For a seemingly uninspired rhythm game that looks like it was done on a shoestring budget, "Looney Tunes Cartoon Conductor" does a good job of offering a hare-raising musical challenge.
Part of the difficulty lies in keeping track of the helter-skelter beats popping up chaotically on the screen, and some of it is trying to find indiscernible rhythms -- in some cases nonexistent -- buried in classical heavyweights like "Mars, the Bringer of War."
Anyone familiar with Bugs Bunny and his Merrie Melodies cohorts knows the cartoon's finest screwball antics are set to classical soundtracks, whether it's Elmer Fudd trying to kill da wabbit set to Wagner, or Sylvester chasing around Speedy Gonzales to the "Mexican Hat Dance."
"Cartoon Conductor" plays similarly to "Elite Beat Agents," but with more emphasis on dragging the stylus to string beats together.
There's a pretty steep learning curve to a game that most likely would appeal to kids. Adult fans who grew up watching these cartoons likely will be bitterly disappointed in the abridged, repetitive cartoon story lines that unfold to the music.
For example, "What's Opera, Doc" is hacked and edited to match the music, with key pieces of the cartoon missing. Unless you've seen "What's Opera, Doc" previously, the in-game version wouldn't give you much of a clue to what's going on. It's as if all the wit were drained in order to facilitate abbreviated gameplay.
While you're sliding and tapping beats, the 3-D animation goes into a repetitive loop -- I'm assuming so that you don't get distracted -- pausing at certain points in the gameplay so you can watch a snippet of the action. But with a replay function present, what harm would it have been to present the cartoon in its entirety, with your reward for a successful completion being the ability to watch the original cartoon?
The four tiers of difficulty truly do differentiate themselves, requiring you to hit more notes at a frantic pace. Fail to nail too many, and the curtain comes down, game over. After finishing a song, depending on your accuracy with the notes -- your timing is instantly graded with an orange, silver or gold carrot during gameplay -- you'll receive a letter grade, and either applause and praise or yawns and wisecracks.
Each difficulty level has a tutorial and 12 songs to unlock -- the same songs for each level -- plus six bonus remixes. Unless you like really terrible, teeth-gratingly bad, pseudo-techno remixes of classical music, you might want to skip these.
The more songs you complete, the more extras you unlock, too. Short bios on the composers and background on the artists who created the Looney Tunes characters are interesting little tidbits, and you can listen to the songs in jukebox mode or scroll through a ton of character dialogue -- some weird gems like "He's got a mind like a steel trap -- full of mice," as well as standards like "I taut I taw a puddy tat."
By no means is "Cartoon Conductor" terrible, but it feels like a letdown. Better animation and unedited cartoons would have been a major improvement, as would making sure the songs being used have a distinguishable beat. It certainly doesn't have much replay value, and the Looney Tunes novelty quickly wears off. Additional Information:
Additional Information: 'Looney Tunes Cartoon Conductor'
Grade: C-Developer: Amaze Entertainment
Publisher: Eidos
Platform: DS
Genre: Rhythm
ESRB: Everyone
Retail: $19.99
