Glu has two tricky tasks to overcome with Loony Tunes Monster Mash. It needs to fathom a way to give yet another Bejeweled clone a unique twist, and to work as many Warner Bros characters into that twist as possible. Neither of which is particularly easy.
It attempts the the latter by way of some obscure back story involving a plot uncovered by Lola Bunny (children’s entertainers, like Warner, are required to offer a female equivalent of all their male characters these days) as the evil Dr Fricktenstein searches for the Monster Badge, which allows people or anthropomorphised animals or whatever to unlock their ‘inner monster’. For whatever reason, this is bad, and you have to stop him by getting the monster badge first.
Presumably, this is a game aimed at younger players, or Porky Pig and Daffy Duck wouldn't be required to make an appearance, so the reams of text attached to this nonsensical story really don't help when it comes to understanding what the game requires.
The match-three gameplay is actually quite simple, despite being buried beneath the rubble of Loony Tunes Monster Match’s plot. It pits you, as one of the well-known cartoon characters, against your slightly less well-known nefarious counterpart.
You take it in turns to make a move on the game board, swapping the icons to match rows of three. Match more than three, and you get an extra turn. Match three bombs, and your opponent's energy is drained. All quite simple, and the head to head aspect provides the vital twist to keep the gameplay interesting.
The rest of the icons offer different kinds of energy. Building up this energy allows you to do gags (quite why they're called gags I really wouldn't like to say) which perform special functions in lieu of your turn on the game board, such as taking ten points or more of your opponent's energy level.
The choice of graphics perhaps wasn't such a wise one. The icons are all different colours, which does help differentiate them, though given that they are all phials and test tubes of some kind or another the screen looks very cluttered.
A more mature player will find the chess-like, strategic element to the game (choosing carefully which type of icon to match depending on whether you want to attack, defend or achieve some other purpose) quite fascinating, but the younger demographic who are likely to want this Bugs Bunny-branded game will probably find it frustrating and far too much hassle to hold their attention.
Loony Tunes Monster Match Review
Although the head-to-head gameplay is a great addition to the off-the-shelf match three gameplay, the convoluted nature of battle and the obscurity of the game's overall objective will likely alienate it from its intended, younger demographic
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.