Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon

Killing is fun.  Well, in videogames at least.  In real-life, it seems unethical, in bad taste, and wrong.  Plus I'm sure it doesn't feel good to do it.  But videogames allow an output for silly violence, graphic violence, silly graphic violence, all in the mode of an anti-social simulator.  The biggest targets for death are: monsters, aliens, zombies, and Nazis.  You don't really feel bad about doing it, and there is the ability to re-spawn after your player dies.  Old arcade games like Total Carnage, NARC, and Smash TV allowed you to waste various forms of scum in bloody, messy ways.  Games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons allowed you to smack and beat your foe to death, actually more like beating them until they flickered and disappeared.  They were fun quarter-eaters in the arcade, and I admit to spending more than my fair share of tokens and change on those machines.  But now times have changed, the arcade is dead, and those games have come and gone, only to be re-awakened with compilations, emulations, and downloadable titles.  Titles like Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon.

Above: Ugly, yet strangely not atypical, Americans: a Cop, a couple of demons, a wizard, and a normal-ish guy. Not pictured: a zombie

Our good friend, Wikipedia, explains the Ugly Americans like this:   The Ugly Americans universe features many different species besides humans, including zombies, demons, wizards, koala people, land whales, two-headed worm people, robots, gorgons, werewolves, vampires, man-birds, treetures, trolls, yetis, chicken people, cyclopses, squids, walking lizards, mermaids, lagoon creatures, pig people, genies, clones, unicorns, squid creatures, angler people, fly people, angels, leprachauns, living plants, floating brains and more.  Seems about right, but seeing the Metalocalypse: Dethgame cancelled and Ugly Americans announced soon after, I wonder if they took out the Metalocalypse characters and atmosphere and replaced them with Ugly Americans?  It's possible.  Not that it matters.

The cell-shaded graphics of the game look decent, and the animations are smooth.  There are lots of enemies that come after you on-screen, but they isn't that much difference in what they look like.  You get flying women bird swarms, demon swarms, zombie swarms, a big boss-type enemy every now and then, nothing out of the ordinary from a game of this type.  The sounds are a mixed bag, with the occasional voice-actor cutting in with silly comments and satisfying splatter noises.  You can level up your characters with weapon strength, special attack strength, which is helpful as you progress through the game as more silliness ensues.  You can destroy on-screen objects like garbage pails, benches, etc, that will reveal weapons or cash (for upgrading your player's attributes), but not every object in the playfield is destructible.  So much so I got my character hung up on an object on the bottom of the screen.  I couldn't kill myself to set me loose, and the enemy birds attacking me couldn't knock me loose either.  After awhile the game realized I was stuck and I magically started moving to the side.  A strange bug, and I don't know if anybody else had this happen to them.  Kind of annoying.

 The thing is, reading this, you may think I disliked the game.  The game is actually on-par with some of the point-A to point-B arcade beat'em ups/shoot'em ups like The Simpsons, Ninja Turtles, Aliens, etc.  The only complaint I have is the controls.  They don't seem to be fast enough.  My player never seems to run fast enough for my liking, some of the weapons like dumbbells and propane tanks don't have the speed to them, the smaller weapons don't seem to have the power I expect from them.  Sure, as mentioned before, I can make them more powerful, but they just don't have that kick a game like Smash TV or Total Carnage gets with your weapons.  You can carry one weapon at a time, like the aforementioned titles, but the weapons, though clever, are dull.  The rocket launcher is cool, but when I'm waiting for the rocket to find its target (when the screen has multiple enemies), I'm left totally unprotected from attack by close-range enemies if the rocket is following an enemy that's far away.

Lastly, there is online and offline multiplayer, but I haven't been able to be online when other people are playing, so I don't have any comment on it.  I'll edit this review when I'm able to get some play on Live.  In short, it's an average game that could use a bit of polish and maybe a few more options.  As it is, I can't recommend the game outright, nor can I tell you to avoid it.  This one is up to you to demo and make up your mind on your own.  To us, it comes up a bit short in the end.