Junkman
Mar 9 2005, 08:32 PM
Game: Cartman's Great Adventure
Creator: Mike Gurval
Genre: Arcade
Description: Cartman is filling in for Pac Man, as he eats cheesy poofs and avoid monsters in this really basic clone.

Rating: 46%

Review: If I had to pick up a game which summed up most of the very old South Park games from the older times, I think this one would be a pretty likely candidate. Like many South Park games of that era, it exhibits some nice ideas and attempts to set into some territory that was left unexplored by some of the most public figures of SPG back in the older days, such as Nomad, Matt Crosta or Polygon, but like almost every game of this era, it lacks quite in the execution. I also don't believe this is much of a Pac Man clone, now that I think about it, but this is the closest thing I can tie this game to. It's definitely playable and it's not bad, but there are parts where the game is pretty annoying.

Enter the main screen of Cartman's Great Adventure. The menu screen for the game is really basic as it's best, with a simple title in a rather plain font with Cartman shooting blue lines with his mouth, which the author supposely refers to as "drooling over cheesy poofs". Once you've hit the space bar, you get thrown in the first level. The graphics in this game aren't easy to the eyes, seeing how everything is incredibly small and quite pixelated. The monsters that you have to avoid don't look pretty, neither. With some detective work, I was able to work out that the enemies in Level 2 were frogs, but what's with the other two critters you meet in the game? I have absolutely no clue. I know for sure they're ugly, though. Apart from that, save from the critters, there's absolutely no graphics change over the game. The background is always black, the wall tiles always look like the same and it's like you didn't even proceeded to the next level at all. Plus, there's also the ending screen and ending sequence which are just plain scary. I'll let them speak for themselves. Thus, the presentation in Cartman's Great Adventure is pretty poor.

Gameplay-wise, there's an attempt to make something good in this game, and yes, the game is quite playable. However, what's there is simply too underworked and can lead to some frustrating moments. The enemies in every level have a really hard time moving around the labyrinths and to make matters worse, they sometimes end up blocking important hallways and doors, thus making you waste quite a fair bit of time as you wait for the critters to scram out of there, but sometimes it do take forever to accomplish, thus leading to boredom. As for the gameplay, you need to find keys, open doors blocking your path and collect the cheesy poofs in your way. However, you can simply ignore all the poofs and simply rush toward the exit as fast as you can, since collecting the cheesy poofs don't even serve a purpose in the game, save from bragging rights. As for the game's length, there's only 3 levels for the whole game and it took me a whopping 3 minutes to clear them out all. Quite a letdown, heh?

Sound-wise, the game is really basic as well. The sound effects merely consist of some sparse blips, grunts as you force doors and finally, doors opening. The music in the game is nothing to brag about, as it consists entirely of some midis taken from popular bands back from 1999, which isn't quite the most enjoyable thing out there.

Cartman's Great Adventure is indeed a good example of what most games in 1999. It seemed like wanting to stretch a bit the gameplay elements of your average game, yet doesn't quite succeed. The presentation is really minimalist, the gameplay is efficient, yet really basic and sometimes uninteresting. There's some major improvements possible over this game, yet it is by no means bad. It's simply mediocre. As with most games from the 1999 era, this game is mostly worth downloading for nostalgia reasons rather than for full enjoyment values.