Loonatics Unleashed - Acmegeddon: Part One (Snark)

Just for the record yes I’m skipping the stupid time-warp episode. Here we go guys, the senses-shattering season finale of Loonatics Unleashed!

Loonatics HQ is prominently framed against the Acmetropolis skyline. Despite the city being the whole planet, it never seems much bigger than a regular city on a superhero show, does it?

 

Look, if I shouldn’t think about it, they shouldn’t mention it.

Then a train whizzes by. I could mention there’s no way in hell it got from where we first saw to where it was in the distance a second later, but I think I’d better pace myself. This is a two-parter, after all.

This proves to be a train transferring supervillains. A loudspeaker warns a group of guards, “Today we’re transporting four of the most dangerous criminals to a new maximum security facility.” Which sounds like something everybody would’ve been briefed on already, but then everybody’s a moron on this show.

Those villains are Sypher, Mastermind, Weather Vane (who was never actually captured) and Massive. We’re informed, “They’ll be under the supervision of one of the most courageous members of the Loonatics.” The show’s predictable joke powers running full-tilt, this turns out to be Daffy.

A blue wormhole suddenly appears in the train and sucks the villains inside. They’re shit back out on some generic barren asteroid and find themselves face-to-faceplate with this show’s idea of a master villain, Optimatus (op-tuh-mot-us).

Not only is that a woefully stupid name, but they hired Charlie Adler to do his voice. Look, I have plenty of respect for Charlie. He’s got a good range, but the one role he’s no good at is this one. He probably can’t help it, but the way his voice sounds, there's this smarmy quality underlying all his lines like he’s parodying the kind of world-beating master villain he’s supposed to actually be. Which is probably why this show’s one of the few where he plays this kind of villain instead of a goofy one or a serious villain’s goofy sidekick.

And I never would’ve guessed that spelling from that pronunciation, but later we have characters referring to him with nicknames like “Optomato.” Must make life a lot simpler when you can read people's names off a script.

Wait, Daffy's voiced by...Peter Pan??

Our villain for the evening offers to let the four of them rule Acmetropolis “and all its resources” if they’ll get rid of the Loonatics for him. The villains huddle up and discuss the merits of throwing in with Optimatus, and even though Massive notes he probably just wants to use them as pawns to take over Acmetropolis himself, they agree to do his dirty work because the writing isn’t sophisticated enough for them to do anything else. Even though Sypher tries to cut a deal to be allowed to steal the other villains’ powers and handle things by himself (which the other villains shut down).

Optimatus gives his little task force a computer chip to insert once they take over the Loonatics’ headquarters. Not what to insert it into, just to insert it when they’re in the Loonatics HQ.

Speaking of Loonatics HQ, Daffy’s terrified of when Zadavia checks in and finds out how the villains disappeared on his watch. Who put him in charge of that anyway? In-show at least he’s supposed to be the least competent team member. Did Zadavia/Bugs figure that was a job even he couldn’t screw up and gave it to him to give the others some peace and quiet?  Wouldn’t that make this their fault, really?

Actually, for once the others are willing to cut Daffy some slack. Zadavia already knows about the villains escaping and seems uncharacteristically worried when Daffy tells her what happened, confirming something powerful and far beyond Daffy’s control was responsible. She then disappears and we see where Zadavia lives, which apparently is Center Neptune from Battle of the Planets. She talks to herself about how she’s running out of time and “he” is coming for her. Look lady, when your face is popping out of giant billboards, you don’t seem all that concerned with laying low.

And oh dear, are we finally going to hear the backstory of this character who never existed before this show? Sorry guys, you waited a little too long, screwed up making certain characters sympathetic or otherwise a little too badly, and made your fictitious world way too stupid for this to be worth the wait.

Back to the Loonatics and Daffy’s brandishing around a bunch of those laser guns most of the Loonatics have no need for except for looking “cool.” He promises to track down and recover the missing villains, with Bugs piping up, “I don’t think so.” And what do you suggest, Mr. Ace Hero Team Leader? That’s exactly what your exalted Zadavia told you guys to do.

