The Regular Show: Best Park in the Universe Review (Android)

     As a Regular Show fan, I consistently find myself drawn to things with the name attached, and of course video games for the show are aplenty.  With The Regular Show: Best Park in the Universe we get something quite good actually, unlike most mobile and browser games.

     In Best Park in the Universe, perpetual slackers Mordecai and Rigby are left in charge after manager Benson heads to a conference.  In an effort to get some get some days off they want to clean the entire park and end up embroiled in a plot with a space cowboy to make their park the titular best in the universe.  Like most of their exploits they end up being idiots and attempt to save their park for the most selfish of reasons, and much hilarity ensues.

     The game itself is mainly comprised of a straightforward beat-em-up with a very, VERY light RPG leveling system in the form of a small skill tree.  For characters you get to choose a tag-team from the main Mordecai and Rigby, but you can also play as Muscle Man and Pops (any combination of the 4 choices), which adds an entire new realm of humor to the battling.

     Over the course of 3 maps (5 levels each) you must battle your way through swarms of various enemies such as space bikers, zombie businessmen, and robots.  The difficulty curve is decent until the last couple levels of the 3rd map where it skyrockets.  All the enemies seem programmed to surround you and attack until you are dead.  Simple enough.  This wouldn't be much of a problem with the leveling system, but it's the controls that make it a problem.  you can't always be sure who you'll be hitting, if anyone at all- sometimes the characters will just swing at air even though you're right on top of the enemies.

Just Flexing Some Pecs as Muscle Man!

     Honestly, an on-screen D-pad could've helped this game immensely.  When trying to evade attacks you'll find yourself tapping or holding parts of the screen and the character just stands there immobile, which opens you up to being surrounded and beaten to death swiftly in the later levels.  It is very frustrating with how it fails to function when you need it the most.  The attacks are all swipe based in the various directions and combinations to create a nicely natural feel.  Only the movement part of the controls feel lacking and I believe a D-pad would've solved most of the issue.

     As for graphics and sound- Best Park in the Universe has top notch in both areas.  They are clean and crisp- graphics are vibrant and wonderful, and the sounds have great voice-overs for the characters.  Hearing Pops ask during his "special attack" if anyone wants to wrestle never loses it's touch, consider his highly effeminate and crazy old man-voice.  I have to be honest here and say I saw a ton of screen tearing (see my Muscle Man Pec Flexing screencap above) and the app crashed at least 15 times over the course of a few days.  There are problems, but since the game was only 99 cents it wasn't much of an issue, more of an annoyance.

     In addition to the main 15 total levels, there are a few minigames to play.  The first is an enemy horde wave mode to defeat as many enemies as possible before you die.  Simple and fun.  The second mode "Epic Destruction" is a destroy-as-many-circuit-towers-in-two-minutes-mode.  Another nice and small challenge- nothing special, but a nice little distraction.  The third mode is "Speed Search Mode" a duck collecting mode.  This mode is the worst part as a result of the poor movement control.  You have to time your movements for maneuvering through many series of lasers- which is made much more difficult because of shoddy movement controls.
     Update:  Just found out the 4th lock is a "Boss Rush Mode."  You get to fight all the bosses back to back.

     The look and feel of this game is something that I believe has actually done some justice for the series, which is open to an entire world of games- they just aren't quite getting most of them right.  I really hope the game makers for any future Regular Show games take note and learn from this and go from there.  This sets up a decent foundation, but that's about it.  This reminds me of the Nintendo 3DS's Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby in 8-Bit Land, they had a solid base, and just didn't get it right.  Fun for what time I played, but not really memorable.
     Overall- if you are a fan of either brawler beat-em-ups or The Regular Show, Best Park in the Universe is worth your time.