Reviewed by Eli

Shame on you Warner Brothers. Shame on you Eidos. Shame on you Nintendo DS.

Looney Tunes: Cartoon Conductor lets you “Conduct your way through 18 hilarious scenes inspired by your favorite Looney Tunes cartoons.”

Ooh. Sounds cool. It’s not.

Wacky Races: Crash & Dash promises you can “Play as your favorite Wacky Racer.”

Sounds sorta cool. It’s really not.

These two games are a perfect example of licensed products that either get rushed through for a quick buck, or are given to an unimaginative creative team. We’re talking about the freakin Looney Tunes! Couldn’t they have made a better game to represent some of the most recognizable and longest lived cartoon characters on the planet? And the Wacky Racers might not be quite as recognizable, they would still be able to hold their own against the likes of Mario and Donkey Kong if they were given a good solid game, and a decent launch. Kids racing games are huge business, and the Wacky Racers are perfect for the genre.

Neither of these games are god awful, but there are both thoroughly mediocre. And being a pretty big fan of both sets of characters, I’m pretty upset.

Cartoon Conductor displays the “hilarious scene” on the top screen while you use the stylus to follow lines and dots on the touch screen that represents the music. It sounds good on paper, and with other music oriented games doing pretty well, (ahem, has anyone heard of a game called Rock Band?) it makes sense to give this game a shot. I was actually pretty excited to play it after I read the back of the box. It’s frustrating at first, while you get used to the controls, then its pretty fun for about twenty minutes, and then you’re bored. One of the main problems is that the “hilarious scene” that is supposed to keep you laughing is in no way involved in the action of playing the game. If you try to look up at it, you’re gonna lose points. Every once in a while the action will pause so you can watch what’s going on, but it pulls you out of the game play in a bad way, and then you have to try to get back into the groove, which can be hard with classical music like Verdi. (In the interest of fairness I should mention that the soundtrack is good and sounds good, and the scenes have been well rendered.) The essential idea isn’t so bad, but the overall execution lacks.

I got my little brother to take a second look at this game for me, because I’m not a huge DS fan. So I was worried that my personal dislike was clouding my judgment. He basically agreed but added that the lack of mini games was unfortunate but felt the need to point out that the control system was “very good.”

Crash & Dash is just plain annoying. It tries a new control scheme where the player leads his character around the track with his or her stylus. This makes it pretty hard to see what the hell is happening on the touch screen. The top screen is mostly used for the obnoxious mini games that only served the purpose of pissing me of and slowing down the action. The system for firing the “wacky widgets” at other players also involved the stylus and was wildly inaccurate.

My brother tried to say nice things about this game, but you could tell his heart wasn’t really in it. The best compliment he could come up with (regarding the control scheme) was that it was “not necessarily bad,” and that the graphics were “not the worst.”

He’s a kind lad. I’m not. Don’t buy these games. If some misguided relative or friend gives them to you, trade them in.