Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports review

It’s been a while since the Looney Tunes have been relevant, yet from the moment I booted up Wacky World of Sports, I felt at home. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Taz were all staples of my childhood, and I still believe Space Jam is an underrated classic. Regardless of your familiarity with these unhinged cartoon characters, is it worth playing? We’ve not got a lot of sports titles that focus more on the fun and arcade-style of gameplay. Nintendo has done it so well with its Mario sports titles, is it worth giving this a go in favour of an already excellent slew of games on the Switch?

Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports isn’t bad, nor is it great. Some of the sports play better than others, but it’s hard to call this anything other than mediocre. Golf is perhaps the most fun of all four sports, with a typical two-button hit mechanic and an interesting variety of courses. The reason it’s the better sport is down to its slower pacing and the fact you don’t have to clunkily run around courts or pitches but rather focus on hitting a great shot.

Take basketball for example. Movement feels awkward and slow, and there’s no fluidity to it at all. Once you get familiar with moving around the court it becomes bearable, but it’s never fun to do. Shots can be pulled off pretty easier and you’ll seldom miss without interruption. You can jump in front of an opponent to try and block their shot, or even throw a pie in their face, but the controls aren’t particularly responsive. You can build an energy gauge that allows you to hit shots from far away, dunk in style with special animations, and knock opposing players off the ball, but it never feels that enjoyable.

Football is a bit better, although scoring is unbalanced. You can shoot from close-up but the keeper saves the shot far too easily, yet an opponent scores from distance and it goes in the top corner without any resistance. This felt like a consistent theme during every match and again, you need to become familiar with the flaws to find any sense of enjoyment. You can build up a chance to pull off a special shot like Mario Strikers, and each character has their own animation. It works pretty well, but outside of these fancy shots the movement is once again pretty clunky.

Tennis is the fourth sport in Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports, and it can be fun when hitting rallies with your opponent. Trying to find an opening doesn’t feel rewarding when you hit that all-important shot because the AI doesn’t seem particularly smart. I also found it hard to move across the back line in order to hit a sweeping shot from my competition because it just wasn’t as responsive as it should be. Despite issues with slow movement and a lack of responsivity, it can still be enjoyable playing against a friend or family member in local co-op.

The animations are fantastic, especially how the arenas come to life during matches. Some of the locations are great, with crowds coming to life and making the whole experience more immersive. Voice lines are fired off effortlessly by the characters, with some great humour familiar to the ACME lot. It’s vibrant and detailed in a way I wasn’t expecting, and if only the game was more fun to play I’d have a much higher opinion of it.

Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports could have been so much better if movement wasn’t as slow, and some of the controls could have been tightened to be more responsive. Golf is the standout mode, but there’s just not enough polish to recommend above already existing titles that do it so much better. The aesthetic is perfect and works beautifully across all the different locations, it’s just a shame the games aren’t fun enough to play.