Well, it’s a Looney Tunes game.
And since I’m the office’s animation guru, I’m the one who gets to play it.
Sorry, did I say, “gets to?”
I meant “has to.”
I’m the one who has to play it.
Suffice to say, Looney Tunes: Back In Action for the PlayStation 2 is a lot less “Duck
Amuck” than “See Ya Later, Gladiator.”
Which is a cartoon nerd’s way of saying...this game is not good.
So this thing was released to coincide with the 2003 movie, Looney Tunes: Back In Action.
Since Brendan Fraser is only tolerable when Rachel Weisz is there to distract everyone
from Brendan Fraser, I can’t speak to the quality of the film.
But hey, I can speak to the quality of this game.
Or the, uh...the lack thereof.
Back In Action is a 3D platformer that at least starts with the right idea.
The classic Looney Tunes shorts almost always paired two characters together to play off
each other.
And the best of all those combinations is, of course, Bugs and Daffy.
They’re Laurel and Hardy on paper, Abbott and Costello in pencil.
Alone, they’re brilliant.
Together, they’re freaking Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
And so, at least the game uses that to its advantage.
You play as both characters simultaneously, swapping back and forth between them as necessary.
So they’re always together, which is a good thing...but the writing is never funny.
Which is such a bummer.
And actually, what’s worse is that the concept never goes beyond, “Okay, here’s the Daffy
part, here’s the Bugs part.”
So it just feels restrictive.
The game never uses the character pairing for gameplay that’s interesting or creative.
Or funny.
So Back In Action is sort of creatively void, right?
It’s, like, as standard and paint by numbers as it gets in terms of design—run around,
collect coins, beat up tourists.
That would be one thing, but the execution is even worse.
The controls are clunky and meh, the camera is terrible...and combined, that makes good
platforming and judging your jumps next to impossible.
It’s not like this is trying to be some definitive Looney Tunes game or anything,
you know?
It’s a licensed video game.
You see Looney Tunes and you get excited, but in reality, this is just another generic
movie game that’s forgettable in its best moments, clunky during its worst.
And generally despicable.