Besides seeing commercials every now and then for the TV show, I have had no exposure to Comedy Central’s adult cartoon Ugly Americans. Not totally aware of the show or its success, I was surprised to see a downloadable game based off of it pop up on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network last week. Considering I’ve been watching Adult Swim on Cartoon Network since its inception, I figured Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon would be right up my alley.

After a brief intro, I was given the choice to play as four characters. Once I picked one, a cutscene began that set up the plot and gave me a feel for the characters and the humor; it’s typical of similar shows, such as Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Ugly Americans is very much a cartoon, and it’s very much an adult one. In the aforementioned cutscene, one of the characters was hanging around a sex doll hoping to make his girlfriend jealous, while another character was joyous that he just received a gun that uses anything for ammunition, his suggestion: a lamp to shoot into someone’s head.

I figured the game would be a side-scrolling beat ‘em up, surely easy for the developer to churn out, and I was kind of right. The game’s stages do scroll to the right and I fought a bunch of enemies, but the combat is conducted via the analog sticks. The left analog stick moved my character while the right analog stick shot my weapon in the direction I pointed. There were a ton of enemies to kill as I wandered through the city streets, but I knew I would only be interested in the game if I had a co-op buddy.

Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon reminds me a lot of Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Zombie Ninja Pro-Am. The use of cel-shading between the games is very similar, as is the humor, and nearly the quality of the game, but Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon has more potential for fun. It seems like an okay game; I can’t imagine it taking too long to complete and leveling up characters could provide an incentive to replay stages. Without a co-op partner or a familiarity with the series however, it’s not recommendable. Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon was released last week for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. It was developed by Backbone Entertainment and published by Comedy Central Games/345 Games.