Loons: The Fight for Fame

Infogrames Fall 2002--Somewhere between the minigame madness of Mario Party and the free-for-all brawling of Super Smash Bros, falls Loons, Infogrames' upcoming four-player party game. You play as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Taz or Sylvester and face off against other Looney Tunes characters in a variety of action-packed, movie-themed stages using cartoon props and gizmos as your weaponry. Looney Tunes and mayhem are definitely ingredients for success; if Loons can manage to keep from getting too stale too quick (cough, Fuzion Frenzy, cough), it could be a winner.

We all grew up watching Looney Tunes. We loved the way they constantly fought each other. Now Infogrames puts you in the role of one of four Looney Tunes stars: Bugs, Taz, Daffy or Sylvester and lets you going head to head against the others, in a no holds barred brawl to see who gets the leading role in Yosemite Sam's next picture. Sounds fun? Well, it is' for a little while.

Loons: The Fight for Fame, starts out with this very promising premise. After all, we grew up watching these guys knock each other around with frying pans, throwing lit bombs or dropping pianos on each other. Who wouldn't want a piece of the action? My kids and I were excited about this game but as life frequently is, the wanting is sweeter than the having.

Playing Loons is reminiscent of Fuzion Frenzy. While there is technically a single player game here, it's really all about multiplayer. You and three friends can talk trash and go head-to-head with an assortment of attacks ranging from smacking them with a large fish, calling down storm clouds to electrocute them or even squeezing a beehive to infest your opponent with bees. The goal of each level is to keep your star quality high and to decrease your opponents rating by whacking them. There is a great diversity of ways to attack your opponents, but that really isn't the issue. The reality comes down to a lack of re-playability and fun factor. These are great characters and this game should be fun, but it isn't.

On the positive side, the cut sequences are well done, the cell shading graphics are decent and the monotony is occasionally broken by bonus games, but for the most part, the game continues on without a lot of variety. Random events, like script updates and items that you can interact with at special times, keep things interesting for a time, but after awhile the fun really starts to drain out of this game.

I wanted to like this game, but I can't even give it a Fans Only rating. Save your money and avoid this one.