online multiplayer but also the aforementioned video editor and downloadable content. The video editor isn't as deep as it could be, but it gets the job done, giving players tools to toggle between different preset cameras, speed up or slow down footage, pan and tilt, lock-on target and zoom. Once you have an episode put together, you can upload your creation to the net for sharing and rating; or if you'd rather just watch, you can download and rate the episodes of others. As of the moment this review has reached the masses, the only downloadable content is in the form of user-created episodes, but the manual promises new stunts for download in the future! The PS2 version, on the other hand, has only one feature, maybe, to make up for what its lacking when compared to its portable brother - the ability to play multiplayer, or pass the controller single player on a bigger screen (if you have a PSP Slim then even this option is moot). The game does score respectively on the 'pass the controller around' front, but trying that on the PSP itself isn't all that fun. If you find the gameplay engaging enough, the tools are there on the PSP version to increase your time with the game tenfold, while this is not the case on PS2. With both games at the same price point, I don't think I need to point out which title provides more bang for the buck.

I feel bad for railing on Jackass: the Game this much, as from a purely gaming perspective, it is not only playable, but at times mildly amusing and wholly enjoyable. But at the same time, as a Jackass game, it fails at replicating the experience of even just watching an episode of the show, let alone interacting with it. The idea of a Jackass game is one that I can see being a highly successful if the concept of developing television episodes is fully pursued, but as a mini-game collection, what we've got is about as good as that idea could pan out. Purveyors of Jackass or lowbrow humor may find a way to justify a purchase, but everyone else should keep their curiosity curbed to a rental.

Reviewed by Tony Peters for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).