Tiny Toon Adventures: Plucky's Big Adventure Review by Eric42 - eric42@eric42.org Rating: 6/10 "Plucky's big adventure really isn't all that big..." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- From the creative minds at Warthog comes a brand Tiny Toon Adventures video game, and it's left me wondering what it was all about. After receiving this game for free, straight from the guys Warthog, I sat down and played it, completing it in days (between work and sleep). Here are my thoughts on the game. When I first had heard that Warthog was creating a brand new Tiny Toon Adventures game, I was interested to see how their take on the series would be. The last few Tiny Toon Adventures games, for the Playstation and the PC, had been bland and aimed at a age group younger than me, and even though I figured the target age group for this game would be the same, I hoped that it could still be a fun game for someone my age (22 at the time of this writing). Early on in the process, I received emails from Warthog, giving me an early glance into what the game was going to be like. So, from the beginning, I knew the game would was going to be a "trading game", but I didn't know what anything else in the game would be like. Would there be a way to defend yourself as you went around finding the items you needed? Would it actually be like the actual episode of Tiny Toon Adventures that it was loosely based on? Too bad the answer to both questions ended up being No. My major beef with the game is the graphics. The Playstation has been out for many years now and while it's definitely not one of the most powerful gaming machines out there, it can do some great stuff. However, for a late-generation Playstation title, Plucky's Big Adventure fails in the graphics department. Don't get me wrong, the hand drawn art that appears in the game looks excellent and even looks like some of the original art from Warner Brothers, but the 3D-Graphics of the game are blocky and pointy. They aren't the best that I think Warthog could have done. What happened, Warthog? The only other beefs I have are the real annoyances that Elmyra and Montana Max are in the game. Yeah, okay, I know that there almost has to be one or two "bad guys" in games today, but shouldn't the "heroes" get the chance to defend themselves? Why didn't Plucky, Hamton, Babs, and Buster get each their own weapon to defend themselves? I'm not talking about real serious violent weapons, but weapons that would have easily fit in with the Toon theme. A spring-loaded Boxing glove for that one time use of knocking Montana Max back against a wall would have been great! Instead, when you get lost in the game and are running back and forth unable to find the item you need next, you may instead find yourself getting "caught" by either Elmyra or Montana Max a bit more than you should. Now, the difficulty of the game is something else. Who were they making this game for? 11 year olds or 25 year old science majors? Sometimes, it got hard to tell when they were giving vague clues that the normal 11 year old really wouldn't know. Maybe it's a ploy to get parents involved in the game as well, but even at the age of 22, I couldn't figure out some of the clues and had to guess at a lot of it. With the bad things out of the way, I'll start in on the good things about the game. It was actually a refreshing feel to have yet another platformer game in the TTA line of video games. Konami has already done those to death. Instead, Warthog opted for a puzzle-oriented trading game that was pretty inventive, even if it a bit hard to find the items, even if you did your best to follow the given clues (see last paragraph). The only other form I'd like to see a TTA game is in the RPG format. Maybe some day. Overall, the game was pretty good. It certainly wasn't the best game out there, but for the age group that the game was made for, I'm sure it's good enough to keep them busy for a while. I certainly will recommend the game to anyone who used to watched the show. Perhaps, this is just Warthog's first try at a Playstation game and maybe we'll see more TTA games from them in the future.