" It's amusing watching a car whip around a corner by bending in half. "

      Title: Cel Damage from EA Games

      Format: Car Combat for the X-Box

      Reviewing Monkey: Chimpan-A

      The Hype: Cartoon violence has been amusing us since somewhere around 1956 or so. With that in mind, EA put together a collection of wacky cartoon characters to hack and bash each other to bits for our general amusement. Sporting multiple toon worlds and weapons, they promise all sorts of destruction and mayhem.

      What This Monkey Thought...

      Graphics: Well, the characters are all cel shaded and (obviously) cartoonish in nature. The whole game does a decent job of capturing the feeling of a cartoon-like environment. The cars are all appropriately wacky. It's amusing watching a car whip around a corner by bending in half. There's no real pixelation and only a rare clipping error. The game has approximately 12 levels. Four groups of three themed levels. The levels are fairly well layed out. 4 out of 5

      Sound: The music has a good feel to it. It accompanies the on screen action rather well. The character voices are done well, although the usual problem of overly annoying one-liners crops up. The weapons all sound appropriate, yes even the portable holes and chainsaws… 3.5 out 5

      Playability: Well, first off the game subscribes to a cartoon physics engine. I suppose that makes sense, but it also make the game really hard to play. Control of your car is sketchy since the cars seem somewhat less responsive than you'd expect and don't drive quite right. If you're not thinking in a cartoon frame of mind, you'll notice your car to be far less maneuverability than the CPU controlled cars. Actually you'll likely find that to be the case regardless of your mindset. The game has three game types, Deathmatch, Flag Rally, and Race. The Smack Attack (deathmatch mode) is ridiculously hard; the others are child's play in comparison. Although there are an abundance of them, the weapons are highly unbalanced. Some weapons will give you a decided advantage over the other players, whereas other weapons will make you pull out your hair in frustration. The same goes for individual character personal weapons. At least you have a good spread of your classic cartoon weapons. The hazards of the different levels can make a major difference, depending on the level and the game you're playing. They're actually far less dangerous in deathmatch than in any other game type. Mostly because they cause delays, and against the computer, delays are unacceptable. 3 out of 5

      Multiplayer and Replayability: Multiplayer makes the game a little easier, but there are no bonus games for two players. The only real difference between single player and this is that one of the opponents is stuck with the same bad physics as you. If you actually manage to beat all the levels you'll get an end movie for your character. You have to beat every level in every game type to get this. The movie lasts approximately 25 seconds. You'll have been playing for 10 hours. This is not worth it in any sense or capacity. You'll replay a lot of levels, but it won't be long until you just visit the internet for a cheat faq. And once that happens, you won't touch the game again. 2 out of 5

      Story/Dramatics: Apparently Cel Damage is a TV show. It's a TV show where a bunch of cartoons in cars blow each other up. That's pretty much it. The characters have a decent amount of personality, but it's mostly stereotypical. There's nothing else to speak of here. 1 out of 5

      The Verdict:

If you don't like all those other car combat games because they're just "too real", then give this a try. However, if you're intelligent, you can go play one of those games and have a much better time.

      The Good: A whole lot of playtime, decent array of weapons.

      The Bad: Bad control, unbalanced weapons

      The Overall Ugly: It's just not a good game. There are far better to be amused with.

      What it's Worth: 20 bucks.