Ugly Americans Review

All right, this is a review of a game that’s less indie then most. Now, I’ve only played the demo. You’ll see why in a bit. This game is Ugly Americans: Apocalypsgeddon. Or, Armapocalypse. Bleh. The title is really, really hard to pronounce, so I’ll just call it Ugly Americans. It is based on an Adult Swim show, Ugly Americans, about a world where demons and zombies and man-birds, wizards, etc., roam freely. Urban Fantasy, with a humorous slant, and VERY much a sucky place to live. It focuse on the efforts of the protagonists to do, well…really dumb stuff. Standard comedy where you laugh at horrible, horrible people. Unfortunately, this game…well, let’s start from the top.

Graphics.
There are two sets of graphics. First, is the graphics for the in-game engine. These are 3/5, borderline 2/5. It’s passable, but, honestly, Chantelise has better graphics. Considering this was backed by Cartoon Network…I’m not giving it a pass. They had an actual budget. They could have made it a lot better. The characters are there, and there’s no obvious failures…but the areas are copy-pasted, the villains are mostly pallete-swaps, and rather generic. (Zombie, Demon, Birdman, Biker-dude are the types in the demo, and pallete-swaps occur within the level). They do a VERY good job of making the main characters resemble the ones on the show, but that’s about it. All in all, the fact that INDIE games feel better…gives it a 2/5.

As for the graphics in the show-portion? They’re…terrible. I mean, this is an adult swim cartoon, done for low budget, and on the cheap. But, I’ve seen episodes. The characters, well, move on the episodes, and they have lips that move in time with the animation. These guys, in general, don’t. Movement is stiff and unrealistic, frame rate is jumpy, and the lips on SPEED RACER move better. Generally, they have ‘open mouth’ and are open the entire time they’re speaking, and ‘closed mouth’, for when they aren’t talking. It’s actually enough to distract. And, most of the actual animation is talking heads. The big ‘money’ shot? When the demoness launches her enemy out the window, starting an epic boss fight? It’s pretty much a single still frame. It makes me appreciate “Charlie and the Unicorn” more. THAT HAS BETTER ANIMATION. I, repeat. Cheesy youtube videos are better then this. 1/5. For adversiting a ‘full episode’, a clearly phoned in low-budget…omake, is not what I’d want.