Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports – Review

What we have with Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports is a collection of four sports games: Golf, Tennis, Football (Soccer), and Basketball. All four are solid, if rather basic, but given the subject matter here, I don’t think anyone buying this will be looking for deep simulations! These are meant to be light-hearted, arcade-style fun, best experienced with friends.

Golf is basic, as I say. You can switch between an overhead view to gauge distance and a behind-character angle to take the shot, which is taken by pressing “A” to start a power bar, “A” to stop it, and “A” again to stop as close to your previous line as possible. Any deviation results in the ball swinging to either side. Putting is much the same, although it can be hard to read the green.

Tennis offers a standard doubles match. Each face button delivers a different kind of shot, and occasionally, power-up targets will appear for you to hit. Doing so will either provide you with a bonus or hinder the other side.

Football is much like any other cartoon-style arcade football game. It’s basic and again, has power-ups that will both help or hinder, depending on luck. Your team is boosted to five players here, rather than the usual two per side.

And finally, the basketball gameplay is very reminiscent of the old NBA Jam from the 90s and was my personal favourite to play. Again, it’s two a-side and there are various pick-ups to collect as you play.

You can choose from playing individual games or a tournament mode where you play a couple of holes of golf before switching to tennis, football and basketball in a random order in random locations. It’s in this mode where you can unlock new locations to play in, but as it’s randomly selected, there’s no guarantee you’ll unlock anything new. This mode takes around half an hour to complete.

There are nine characters to choose from and they’re all the ones you’d like to expect, although Yosemite Sam is a paid DLC. There’s Buggs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig etc. Marvin the Martian is oddly missing though and seems an odd choice to leave out. Each character has a special move they can use which is sensitive to each sport, so they all play differently.

Presentation-wise, again, it’s very basic. The graphics are fine. They’re nothing special, just cell-shaded as you’d expect from a cartoon game. Sadly, they do look like something from the Dreamcast or PS2 era, rather than the more modern work like Hi-Fi Rush, for example. The music can grate on you a little too. The Looney Tunes theme doesn’t sound quite right and is a bit short and very repetitive, but the in-game music is fine. The character voices are authentic enough.

It’s hard to recommend Looney Tunes: Whacky World of Sports as it stands. Each sport is decent enough, but nothing really stands out. It’s probably overpriced as it stands as well. I’d recommend waiting for a sale before considering a purchase. There’s definitely fun here though, especially in multiplayer.