Calling All Titans! Review

First published online Sep 20, 2016.

"Calling All Titans!" is an online game I found on Cartoon Network's website available to play for free. In the past I've found that games of this ilk usually aren't that impressive, generally just being a basic game like a Pong-clone or a shoot 'em up, but I was surprised to learn that "Calling All Titans" was actually a fun, addictive, action-adventure game with a good mix of gameplay.

You start off by selecting which Titan to begin the game with. Naturally I choose Raven.

Next, you're taken to Titans Tower -- the hub for the rest of the game. Raven's room is even accessible here!

When you're ready to start your adventure, you use the T-Sub to travel to different areas where you can run around exploring, defeating enemies, and collecting things like pizza slices and Titan "prizes" such as Raven's meditation mirror. I'm not sure what these mirrors do, though -- I collected over 100 of them and nothing ever came of it as far as I can figure. They may have increased my max health, I'm not sure, though I know 300 pizza slices will do that.

The mission of the game is to reach several "boss" enemies that allow you to team-up with an additional Teen Titan member when defeated, ultimately leading to a final showdown with Slade. You move around from a sort of bird's-eye-view and encounter enemies that set off a mini-game when touched.

"Grunt" enemies will trigger a small command for you to perform, such as three consecutive presses on the keyboard's arrow-keys, or a well timed press of the spacebar. "Brute" enemies will trigger a slightly longer game that bring to mind the micro-games from the WarioWare series by Nintendo. Here's a look at many of those, as well as a boss battle, which are like longer mini games:

Raise the Shield!

Pizza Party!

Fallout!

Enemy Invasion!

Control the Points!

Rooftop Run!

Boss Stage! Mad Mod

Besides just being fun, the game also features voice clips for each Titan. Here's most, if not all, of what Raven can be heard saying:
"Good choice."
"Ah, more power."
"Hah!"
"Perfect."
"I can do this all day long."
"I can't believe that just happened."
"Oh, crud."
"Nope. I need help, here."
"Still haven't learned your lesson, huh?"

I played the game from start to finish in a day, including maxing out the pizza counter, but I actually did so in two separate sittings and was happy to find that the game somehow managed to save my progress. Surprisingly, I like this game more than both the Gameboy Advance Teen Titans games, which is a shame since I own copies of those but can't own a copy of this. The variety in its gameplay is the real key to its success -- if defeating enemies just required mashing a button or a long RPG-style fight, the game probably would've been boring. The challenge level was also pretty good. I mean, it was pretty easy most of the time, but that's better than pretty hard most of the time, and the boss stages did pose some decent challenge, besides. On top of all this was an obvious attention to detail, with familiar things like Starfire's circular bed and Mad Mod's crazy world making appearances, which when all rolled together, result in a great game.