Did we learn NOTHING from Shadow the Hedgehog?
Is there a story to this game? There seems to be, but there's no intro, you press the 'Story' option and you are thrust into Mission Select. It seems the Looney Tunes must band together and go back in time to destroy countless, generic robots. A terrible idea with a vapid execution, exactly what the doctor ordered! At least the game can be played in co-op with another player, and there is a deathmatch mode in case you want to torture someone. If you are by yourself, you can swap between characters with the L1 button, each character having his own independent life bar.
70% of the game is played like a beat'em up, Square is your three hit combo, triangle is your strong attack and circle performs a super weak attack that hits all around you. Every character has different animations, but they play exactly the same. You can power up your attacks by collecting green pick ups and filling up your green energy bar, up to two levels, and to be fair it's kinda neat how their weapon changes. Marvin's swords get bigger, Bugs gets different, bigger guitars, Daffy gets different, bigger hammers, etc. On the other hand they cut costs with Taz and Hulk Bugs Bunny(Yeah...) since they only get differently colored trails. Lame(Taz is my favorite Looney Tune!). There's this very weird mechanic in which CERTAIN enemies, and only certain enemies, can actually zap some of these energy from your gauge, even leveling down your strength level! It's kinda dumb, particularly when enemies pelt you away from afar and as you awkwardly make your way towards them you are penalized because screw you.
Eventually you may come across a gun, maybe you spend in-game money to get it or you find it... they have very limited ammo but are definitely stronger than your melee attacks. Despite proudly displaying guns in the game's cover, they sure play a small part in the game. Weapons 'try' to be silly, like a gun that shoots baseballs, a gun that shoots bear traps and a useless gun that shoots a mallet that hits enemies, but they just come across as uninspired.
Lastly, there are 3 or 4 racing stages and these are awful. They are too long, which makes them boring, but the controls are awful, who tested this? Who thought this worked? Triangle accelerates and... X jumps. HOW does that make ANY Sense at all? AS far as I know you can't change controls, so how did people testing this game never protest about this? It makes no sense!!! And to make it even more fun, R2 is used to shoot. Basically, during racing stages my right hand would bend into this very awkward position so that I could hold down triangle and R2 together while letting me tap X to jump. It makes no sense.
The worst part about the game is how lifeless it feels. The game is so unbearably boring, with a combat system that lulls you into sleep. Hitting stuff just isn't fun, satisfying or rewarding, and if 70% of your game is about hitting stuff... you are doing something VERY wrong. Guns are just as drab, everything in the game lacks weight and oomph, heck, your characters slip all over the place when attacking. It feels as cheap as it looks.
So, to get you up to speed: Terrible premise and boring gameplay, how could it get any worse? Well, it runs like hot garbage, at least on PS2. The game is constantly stuttering and micro-freezing while you play. One stage had the music get stuck and a blue screen of death would start showing up saying "Difficulty Reading the disc"...but my disc looked fine. I looked it up only and at least another person got the same error even though their disc looked fine too!
Acme Arsenal is easily one of the worst, if not THE worst game I've played so far in 2021. It kinda makes me glad to know that it'd be hard to play something worse than this. Can't say I don't look for the bright side, eh!
1.5
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