Animaniacs: The Great Edgar Hunt (GameCube) Review

There are spectacular games and those that merely have you 'pfft'ing at the television whilst you play. Unfortunately, the visuals in Animaniacs fall into that latter category, with barely anything of note that could not have been pulled off on the Nintendo 64. Whilst the characters are full of life, sporting mildly amusing facial expressions, the general location surroundings tend to leave a bland taste in your mouth. No real effort has gone in to making this stand out from the crowd of identikit low-budget platform games already on the market it would appear.

And the same definitely has to be attributed to the aural aspect of The Great Edgar Hunt. Okay, so if you like the wacky and zany musical antics of the show itself you might be slightly more forgiving in this area, but in all honesty you should not be so gracious and lenient. As with the graphics, the word 'insipid' is a perfect one-word summation as other than the exception of decent voice-overs (using the actors / actresses from the cartoon show) everything is utterly forgettable.

You might have noticed that my usual technique of providing a brief summary of the storyline at the start of reviews has been omitted this time around and you would not have to be a genius to know why that is. Anyway, the aim of the game is to wander around and collect 'Edgars', the Animaniacs' version of our beloved Oscars. This means having to traverse a variety of theme worlds in order to complete numerous tedious tasks in order to gain one of the elusive statuettes.

Many of you will have seen the set-up found here in other platform titles, albeit done several times better. In fact, considering Warthog is supposedly one of the illustrious game developers in the UK it makes you wonder just where this went wrong.

After all, borrowing from the likes of Jak & Daxter, Sly Racoon as well as Ratchet & Clank should bode well, no? Instead we are left with a copycat title that pales into insignificance compared to its peers. If only Warthog had not swallowed, and then proceeded to shut down, the talented Zed Two...

There are three characters to play as on this 'thrill-a-minute' adventure, Wakko, Yakko and Dot – the Warner Bros and sister. Each one has a different ability that can be used to collect a set amount of Edgars before being able to move on to the next section. Early tasks include finding hidden children, pulling horseshoes off with a large magnet in one of the Pinky & The Brain sections and saving sister Dot from an on-coming train to eventually unlock her as a playable character.

So there is an amount of diversity found within, yet the tedium sets in quite quickly. Yes, I will admit that there are times when I chuckled, but they were so few and far between that unfortunately I find this game has tarnished my positive memories of the cartoon that only just came in behind Tiny Toon Adventures in my eyes as a younger child. Oh, and the camera will annoy you with its slow movement and the likelihood of it growing a mind of its own to land itself in the most awkward of positions for you, the gamer. Irritating…

And to top it all off, with so many checkpoints and infinite lives, the game will hardly last you a long time at all. Especially when there are only six worlds to progress through!