Junkman
Dec 13 2004, 04:51 AM
Game: Cartman's Adventure 2
Creator: Beamer
Genre: Platformer
Description: Help Cartman defeat the dastardly Dr.Doom and his mutants for the second time.

Rating: 80%

Review: For those of you who played the original game, you already know the routine; Dr.Doom is on the loose, there's swarms of mutants you need to stomp and the list goes on. This game somehow plays like a Mario game; you jump on the enemies, you bounce off them, and gain points. The way it's been implented in the game works pretty well. I've rarely had a moment where I got pissed off because an enemy didn't died when I stomped him. Speaking of enemies, things are really ugly (for Cartman of course) with the good character cast within the game. You'll face off these blue, floating spherical mutants, fire-snorting mini dragons, little birds who love to shit on your head, tree monsters shooting sharp wood tacks on you, and the list goes on...It's rather hard to beat most of these baddies without losing some energy so the challenge level can be rather high at times. I've been glad however to see that this game, unlike many Beamer's games, isn't the average game you'll bust through without breaking a sweat. Something which irritated me though was when you reached an hard level with only 1 life left and some bare energy, the only way to restore your health bar and lives counter was to restart the game from scratch and try to play better. Luckly the game is fun enough to play, otherwise, I wouldn't have restarted again and again from the start. smile.gif Engine-wise, the game does okay most of the time, but timing your jumps through the fans was really irritating at times as some jumps needed to be perfectly executed otherwise, you'd just fall in the water endlessly, eating up a ton of damage. In the boss department, expect some possible returns of CA1's bosses, a huge tree monster, a force field lizard, and of course, Dr.Doom.

Since Cartman's Adventure 1, things have been improved graphic-wise too. I remember about many ugly enemies in the original game, but each foe of the game looks better than ever. OK, they are not spectacular, but more pleasant to the eye. The platform environnement of CA2 are 3D platforms and the overall effect is pretty good. It's obvious that the cutscenes images you see during the game are for the most part photographs, But, whatever, I don't need to complain about that smile.gif However, I would have wished for better backgrounds though. Most are single-color backdrops, and while there is some backgrounds which are better detailled, they could've been better. The animation is basic, but at least the characters aren't static like many other games around.

The sound effects used in Cartman Adventure are fairly standard, but they fit the game well though. Except maybe for those fireheads flaming sound which makes me jump out of my chair if I somehow setted up the volume of my speakers too high. A lot of the game music has been composed by Beamer, and while this isn't the greatest music (nor the worse either) it fits pretty well in the game. Another large portion of the musical score is from many "The Offspring" midis (one of my favorites bands, yay) smile.gif . There's also this neat catchy tune from Sonic Adventure whenever you get invincible (however, midis must be playing in the game, because you can't be invincible then. Duh).

To finish this off, I was pretty damned happy with Cartman's Adventure 2. This is Beamer's best game yet, and it's definitely great. While it didn't evolved much in the storyline nor the style of play you'll still enjoy running through these mutants infested fields, ready to stomp every thing moving nearby.