Looney
Tunes: ACME Arsenal lets players take
control of classic characters, like Foghorn Leghorn
Here's
a little clip of the game,
which has been given a PG rating
Bugs
Bunny must have taken a firearms
training course 'coz he knows how to fight
The
Tazmanian Devil is a natural for this
videogame, spinning around like a nutter
Many of my 'so-called' friends had
the luxury of watching Looney Tunes when they were
kids.
They
would talk about the mad-capped adventures of Wile E. Coyote, Bugs
Bunny's penchant for cross-dressing, Daffy Duck's mobile beak, and
Foghorn Leghorn's impressive wit.
They talked of these characters
with such fondness that I knew it was good TV.
To say the least I was jealous
child, and missing out in Looney Tunes left scars on my soul...
Unfortunately for me, my carers
didn't permit me a television when I was a young whipper snapper
because it was allegedly an 'unholy influence'.
But now I'm much better about the
legacy of cultural neglect my legal guardians inflicted upon me, and
they are repenting via *this
material has been removed pending a court injunction* so
in the end you could say they were 'dead' right.
Hahahaha.
Anyways, Warner Bros has released
a brand new Looney Tunes game on the Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, and
Playstation 2 called ACME Arsenal, which as the name suggests allows
gamers to get their hands on all manner of cool ACME equipment.
This includes things
like the freeze gun, the spring-loaded boxing glove gun, the
"people's favourite" grenade launchers, and who could forget the
bear-trap-launching gun?
While the game will appeal to
younger gamers due to the basic gameplay mechanics and endearing
visuals, ACME Arsenal lets you play as many of the cartoon characters
from Looney Tunes franchise and with an eclectic array of weapons,
older gamers and fans of the original cartoons may be intrigued also.
Aspects of the game that kept me
coming back were the multiplayer deathmatch option. I'm 27-years-old
and I played the game with my nine-year-old nephew and we had a great
time (he loved the wacky violence), but playing through the single
player game on my own in a dark, drab apartment infested with
loneliness and no indoor plants wasn't quite as
memorable.
There are also various unique
features for all versions that add a little variety:
Xbox 360: 2-player
co-op arcade mode for Xbox Live Wii: Nunchuk
controller compatibility PS2: New character
skins and an extra level
Ah, but before you ask, "Will,
what are we to do in this game?" there's a back story to set the scene
for this simple platforming romp.
For reasons not given (rumour has
it he was denied Saturday morning cartoons as a child), the Evil Mad
Scientist has decided to travel back in time and destroy the Looney
Tunes characters.
But Bugs Bunny and Marvin the
Martian managed to steal the Evil Mad Scientist's blueprints for the
time machine and built one of their own.
So now the entire Looney Tunes
gang must work together and stop the Evil Mad Scientist from erasing
their past, present and future.
During the single-player game you
can choose your main character and a secondary character.
The bulk of the game involves
navigating the levels, dispatching enemies with either the
intriguing ACME weapons or with close combat melee moves.
The game is played from the
third-person perspective (over-the-shoulder camera) for the most part,
and the camera is not the most intelligent ever devised which makes the
platform-jumpy bits quite frustrating.
There are a number of vehicle
racing levels to spice up the action a bit, and while great for a
nine-year-old they failed to ignite my interest.
Though the graphical complexity
doesn't push the envelope, the visuals are pretty sharp and the sound
effects are fitting.
Best of all is the voice
acting. There's some amusing one-liners thrown in
there for good measure, crowd pleasers if you will. The humour in the
game is one of it's best assets and together with authentically
recreated 3D characters the game does have a certain charm.
An unoriginal premise to be sure -
time travelling platform action game based on a popular franchise - but
this is a budget priced game (at least on the PS2) and having seen it's
target audience shriek (painfully loudly) with glee at unleashing the
spring-loaded boxing glove gun on yours truly, it seems to have hit its
mark.
The environments you'll get to
explore are truly surreal, and are fairly faithful to the original
Looney Tunes cartoons (I bought a DVD box set when I turned 18), and
developer Red Tribe is Australian based as well which is nice to know.
It would have been nice to have a
co-op mode on all console versions that didn't require an Internet
connection, but hey, I'm just glad *this
material has been removed pending a court injunction*
which means terms such as 'legal guardian' and 'carer'
are misleading in the extreme.
While many videogame console
owners may find the gameplay a little too easy, younger
gamers and newbies will enjoy what's on offer here. It's colourful,
it's vibrant, the controls are simple and the premise straight forward.
