Following on the success of 2009’s excellent South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! , another Comedy Central cartoon gets the videogame treatment in the form of Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon. Ugly Americans is a bizarre animated comedy for adults that airs during Comedy Central’s Adult Swim programming block. The show takes place in an alternate universe version of New York in which humans, wizards, zombies, demons, and myriad other monsters all live together in relative harmony. Sounds like the perfect setting for a game, does it not?
A recurring theme on the show is that demons constantly try (and fail) to bring about the apocalypse and the end of humanity. It’s a cultural thing! That also happens to be the premise of the game. Super hot demon lady Callie Maggotbone’s father enlists the help of a new female demon (created just for the game) in a plot to bring about the end of days. This causes New York’s rabble – hordes of man birds, zombies, and demons to run amuck. The task of stopping it all falls on the shoulders of the always vigilant members of the Department of Immigration.
Four of the show’s main characters are playable: Mark, the ever-optimistic social worker and most normal member of the cast; Callie, Mark’s girlfriend and boss at the DOI; Frank Grimes, the immigrant-hating head of DOI’s Law Enforcement division; and Leonard Powers, Mark’s centuries old-magician, slacker, and alcoholic coworker. (Sadly, Mark’s zombie roommate Randall doesn’t make an appearance, presumably since he doesn’t work for the DOI.) Each character has unique stats, special moves, and weapon proficiencies, differentiating them as much as a twin-stick shooters calls for.
Yes, Apocalypsegeddon is a twin-stick shooter, though it feels different from most. The heroes must tackle 8 standard levels and three boss levels in their quest to maintain the status quo. The level design is reminiscent of beat-em-ups like Double Dragon, with players running from left to right, encountering groups of enemies, and then moving on. It works pretty well, though the actual level layouts are rather mundane and too-similar to each other.
Dotting the landscape of each stage are numerous breakable objects like trash bags and hot dog carts. They may contain money (used to purchase extras from the shop), or weapons. Every level offers 3-4 unique projectile weapons, such as Boomerangs, Magic 8-Balls, and demon Mating Bones (!). Their firing patterns, rates, and damage all vary, plus every weapon gets special bonuses like extra damage or homing when wielded by one or two specific characters. Players can even swap weapons among themselves, making it easier to collect them all.
Destructible objects sometimes drop rare items too. Each of the game’s 8 main levels hides a case file that Leonard carelessly tossed away in favor of more drinkin’. The catch is that whether they appear or not is random, so it may take several visits to each level to find its file. Plus only the player who collects the file keeps it, meaning it’s easier to hunt for them on your own. Collecting all the files unlocks new extras in the shop as well as four special, super powerful weapons. Once you get the special weapons, there’s little reason to go back to the regular ones, but I enjoyed finding them all my first time out.
Level 5 introduces a new rare collectible: demon babies. At the start of the level, the DOI team finds Dante, the baby whose father tried to sell him off in the show. Pick him up and beat the level to unlock not only an avatar award, but the ability to find more babies. Note that only one player gets the baby per visit to the level, so you may need to visit it more than once. The remaining three babies randomly appear in past levels, thankfully marked on the map with a demon baby icon. Carrying a baby provides different stat bonuses, like making pickups last longer or increasing XP gains.
Ugly Americans’ RPG elements add some depth and customization to the chaos. Killing enemies earns XP, allowing gamers to level up between levels. For every level gained, you get to distribute one attribute point to strength, life, speed, special move recharge, and other stats. Reaching the maximum level of 60 in the XBLA version unlocks an avatar T-shirt. It also activates a bug that causes the game to slow down or lag intermittently, which the developers will hopefully fix soon. While there’s no real incentive to max out every character, doing so will greatly extend the playtime for serious fans of the game.
The level 60 slowdown bug is only one of several rough edges that betray the game’s budget roots. While South Park: LGTDP! perfectly captured the look of its show, the 3D cel-shaded graphics of Ugly Americans come across as cheaper and uglier than the actual cartoon. It’s far from unacceptable, but people who don’t already like the show might not give such an ugly game a chance.
Sound is a mixed bag as well. On the plus side, all of the characters are voiced by the show’s voice actors. However, the enemies (of which there are only four types) repeat the same few voice samples way, way too frequently. The man birds’ sayings in particular consist entirely of stupid and asinine sexual insults – think Jerky Boys as opposed to Monty Python. I wish we could turn off only the man birds’ voices, I hate them so much. In short, a greater variety of enemies who speak less frequently would improve the game a fair deal.
What balances out all of minor flaws? Why co-op, of course! Ugly Americans supports four-player co-op with any combination of local and online players. Online or off, everyone is restricted to the same screen. Players can’t pick the same characters as each other. It might seem like a downer having to sit out your leveled character because someone else chose him or her, but you do keep access to unlocked weapons even when switching characters, so even a level 1 character shouldn’t necessarily be too underpowered.
Multiplayer adds a lot of fun to the game, creating a ton of visual chaos as projectiles and enemies flood the screen. If someone gets knocked out, another player just needs to press a button and revive the poor unfortunate. Naturally, there is an Achievement for doing so 50 times. Players will also need to go through the game online in order to get an Achievement, though all the rest can be done locally. The only real downside to playing the game online is that players can’t drop-in to existing games; if you’re in the middle of a game and a friend wants to join, you’ll have to finish the level and exit the game before sending the invite.
Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon may not reach the sublime heights of the last South Park game, but it’s still a good, unique twin-stick shooter. As a single-player game, it pretty’s challenging as enemies can overwhelm the player, and bosses have a ton of life. Nothing a little grinding can’t fix; after all, the character leveling system is fantastic. Multiplayer really makes the game come to life, speeding up the pace as gamers team up against crazy swarms of ne’er-do-wells. Factor in the unlockable extras like two avatar awards (a demon baby and a shirt), a full, hilarious episode of the show (“G.I. Twain”), deleted scenes, and plenty of concept art, and it’s a package that Adult Swim lovers dare not resist. Twin-stick shooter enthusiasts who haven’t seen the show shouldn’t have a hard time getting into Apocalypsegeddon either, provided they bring along a partner or two for the ride.