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Review

Sep 07, 2011

Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon Review

Lights Off
3 Okay
Retails for: $9.99
We Recommend: $6.99
  • Developer: Backbone Entertainment
  • Publisher: 345 Games
  • Genre: Action
  • Released: Aug 30, 2011
  • Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
  • Reviewed: Xbox 360

During the process of me downloading Ugly Americans : Apocalypsegeddon, a couple of ideas of the game came to mind. First I taught that the game was going to be about a bunch of ugly-looking people eating a ton of burgers invading the universe. The other idea was that the game would be about just killing everything in sight and we would be playing a some ugly people. Well after I got to play the game for a bit I realised that my second idea was not really that far off. Ugly Americans is an animated cartoon show featured on the Comedy Network. The game features four of the main characters from the series: Mark, Callie, Leonard and Lt. Grimes.

The game looks good, that being said there is nothing that makes it jaw dropping. The game has a cell-shaded look that is used to resemble the cartoon series that it’s based on. The game is very colorful and you will be impressed by number of enemies that can be on-screen at once without any major frame-rate issues. One of the weak points of the game is that the enemies look all the same and that they repeat the same sentences all the time, which after a while it really starts to become annoying. The same can be said for the main characters who will often repeat the same catch phrases after they kill an enemy or even when you pick up a new weapon. In the end, the game looks fine for an arcade title, but it does not compare to some of the gems we have seen this year on XBLA and PSN.

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The gameplay reminds me of a mix of Smash TV and Castle Crashers. The controls are very simple and anyone can just jump in and play. You use the left stick to move your character and the right stick to shoot the hundreds of zombies, birds and devils that you will encounter in the game. The controls feel great and there are no noticeable issues. The only draw of having a basic control scheme is that the game is somewhat basic as well. During the game you will be asked to shoot everything in sight, using anything from gasoline tanks to golf balls, without much purpose since the all the cut scenes can be skipped and for a person like me who does not even follow the show, they don’t make that much sense anyways. when you chose to star a game you will be asked to pick one of the four characters and they all have different stats. They go from strength, health and speed. Every time you level up, which you do by shooting the living hell out of everyone, you will have the opportunity to put points into what ever category you want. The only difference between the characters is that their maximums in each category is different for each one of them. After you have selected you character, you will start a game, but if you did not notice the game will automatically search for an online game for you to join. My only problem with that, is that the game does not seem to try to match you with people who are at the same level as you. In my experience playing the game, I joined an online game at started at level 7 which is pretty high considering that the game has only 10 levels. One thing that was nice tought, is that the people with who I was playing with were nice enough to give me some of the most powerful weapons to when I decided to play alone I would completely destroy the first few levels. Even if you start an online game on a random level, it does not really affect the story of even my appreciation of the game since the game’s story is not very present anyways.

In the end, Ugly Americans is game that is best suited to be played with your real friends or if you don’t have real friends you can play over Xbox Live or Playstation Network. The game is not made to be played alone since the enemy scaling is pretty poor, so if you are by yourself get ready to be bombarded with enemies all over the screen. The games lack of story and somewhat disappointing sound makes Ugly Americans a game that I will only be coming back to play with friends when we need a four player co-op shooter to play. Don’t get me wrong the game is really fun to play when you are among friends, but the fact that you need other people around you to play is something that makes me think that the game won’t last very long, since it is really hard to get a game going on Xbox Live. If you want a casual dual-joystick shooter to play with your buddies than I recommend you take a look at Ugly Americans: Apocalyspegddon.

An XBLA code for the game was provided by PR for Review purposes