Animaniacs: A Gigantic Adventure

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Review: Animaniacs: A Gigantic Adventure

Yakko, Wakko, and Dot must foil the sinister Thaddeus J. Plotz, CEO of Warner Bros., and rescue lost movie classics he has hidden on the set of Gigantic. (Think Titanic strewn with grabbable star, food, and bonus icons). The side-scrolling action moves to an offending iceberg and then spills onto other sets on the WB lot. You'll control a different Warner sibling in each world, collect a number of hidden films, Oscars, and movie posters, and take on the occasional boss.

With far too little animation and a woefully inadequate variety of bad guys, Animaniacs' characters play like a broken record against the landscape of detailed but cliched backgrounds. Everything is pre-rendered in the style of old platformers (although an occasional hidden TV set may invoke a quick FMV animation). Some nifty fore- and background effects crop up, but Animaniacs can barely contend with decade-old SNES classics.

Similarly, this game's audio stylings are sparse and utilitarian. Each Warner sibling has one or two general sound bytes. Since the vibrant Animaniacs are known for constant wry quips on everything that passes under their noses, their relative muteness here is inexcusable and disappointing. The ample cartoonish sound effects might have been pulled right from the WB vaults, but virtually no in-game music is provided, some sound cues are misplaced, and even the bosses don't have battle cries beyond a chortle.

All in all, this is a far cry from the TV show's kinetic atmosphere.

Animaniacs' interface doesn't have a steep hill to climb. You've got standard run, jump, and attack buttons in a world with platforms, collectable icons, and pacing bad guys--a formula that was perfected nearly two decades ago. Nevertheless, collision detection is dubious at best, and your character may get stuck on corners or steps. You're propelled backward when striking a bad guy, often right off the precious platforms. The jump button falls deaf when you're blinking after taking a hit, so it's easy to become trapped in dangerous situations. Although none of these faults are insurmountable, their sum is disappointingly high for such a simple game.

Animaniacs: A Gigantic Adventure, with its cartoon nature, benign violence, and goofy characters, is clearly geared toward the youngest common denominator in video game fans. But these are the same kids who enjoy the complex mysteries of Zelda or Banjo-Kazooie. It's hard to imagine them, or anyone else, appreciating this game's antique feel.-- Hugh Sterbakov / GamePro