If you missed the announcement that Apocalypsegeddon was now available across a variety of digital services, you weren’t alone. It’s less of an issue of marketing and more of the fact that the game is based on a niche Comedy Central animated property. If you were curious about what direction the game could take the Ugly Americans property, then you’d best consider yourself as part of an even more exclusive group.
And, if you managed to play through the game and enjoy it, then your group is so small that you’re probably the only person in it. That is unless that group likes a lot of needless repetition, because that’s all you’d get with the game.
Ugly Americans is an interesting idea for a television show, and brings to animated life a world similar to the comics of the Fables series. The game takes place on the eve of the Apocalypse, as imbecilic demons and zombies rise up and roam the streets. The premise to this dual-stick shooter is pretty typical: choose from one of four playable characters and save the planet, with some cut scenes and boss battles scattered along the way.
The game is divided up into short side-scrolling levels, has several weapons, RPG-lite stat improvements, and is best played co-op with up to 3 other people, online or on the couch. The game’s marketing materials note that the developers had thoughts of Castle Crashers and classic Gauntlet matches when creating Apocalypsegeddon, with the hopes that players would discuss strategies to completing levels and maintaining replayability.
The game plays well, with the action moving at a tolerable pace and the enjoyable boss battles being challenging enough without frustrating. Cell-shaded visuals capture the look and feel of the cartoon, and the constant cussing — yes, there is almost too much for even an adult — brings a childish chuckle once in a while. I found that the game played best in bites, with 2-3 levels going down in each sitting.
In short, there’s plenty here that the game does right.
However there’s also one big, giant thing that the game does absolutely wrong: it’s pitifully repetitive.
It starts with the character designs. They all have the same abilities and only have mildly different stat adjustments. Though there seems to be hundreds of weapons, they’re all just color or shape variations of 3 types or so. The level design is repetitive, utilizing not just the same assets but often entire areas.
The real kicker, however, is the gameplay. Shoot zombie, run to avoid zombie, shoot zombie, run to avoid zombie. Everything moves left to right through hordes of demons with no puzzles to solve or strategies to employ. It’s just shoot, shoot, shoot, and it got tedious for me very quickly. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t play for more than 15 minutes at a time, as I couldn’t stand the game any longer than that.
I managed to get my wife to play couch co-op with me for a few stages, and then switched to online partners for a few more. I ended up completing the game in single-player, and only because I had to… not because I wanted to. After playing and enjoying the first level of the game, there really wasn’t anything new to bring me back for the remaining stages, apart from an achievement or two. In fact, I needed to grind way too much and backtrack through already mind-numbing stages to have my character powerful enough (I was playing as Leonard, the drunken wizard) to beat the final boss.
It’s a shame. All of the elements of a fun experience are here, except for interesting gameplay. Apart from the first 15 minutes, the game really isn’t all that fun.
Apocalypsegeddon was missed by a lot of gamers, and it should probably stay that way.
This review was based on a copy of the game sent to SideQuesting by the publisher.
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