Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion XL Reviews

Welcome to another entry in Worhammer's Shameless Easy-Mode Super Happy Gamerscore Funtime. I play all the bad ones so that you don't have to...

Let me start out by saying one thing:

This. Game. Sucked.

If you don't feel the need to read past that, I don't blame you. In fact, that was kind of the point. If you feel like you still have a desire to rent the game, please allow me continue my efforts to persuade you otherwise.

I grew up with these cartoon shows. I'm 27 now, which means I was 10 when Dexter's Lab, the oldest Cartoon in this game, first premiered. I remember "World Premier Toons," the brand under which Dexter and a few of the others in this game first showed up. So when I saw this, I was actually a little excited. The fact that it was a Super Smash Bros. clone also added to the excitement. As is my usual plan, I didn't read any reviews. I try not to so that they don't influence my writings here, or my feelings towards these games.

At the time, I was in a hotel room and had to trick the hotel internet into letting me get my xbox connected to LIVE. You don't care about all that, but I'm trying to set the mood here, so bear with me. I put the game in, and sat down to play. I played for about 15 minutes before taking the game out of my tray. I spent the next week in the hotel room, and didn't touch that game once.

I got home, and for another week, it sat on my desk collecting dust. When I finally managed to force myself to put it back in, saying to myself it will only be a few hours of pain, I found myself....disappointed.

Not in that the game got any better. In fact, it got worse. Those "few hours of pain" turned into close to 15 hours of pain. I'm pretty good at Super Smash Bros. I love playing with friends and destroying them. The problem with this game is that the controls suck. Not only do the controls suck, but they also aren't very responsive. I would hit the jump button, and instead I would just keep running to my death. This wouldn't be such a problem, but if you're going for the full 1K, you are playing on hard, which means you only get 4 lives. Some of the story mode stages are extremely long (15 - 20 minutes each, towards the end) which means that if you die near the end, you've just wasted a good amount of time. This is where my hate for this game stems from.

I spent well over 4 hours just replaying sections of the game because I would die to stupid controls or some other annoying thing.

At some point or another, my pain ended and I managed to finish the story mode. Oh happy day. Then I read up on the achievements I had left.

Four luck-based achievements and several achievements that require you to play as a certain character over and over again. Awesome, right? Right....

There are a few ways you can stack things up using four controllers so that you are doing two or three achievements at once, but in the end it all boils down to repeating the same crap over and over again for a couple hours. Press start, select your characters, select the stage, run off the stage with controller 2 and 3, mash the B button until you get back to the main screen, and start over.

Which brings me to my next point. Who thought it was a good idea to force you to go back to the main menu after each fight? I don't think that's a good idea. Why not just let you replay the battle? Or even put you back at character select. At least that way you don't have to go through the trouble of selecting the game mode, arena, time limit, etc. every single time. Ugh!

So let me sum things up for you.

The controls suck. You'll be doing a lot of staring at loading screens and mashing buttons. The story mode is lame, and they didn't get a lot of the original voice actors for things, which was also disappointing. You'll be replaying the same characters a lot for stupid achievements after you finish the stupidly hard story mode.

All in all, I wanted to love this game. I really did. I just couldn't. It had the nostalgia factor going for it, it's based on not only a very successful game style (Super Smash), but several successful cartoons that I loved as a kid. As it is, I barely managed to force myself to finish it. So if you didn't quit reading after the second paragraph, do yourself a favor. Don't waste your time or money on this piece of garbage. If I still haven't convinced you not to play this, then....well, you'll wish I had once you actually do put it in your 360.

Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion XL is basically a port of the 3DS game of the same name, except without the XL and other exclusive characters, arenas, and options not available to the 3DS. It's also a Super Smash Bros clone.

Does Punch Time Explosion win the fight, or is it just a complete knockout?

Story is the thing you're going to play most in the game.

In the story, an evil remote control, that's right, a remote control, takes over the CN universe, and all the CN characters must team up with each other to save their universe.

Story mode is VERY repetitive when it comes to the levels, and is also very short. You can play the story in up to 4 player co-op if you wish.

Battle mode is where you can face off against opponents by yourself, or battle it out with friends.

There are items, everyone has a PTE which they can use when you fill up the bar from hitting people, and they also have their own synergy assist, which is activated when using a checkered question mark box, although you'll have to get lucky, as you'll not all the time get your special assistant.

There's a store where you can buy additional characters, costumes, arenas, and video clips from some of the shows that represent this game.

As far as achievements go, this is a pretty easy 1000, save for some frustrating achievements, like beating a certain level without dying, beating a certain level in x amount of minutes, etc.

Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion XL, in my opinion, was hit and miss.
I had fun playing it, but the game causes A LOT OF FRUSTRATION, especially when grinding for achievements.

The story is dull and short and pointless, the final boss is predictable, and it just doesn't live up to it's name.

It was an OKAY clone of Smash Bros., but will be NOWHERE as GOOD as Smash Bros is.

Also, as a side note, they missed some good characters to add in this game, like Courage, Cow and Chicken, ED, EDD, N EDDY, and I wouldn't even mind seeing Lazlo in the game.

Overall, Punch Time Explosion XL is not a bad 1000 to add to your gamerscore collection, pending you have the patience to play it.

However, if you're getting this just for achievements, RENT the game, because you'll get the full 1000 in a week.

In fact, the game itself is just worth a rent, not only for achievements, but just for playing it for fun, because really, the kids who like CN now are going to be oblivious to the characters in the shows we used to watch at their age, like Billy and Mandy and Fosters, and if today's kids don't know the REAL CN, then this game just isn't for them.

My final word: The game is worth a rent, but DEFINITELY not a buy.

Awesome game, after playing it I now recommend it to anyone that enjoyed watching Cartoon Network and loves the classic video game Super Smash Brothers series from Nintendo; basically if you have played any of the games from that series before the controls are nearly the same so it is easy to pick up and play.

Playing this game was a great nostalgic trip for me and it has a perfect balance of characters from both the 90's and the modern era as well so no one really feels left out although I wish the game had more playable characters. Despite this however I actually don't see why this game seems to get such bad press on TA even if I were an outsider that didn't already grow up enjoying the characters etc.