Animaniacs: A Gigantic Adventure

I wanted Animaniacs: A Gigantic Adventure to be good. I really did.

Animaniacs is one of those cartoons that should make a great game almost by accident. Yakko, Wakko, and Dot are already running around like escaped lunatics. The show is fast, loud, weird, and stuffed with more jokes than most people catch the first time. Turning that into a platform game should not be hard. Give me big cartoon worlds, stupid weapons, a bunch of ridiculous enemies, and enough personality to make it feel like the show.

That is all I wanted.

What I got was a PC platformer that feels like it escaped from a much better idea.

The problem is that the actual platforming feels stiff and plain. You run, jump, whack enemies, collect stuff, and move through levels that should be bursting with cartoon energy but usually just sit there. For a game based on Animaniacs, it feels strangely flat. The characters are here. The names are here. The general idea is here. But the timing, speed, and madness that made the cartoon work are missing too often.

Yakko, Wakko, and Dot should feel like chaos with legs. Instead they feel like ordinary platform game characters wearing Animaniacs costumes.

The levels are not terrible, but they do not have enough bite. You get areas like the Warner Bros. studio, a ship, and other themed locations, but too much of it feels like standard platform game filler. Jump here. Hit that. Pick up this. Avoid that. I kept waiting for the game to really cut loose and do something wild with the license, and it kept giving me another stretch of basic jumping instead. A game like this should be throwing gags at me constantly. It should be surprising me. It should be annoying me in a funny way, not boring me in a normal way.

The characters having different attacks is a good idea, but it does not change the game enough. Wakko’s bat, Yakko’s mallet, and Dot’s anvils give each one a little identity, but this is not some deep character-switching masterpiece. Most of the time you are still doing the same basic platforming with a slightly different cartoon weapon. It is cute for a while, then it becomes background noise.

Graphics are decent enough in that bright Saturday morning way. The characters look recognizable, the colors are fine, and younger players will probably enjoy seeing the Warner kids bouncing around the screen. But even here, it does not feel as alive as it should. Animaniacs was all about exaggerated movement and timing. A game based on it needs animation that snaps. This has moments where it looks okay, but it never feels as wild as the cartoon.

Sound is probably the most frustrating part, because this is where an Animaniacs game should kill. The voices and music should carry half the experience. Instead, it is just there. Not awful. Not enough. The show had personality coming out of every corner, and the game only catches pieces of it. You get reminders of Animaniacs, but not enough to make the game feel like a lost episode you can play.

I do think kids who love the show may get more out of it than I did. There is nothing here so broken that it cannot be played, and for a younger player who just wants to run around as Yakko, Wakko, or Dot, this might be enough. But that is a pretty low bar. A licensed game should do more than exist with the right characters on the box.

The real problem is that Animaniacs deserved better. This should have been one of those fast, clever, ridiculous cartoon platformers that makes you grin even when the level design gets cheap. Instead, it is just another average PC platformer with a good license pasted over it. It has some charm because the characters have charm, but the game itself does not earn much of that charm on its own.

Animaniacs: A Gigantic Adventure is not a disaster. I have played worse licensed games. A lot worse.

But that may be the nicest thing I can say about it, and that is not exactly high praise.

If you are buying this for a kid who loves Animaniacs, fine. They may have fun with it. If you are buying it because you want a great platform game, keep walking. There are better games, better cartoon games, and better ways to spend an afternoon than waiting for this one to finally go completely nuts.

For a game about the Animaniacs, it is way too well-behaved.