mario15
Smash Cadet
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2010
- Messages
- 52
- NNID
- kylemshipley
- 3DS FC
- 3351-4555-2812
A couple of years ago, I purchased a game that I really shouldn't have. The game was Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion XL (I'm not kidding), it was basically a fighting game in which you played as your favorite characters from the various shows throughout Cartoon Network's history like Johnny Bravo, The Power Puff Girls, Dexter from Dexter's Lab, Samurai Jack, and so on. The game featured mechanics very similar to Smash Brothers, in fact it's practically identical; build up your opponent's damage and launch them off the stage, you can use smash attacks, tilts, special moves, you can shield, spot dodge, roll dodge, and air dodge, it's pretty much all there from Smash. This sounds great as a concept, but the execution is where the game falls apart. While the developers of Smash took time and care to fine tune everyone's moveset to make sure every character was balanced with there own set of advantages and disadvantages, Cartoon Network PTE XL saw fit to make every character indistinguishable from one another by giving them all nearly identical movesets. The skill element in Smash was also crucial, you would have to study the moves of the characters to know what play style would be efficient for each character, is your character powerful but slow like Bowser? Play defensively by guarding often and look for openings to smash your opponents, is your character fast and agile, but lacks the power of heavier characters? Use your speed and agility to your advantage and go on the offensive. None of these complexities can be found in Cartoon Network PTE, the main "strategy" for this game is to find one move that works and use it again and again. The game feels unstable as a whole, as I've had many instances where stages would fail to load properly or the game would freeze up altogether. You can tell from the moment you launch the game on the wii menu that it isn't put together very well, as you'll be treated with this lovely noise from your wii when it starts loading up the disc, I was actually afraid at times that the game would break my wii. By far the worst aspect of Cartoon Network PTE XL, is that this game was a second attempt, the first version of the game was released on the 3ds a few months earlier, the fancy XL version for wii added new characters and stages, but didn't fix any of the bugs and gameplay flaws that were present in the 3ds version. I skipped over some details of the game like the lackluster story mode, but I honestly don't care to talk about it, all you need to know is that this isn't a very good game. With all this being said, I still don't know what made me buy it, maybe it was the little kid in me that wanted to play as Samurai Jack, that's really the only reason I can think of. Now some of you may be asking, "If you hate this game so much, why talk about it?" Well, my point is that after I played this game, I appreciated how polished and well made the Smash Brothers games are, I rwalized that these games are a labor of love from Mr Sakurai and his team. Now on that note, what games have you guys played that you would consider knock offs of Super Smash Brothers, and did they make you appreciate the source material more? Maybe you've played games that were inspired by Smash brothers that you really enjoy, let me know in the comments.
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