Underling Uprising is an ambitious little title that came across my purview with a few key words floating tantalizingly on the forefront. Beat-em-up, alright, always a good time. Local co-op, definitely a plus in my growing quest to have games to share with my kids. But the phrase “90s cartoons” gave me pause, simply because it could mean so much. A lot of people think of the ‘90s as an era of grunge music, flannel and good times, and I can assure you that it was a very subjective perspective depending on where you grew up. As the ‘90s encapsulated a full decade, being able to emulate ten years worth of cartoon identities is certainly a brash claim. Could we really cover everything from Garfield and Friends to The Pirates of Dark Water and Recess? The answer, it seems, is a decided “kind of.”

Trust me, Boogie, we all saw what happened. We know what you did last summer.

Hey kids, look, a bizarre science research lab! What’s going on here? Why, some mad scientist has decided to genetically and cybernetically alter four hapless beings, because what else will you do on a Thursday afternoon? But when a hapless assistant robot accidentally short circuits the containment unit, the Underlings are now loose, and they’re…mostly confused!

There’s not really a good way to express the plot other than “we were imprisoned and now we’re not,” and that’s all players really have to work with. Oh sure, there are storybeats to explain why you’re fighting this boss or going into that biome, along with occasional cartoonish vamping from the scientist himself, but Rose, Ángel, Deckster, and Boogie are mostly just here for the chaos. Choose which of the four playstyles best suits you, grab a friend or three and hop into some real button mashing mayhem.

Underling Uprising has some solid notes of fun in this 2.5D brawler, especially coming hot on the heels of my mediocre time with Chronic Blunt Punch. For one, you never know how much you appreciate having difficulty settings until you previously had no choice, and putting Uprising on easy made this a romp and a significantly more enjoyable process. You’ve got your heavy and light attacks, along with some grappling for throwing and pummeling, along with a metric ton of dropped items for ranged and melee attacks. There’s no friendly fire between the player characters, so feel free to really get into the thick of it all without worry about the buttons you flail being the undoing of yourself or someone else. And the characters are really good balances: while Rose is clearly the medium forward, being able to pair Deckster with Ángel is a powerful duo.

One thing I really enjoyed was the number of background NPCs that weren’t fighting and also couldn’t be hit.

There is an aspect of Underling Uprising that appears to be marketed more towards a specific type of player, though I’m reluctant to put labels on anything. For one, though standard attacks are enough to do most things, it becomes infinitely easier and more exciting to toggle through the dropped, temporary weapons of enemies. For example, masked wrestlers take quite a few shots before going down in traditional fisticuffs, but three swings from the electric whip the hazmatted scientists drop is enough to get them off your back entirely. And, while the boomerang is fun in theory, it’s one of the least reliable weapons, yet wildly better than your usual swings from anyone, including Ángel. Enemies always drop a surplus of weapons when they’re available, so having three or four players is important to keep the hit parade going.

In that same vein, the riding moments are clearly superior to anything that you’d do on foot. Various short term mounts can be found on different stages and they make everything so much more fun and exciting. They change up your gameplay just enough to make things feel fresh and shake off the repetition of what is a seriously simple cavalcade of baddies. When we discovered the rideable lion in the zoo area, all the players actually took turns because you moved faster, you hit incredibly hard and you also could use the lion as long as we were still in the zoo zone. These bursts of over-the-top power were really satisfying, and I appreciate that they were the exception, not the rule, to how stages unfolded and players were able to progress.

A weem a way, a weem a way, a weem a way, a weem a way…

The powerup attacks, on the other hand, feel pretty imbalanced when they’re operated on their own. With Underling Uprising, taking a solo approach means needing to figure out how to navigate a game that’s clearly designed for many people by yourself, and it comes with its pluses and minuses. Ángel’s divebomb attack is great to hit clusters of enemies, but they only really cluster if they’re attacking someone, which usually means another player. Rose has a devastating longbeam that can stun multiple enemies but only does a bit of damage: it’s a great assist to line up someone else. And Boogie’s bizarre little doppelganger summon can help to annoy and eventually take out a single mob, but it doesn’t really help if you’re being overwhelmed. Unless you’re operating with at least one other player, you’re at a massive disadvantage.

This really presents itself with level hazards, which are mercifully few. Dodging electrical zaps and rolling boulders down hills is fine when you have moments to breathe, but the relentless nature of the mobs is taxing enough on its own: you don’t need more hurdles to overcome. When aggressive scientists are coupled with an environment that can stun you into a massive beating, it takes the momentum out of whack and leaves you rolling your eyes as you get knocked down, and then get up again, and you don’t even get a whiskey or vodka drink. It’s important for a game that is multiplayer but can be played as single to be properly QAed so that the balance is present and players don’t feel like they’re being punished because friends are busy or they just want to game by themselves.

Though watching bosses crash out and attack nothing due to lack of targets was pretty funny.

The cartoony nature of Underling Uprising is fun enough, and I can’t discredit that. There’s some great animations for all the actions and the enemies themselves, and the color palette really pops in a way that someone would think a ‘90s cartoon might appear. While I did get some vibes that were more late ‘90s – specifically early Dexter’s Laboratory and a splash of The Tick – a good amount of it felt a bit more early 2000s. You’ve got a distinctly Codename Kids Next Door vibe to everything, and, while I would argue there’s some pretty Pepper Ann writing going on in the exchanges, it’s more about the concept than the actual references. I like that it felt like it could have been a ‘90s cartoon era instead of specifically being one. The voices were good within the battles, and not fully voicing all the interactions kept it clean and crisp.

My only real sour note about it all was the game’s soundtrack. I can tell that the attempt to capture the sensation of a cartoon was really instilled in the developers and composers,  but it came at a cost that someone hadn’t factored: cartoons usually have very short setpieces. The music is fine for the game, but it’s also very, very repetitive. You enjoy the first few notes when you get into a stage, and then it starts to really grate on your nerves as you continue to be in the same sound loop, fighting through this, that and the other to get to some larger-than-life-but-also-not-difficult bosses. After a certain point, I wish they would have faded out the music entirely and just let the quips and grunts from the players be the entire track.

No penguins were harmed in the playing of this video game.

But Underling Uprising is good, clean, goofy fun for everyone involved. It’s simple to learn, has a decent length to the game without being too much, and finishing the arcade version will unlock plenty more shorter, more intense game modes. Hardcore fans of the genre won’t find that Streets of Rage or Shredder’s Revenge is being usurped, but it’s an enjoyable title that’s certainly worth the price tag. It’s refreshing to see a great game made with some new, original characters, and Dummy Dojo has done a fine job with crafting a world and characters that are both quirky and relatable in the same silly breath. 

Underling Uprising is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch.

Reviewed on Switch.

A copy of Underling Uprising was provided by the publisher.