Developer: Backbone Entertainment
Publisher: Comedy Central Games
Genre: Action, Shooting
ESRB Rating: M
Release Date: August 30 (PSN), August 31 (XBLA)
Platforms: PSN, XBLA

It’s a fact that at some point, if a particular adult-oriented cartoon gets popular enough, there will be a video game adaptation. It happened with Family Guy. It happened with South Park. And it happened with The Simpsons multiple times, despite the fact that the show hasn’t been worth watching since season twelve. Most all of these attempts have failed in one form or another.

Now, Ugly Americans, the show about supernatural creatures living in an alternate New York, gets its turn to jump on the bandwagon, with Apocalypsegeddon. And with a poorly put together plotline that involves the prevention of an actual End of Days from occurring, as far as cheap cash-ins go, it’s got the formula down pretty well.

Suck My Balls!

Right away, it’s very evident that not enough effort was put into the game’s design, and while it tries to keep to the original show’s artstyle, it ends up coming off as a half-assed attempt. The actual game levels look extremely poor, with low quality 3D cel-shading and flat backgrounds that look like cardboard cut-outs. Character models for the most part are also extremely stiff, with very few actual animation frames. The in-game cinematics, meanwhile, look like slideshows because of the obvious lack of animating that went into making them, indicating a fairly rushed product in general.

The audio tries to work better than the visuals, but it’s a fairly poor effort. The original cast reprises their respective roles, however, the writing is very hard to believe, with everyone being given lines that just feel forced and out of character. The script writing itself also blatantly comes off as an excuse to be able to get away with more swear words and obscene jokes that they couldn’t use on the show, instead of sticking closer to the humor of the source material. Enemy sounds also get redundant real fast, tempting you to play the game on mute. Seriously, having manbirds saying “Suck my balls!” repeatedly does not, in fact, make it funnier each time.

Pass On The Bethany Stew

For what it’s worth, the controls of the game are one of the few working points. They are simple, easy to pick up, and most anyone can get in on the mess if they’re feeling masochistic. Up to four poor souls can join a game playing as one of four characters from the show (Mark, Leonard, Callie, and Grimes), each of them using their favored method of attack (Mark and Grimes use the BSU, or Blow-Sh*t-Up, guns, while Leonard and Callie lazily use magic). Online functionality, for the most part, works, and getting a group together is one of the few painless procedures present. When there are people actually online, at least.

The actual stages you go through, however, while using locations from the actual show, are bland and don't catch the eye very well. Unfortunately, you’ll be forced to go through them several times on your relatively short journey. The enemies you fight share this sense of repetition, with rarely any variety amongst them except for their numbers, and with largely the same strategies being applied to most all of them: shoot them in the face until they’re dead.

Boss battles, meanwhile, are completely unfair, not just because they are unnecessarily long, but because they are fixated with filling the screen with as much crap as possible just to make things difficult for you. It’s almost impossible to solo them, if only because you need another body to soak up some of the hits. Add on a completely unnecessary leveling system and some lazily applied reskins of the various items you can use as weaponry, and you have one hell of a mediocre experience.

You Made Doug Cry

Really, the only good thing about this entire thing, is that you can unlock an episode of the show itself for viewing. That is, if it wasn’t already possible to find said episode via youtube, Hulu, or whatever your video streaming site of choice is, saving yourself from the trouble of going through the whole mess. The sad truth is that Apocalpsegeddon is no different from the other cheap cash-in titles that flood the market regularly. Only the most hardcore of fans need apply here. Or those that are into torture.

tl;dr - Too long; Didn't read

Another cheap cash-in to add to the pile. Unimaginative, repetitive, and overly vulgar where it doesn’t need to be. Truly, the Ugliest American.

Aesthetics: 2.5

GamePlay: 3.0

Story: 2.0

Quality: 2.0

Overall Score: 2.5