Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal

"Broken and almost unplayable"

As I placed Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal back in its case after finishing it, I was still in shock. It took me a few minutes to get back to reality and try to comprehend what had lied before my eyes during those few hours of play. In fact, there is nothing to make sense of. I've played many bad games, but this takes the cake. Not because it's blatantly bad, this is not Big Rigs or Superman 64, but because it's impossible to play this game and not be astonished by how unfunctional it is. I just couldn't believe my eyes at the incomprehensible mess Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal is.

The only, and only, one thing the game does well is implementing the Looney Tunes characters into a cartoon world scattered with humour. What's hilarious about the game though, isn't the developers' attempt at funny situations, but rather the crazy amount of glitches. Your character constantly either bumps into invisible walls that don't seem like they should be there, right in the middle of a clear path, or on the contrary, walks into places where you wouldn't be supposed to go, because of a missing invisible wall. It makes it feel like you don't have to play the game as intended, but rather just find any way around the levels, as long as you get to the end, who cares you did it the right way or not.

For instance, there might be a locked gate blocking your path, and the only way to open it is to defeat all the enemies around, but by jumping a bit around, you might find an opening leading through the gate. The catch is that it's not a shortcut, but a glitch. The game is full of those. Want to avoid a large area full of enemies? Jump around a bit and your character might just get stuck in a wall and slide over to the other side. Crazy. Sometimes, enemies will bump into you, and your character will get stuck in the air and float around a bit before falling back. Or it might just get stuck between two crates with no way to get out, other than resetting. Perhaps I'm just really unlucky, but those bugs plagued almost every single level, and that's not even all.

Glitches or not, the programming in Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal is nothing short of disgusting. The level design is confusing and makes absolutely no sense. There is never any way to know what you're supposed to do, or where you're supposed to go. Considering the levels are 100% straightforward, not knowing where to go is indeed a problem. It's never too clear if you're supposed to jump on that faraway platform that could be part of the background (or not, who knows) or that close platform that is inclined at 179 degrees (yet you can still stand on it), or if you're just supposed to find a switch that is so hard to see it might as well be invisible. Or you might just find another way around. The game does give you the same hint over and over, "Shake the Wiimote to activate", but the problem is that it never tells you what exactly you're trying to activate. Activate what? The question is still haunting me.

Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal is like a very, very bad Ratchet & Clank. You go through a series of linear (but varied) levels filled with enemies, and do some platforming in-between killing. I suppose I don't need to mention that the platforming is atrocious. The camera often gets stuck around, moves in the wrong direction all the time, and even points in the opposite direction you're facing. The platforms you're supposed to jump onto are often too faraway, making the jumps impossible, and at times your character doesn't even try to grip the edge and just falls down even though it seemed like you were going to land on the platform. There's never any way to know where exactly you're jumping, and the necessary triple jump only works one time out of two. You're supposed, and I say supposed, because it rarely works, to rotate the Nunchuk right after the double jump, to make the character hover. However, for some reason, this works at times, while at other times it doesn't. It's very common to fall into the same pit several times in a row, thanks to that.

Thankfully, the levels are filled with checkpoints to make up for the cheap deaths. So many checkpoints in fact, that you might find checkpoints every ten steps, to a point where it becomes ridiculous. You just can't lose with that many checkpoints. There are even a couple of areas where you'll find two checkpoints one right after the other, at about two steps from each other, and no obstacles whatsoever in-between. Phew. Where was the developers' mind? The game is downright ugly, even for a PS2 port. The graphics are texture-less, blurry and almost rival those of the N64, with an awful draw-distance. As you walk forward, huge background elements, like mountains, pop out in the horizon, and sometimes you can even see right through them before they appear. There is one level in particular with a badly animated pterodactyl that is so pathetic to look at it leaves me without words. I still can't believe it just thinking back about it.

The game lets you control a few of the Looney Tunes characters, two per level to be precise. You'll start with one, then can switch between the two at any moment, or if you die, the other character will take over. It's just for the sake of it though, since all characters pretty much control the same way and have no specific abilities. Here and there, you'll find guns to help you take care of the outstanding amounts of enemies. I'm not too sure how exactly this came to be implemented in the gameplay, or maybe it's again due to the bad programming, but targeting enemies is almost impossible because of the wonky camera, and if you're not targeting, there is no way to see where you're shooting. Not to mention the enemies always take you on in groups, so no matter what enemy you shoot, you get shot by twenty others. And if you're not using a gun, then you have to rely on waggling the wiimote around to perform combos that never work. What a terrible beat 'em up.

And that's not over yet. The game features countless enemies to beat up on -- and a weak framerate. In addition to the choppy and mindless action sequences, too many things going on at once on the screen often results in clipping graphics and cutting music. This whole thing makes the game almost unplayable. It's hard to make sense of what's going on screen, and even if you manage to, your control over what's going on is just not fun. Add to this that your character constantly talks to himself every two seconds to say silly stuff that is supposed to be funny, but is not, in some fake cartoon voice-acting, and you have another reason to be annoyed besides the glitchy layouts. Fortunately, the game only lasts a few hours, with some of the worse boss battles ever. You'd have to see for yourselves though; it's just indescriptable how awful they are.

Now don't get me wrong: the general idea behind Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal's concept isn't bad. It would have made for something decent, if handled right. However, the game is completely ruined by atrocious execution. The only thing that kept me going was to see how bad the next level would be. Just to make sure, I even checked the credits to see if more than one person had actually worked on this game, and if it had been tested. To my surprise, many people were involved, and the game was even tested by five beings. Then again, the problem might come from the production time, or the budget. Whatever it is though, it doesn't seem like the people in question really tried the final product and questioned whether or not it was ready for release. Final verdict: If you like playing broken games for fun, then you'll have a blast, or if not, a headache. The game's at least worth a good laugh...

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 01/23/08, Updated 03/11/08

Game Release: Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal (US, 10/09/07)