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“Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin.”

Duck Amuck remains as one of the funniest animated shorts I’ve ever seen. If you’ve never heard of it or are scratching your head trying to remember it, Duck Amuck was a Looney Tunes short that featured Daffy Duck getting messed with by an unknown animator who made Daffy’s life miserable for about 6 minutes. Daffy eventually has enough and demands at the end to know who is responsible for his antics after blowing his top several times. Watching Daffy’s reaction to his abuse is as funny now as it was when the short debuted back in the 1950s.

Now, over 50 years later, Nintendo DS owners are given the chance to be that animator and torture Daffy all over again, courtesy of Warner Brothers Interactive. Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck allows players to interact with Daffy, with the ultimate goal of angering Daffy so much that the game ends. The game is based on the animated short, but combines it with new ways to tick off Daffy that Chuck Jones might not have ever thought of. The game looks fantastic, and Daffy has got a fair amount of speech in the game; unfortunately, the game’s flaws cancel out the gorgeous aesthetics and leave the game smack dab in the middle of mediocrity.

In order to piss Daffy off, there are a few things you can do. You can job at him with your stylus until he gets mad. You can drag your stylus across certain portions of the white background to rip it, causing Daffy to try to tape it up. You can even try closing the DS while turned on for a hilarious reaction from Daffy. Once angered, and depending on what actions you took to make him mad, Duck Amuck proceeds to a minigame sequence.

The minigames can be fun, but the game makes a grave error in that it assumes that players know what to do. There aren’t any pre-game instructions or objectives; Duck Amuck basically says, “Here you go. Have at it.” For some of the minigames, this works just fine because the objectives are obvious. For others, though, it takes some trial and error to figure them out. Thankfully, there’s no way to “die”, per se. Successful completion of these minigames serves to fuel a thermometer, which is basically Daffy’s anger meter. Once that’s full, Daffy freaks out and the game ends.

The good news is that the minigames are rather varied and are fine to play, once they’re figured out. One sequence has you dealing cards to the appropriate player as Daffy becomes a sheriff in the Wild West. Another sequence has you trying to drop TNT on Daffy as he skis across a winter wonderland. Robin Hood Daffy and Duck Dodgers also make appearances in the game, which will please fans. There are also minigames to be unlocked throughout the game, which can be seen by collecting character coins and fulfilling certain requirements.

Perhaps the biggest attraction of Duck Amuck is the interaction between the player and Daffy. Daffy’s got brand new dialog that brings him into the 21st century, as he waxes about graphics engines and algorithms and mixes that in with classic lines from the original cartoon, delivered masterfully by the new voice of Daffy Duck, Joe Alaskey. Alaskey’s interpretation of Daffy’s voice is eerily similar to Mel Blanc’s famous voiceover work, and that’s certainly a good thing. Seeing Daffy get mad and hearing him call you names is amusing. The music is exactly what you’d expect from a game of this ilk, although it is interesting that the traditional Looney Tunes jingle is absent.

The presentation is as good as it gets for a Looney Tunes game, and especially in the DS. WayForward Technologies does a great job of combining full-motion video (FMV) sequences with very pretty minigames visuals that closely resemble the original cartoons that the game and characters are based on. Duck Amuck is as close to an interactive Looney Tunes short that has ever been seen. Daffy’s expressions are priceless, whether you poke him, blow him up, or run him around.

As good as Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck looks and sounds, the gameplay becomes tiresome quickly. It’s too easy to run through the game by completely filling Daffy’s anger meter; in fact, it’s possible to do it more than twice in less than an hour. Unfortunately, aside from unlocking more minigames, Daffy doesn’t have an infinite number of reactions and repetition occurs way too soon for a fully-priced video game. Duck Amuck winds up becoming a conversation piece to show off to friends and get a laugh here and there. There’s just not enough depth here, and that ends up costing the game any replay value.

Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck pays homage to its base material and can be a fun diversion… for a budget price. Daffy Duck in the 21st century is as funny as he was in the beginning, and that’s a tribute to WayForward’s attention to detail, the original cartoon’s script, and Joe Alaskey’s stellar voice work. Unfortunately, the underlying game just doesn’t have enough substance to warrant a full-price purchase. Pass on this one until the inevitable price drop occurs.

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