Looney Tunes: Back In Action

Posted May 28, 2012 by Speed - 0 comments

This review took some time to write, even though it will probably be the shortest one I have ever written. Why did it take so long? Well, let me tell you one thing: I’m not 12 years old any more. Indulge me to elaborate on that.

I accepted Looney Tunes: Back in Action because I thought: ‘what the heck, let’s do a kiddie-game’, thinking that it would be easy for me as an adult to play. Unfortunately I was very – very – very wrong. I’ll write about all the stages I went through to write a review on this d*mned game.

Right after I popped the DVD in my PS2 I noticed some really cool graphics. It is a Toon-game of course, but it’s obvious that the developers did their best to make the game visually appealing – and they did their job well. You get an introduction to the storyline which is quite good: a strange and irritating little monkey (that doesn’t talk like all other animal-toons) steals the biggest and most precious diamond in the world. Right from under the noses of our two herous: Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

These characters -and especially the greedy Duck- cannot let this multi-$$$ chance go by and give chase to the monkey. This is where the game starts.

The controls are easy to master – even a kid could do it Second part of the first mission: rescue Daffy Duck by destroying 10 ‘Wanted’ posters while staying out of the hands of the ‘pigs’ (aka the cops). People… this took me over an hour to accomplice ! I’m not kidding you ! I just didn’t find that d*mned 10th poster.

And it wasn’t as if I weren’t looking. I looked *everywhere* for the thing and spent what felt like hours trying to get onto a staircase (leading to a big waterreservoir). Turns out I couldn’t get to it and that the poster wasn’t there after all
It was about the sixth or seventh time that I tried this game that I found all ten of them. Call me st00pid – I don’t care- but it took me around 5 hours to get past that ‘mission’.

I let my 10 year old nephew give it a try too and he found them after a good 25 minutes. He was pretty pissed by then, as was I. I let him have a shot at the third part of the first mission – set in a Hollywood filmlot with ancient Egyptian and/or Greek props. After about half an hour he was getting more and more aggressive to the point that he nearly destroyed my PS2.
Good to know that I’m still in touch with my 10 year old self – as I had the same emotions.

What this illustrates is that the gameplay was -to say the least- bizar not too mention difficult. Both for kids as for adults. Nor was it entertaining. There was no motivation to push past a challenge, knowing that there was going to be the same deal of frustration in the next part.

Don’t get me wrong, the controls were easy – perhaps a tad too easy-going, but I don’t think just anyone can appreciate this game. You’d have to be a gamepad-wizard to climb and jump onto everything in less than 150 tries.

I could write more: about the repetitive trademark Looney Tune verbal gags (which do get annoying after 20 minutes), about the lack of ‘guidance’ (the helpboxes disappear very fast) etc etc. But I don’t feel like it. This game has cost me enough valuable time as it is.

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