A lot like an episode of the show... and over almost as quickly
The games main attraction is the Story Mode where you take all five Titans through several stages. The story is fun as the Titans recieve a game based on themselves and soon find that they've been trapped inside it. The story capture the look and feel of the show with plenty of the trademark humor and style. You'll face a number of Titans villains throught the missions. The game claims to have ten villains, but you only actually fight eight of them. In the story mode, you can cycle between any available Titans and the game supports up to four players at the same time. This is fine since the game does have areas where one Titan may be occupied and you have to give them cover. The single and multiplayer modes are fun, but can only be played through a single PS2 as the game has no online mode. The controls feature three different attacks including a projectile attack and all three can be charged using energy from a Special Attack bar. Each Titan's attacks are different enough to make them distinct but they all handle surprisingly well.
The combat is very heavy on button mashing and there's often a lot of chaos on the screen. While the graphics usually look good, there are some issues. On my second time through the story mode the construction tower that you have to climb in the second mission vanished and remained missing for the rest of the stage, meaning I was fighting enemies on invisible floors.
Each stage contains not only entertaining cutscenes but some clever dialogue from the Titans as the level progresses. This is fun, except in boss battles where you'll hear the same lines over and over and over again.
Once you've finished the Story Mode, which has a great ending and you should stick around after the credits, the only other feature is the Master of Games mode, a one on one combat arena. If you've finished the Story Mode, you've already unlocked everything that can be seen in Master of Games mode. While there is a large selection of characters, the combat engine isn't well suite to this. Fans of characters like Terra, the errant sixth Titan or the Titans East will see plenty of cool characters to play as and with only a couple of exceptions, they're all voiced by the voice actors from the show too. Like the boss battles, Master of Games battles features lots of one-liners fired off by the characters, but they repeat a lot and rarely reflect what's happening in the battle.
The only other feature adding replay value is the goal of finding Larry the Titan in each of the Story missions which unlocks bonus galleries and video clips. The galleries are great and Titans fans will love this added art, but the clips consist of a promo for the Titans season 1 DVD release and the 5th season of the show. It's somewhat annoying to scower through a stage for unlockables, only to be rewarded with advertising.
The story featured in Titans shows how great the game could have been with more modes of play, but this release feels rushed and unfinished.
True Titans fans probably won't have much problem with shelling out for the game's $20 price tag for a few good hours of Titan themed mayhem and will be impressed by the game's loyalty to the show's look and feel. But anyone who doesn't feel particularly attatched to the franchise will find this one too flat to recommend.