Lexi explains “this is just another sad, desperate attempt to kiss up to Zadavia and hog all the glory.” Excuse me? All Daffy said was he was gung ho about finding and recapturing the villains, as all of you should be. Lexi’s just seizing the moral high ground because the writers seem to think she and the rest of the team automatically have it over Daffy. Sorry writing staff dudes, despite what twifans might have thought that’s not how characterization works. If one character’s supposed to be less likable than the others, you have to actually make the other characters more likable. And the other Loonatics are…nothing. They’re not even stereotypes, they’re that flat and boring. Lexi herself just comes across as kind of a bitch who’s overly concerned about looking fat in the one or two other times the writers deemed to give her another character trait.

Bugs does agree to let Daffy go off on his own to find the villains, but only if Roadrunner goes with him. Daffy refuses until Roadrunner plays on his ego, saying he could be Daffy’s sidekick rather than his partner. After they’re gone, Lexi voices suspicion that Bugs did that just to get Daffy out of the way. He coyly replies he has no idea what she’s talking about.

They don’t elaborate further, so let me ask, what’s the plan? There’s four supervillains out there, all of whom were able to menace the entire team on their own. And Bugs is depleting their powerbase to keep Daffy occupied and out of the way for…what reason? If Daffy’s just dead weight when they’re facing this big of a threat, why do they keep him around in the first place? PR reasons or something?

The Loonatics seem like they’re supposed to be basically a cartoon animal Justice League, but nobody on the writing team seemed to understand that the reason a superhero team puts up with a member who’s (supposed to be) an asshole is he’s still useful to have around. Usually because of a reason like he provides capabilities nobody else on the team does. But the show never asks that question. Daffy’s an asshole because that’s always been his role, and nobody ever even gets a moment where they get to display a different side.

That’s awfully lazy and unobservant for people trying to create something to appeal to the demographic hooked on the darkness and sophisticated writing of anime shows, is all I’m saying.

Bugs doesn’t appear to have any plan in mind anyway, since he asks Wile E. to scan for any power surge, gravity anomaly, anything at all suspicious. It doesn’t take them long to detect Sypher raising havoc at the Acmetropolis Zoo, and they jet out to confront him.

When they get there, after trading some lame insults Sypher reveals he’s juiced up for the confrontation by stealing some of the animals’ abilities. “The kangaroo’s hop, the falcon’s speed, and the grizzly bear’s strength.” Wile E., not showing off much of that vaunted brainpower, tells Sypher to give up since he’s outnumbered four to one. Maybe if it seemed like they’d actually brought anything or developed any tactics to take into account his powers (let alone the powers of the other villains they know are on the loose).

But no, that’s just a handy opening for the rest of the villains to step out of the shadows and announce their teamup with Sypher. Even though we already knew about that. Look, it’s not a given that the villains would’ve teamed up, but it’s a possibility. And one the Loonatics didn’t anticipate at all.

It still being pretty early into an episode of an extremely mediocre action show, the Loonatics have forgotten all about the tactics and/or devices they used to defeat these same villains before and the villains gain the upper hand with ease. Bugs tries to zap Massive, even though none of them were able to hurt him before, and gets smooshed against the ground. Lexi gets blown away by a tornado from Weather Vane (although it’s purple like Taz’s spinning and for a second I thought they’d fallen to fighting amongst themselves).

Taz tries to throw something big at Sypher only for Sypher to throw something bigger at him first. Wile E.’s so off-guard he doesn’t even guess that the silver dust Mastermind blows at him is in fact nanites that start up his jetpack and smash him into a wall.

The Loonaturds wake up in Mastermind’s old cell. She gloats at this reversal. I’d ask if the villains had to take over the prison and why they didn’t release the other inmates because we never hear about that, but astoundingly we hear a throwaway line later that the prison was shut down. No word of what happened to the other inmates and if the villains were being shipped to a new jail just for their ilk, but at least we got that one bit.

“Hey Craniac, you ever get premonitions? Cuz here’s a psychic flash!” So saying, Bugs shoots his laser vision at the bubble. What the fudge…? What kind of witty banter is that supposed to be?! What does that have to do with anything, or what he actually does?

 

You kinda deserved that, Bugs.

And did he really think a jail cell intended for a supervillain wouldn’t give him any problems?

“Prisoner-specific defenses? Nice,” Wile E. admits. That’s pretty standard fare for supervillain incarceration. Shit, how long ago did they publish Escape from Stronghold, anyway? Besides, the pods the villains were in when they were loaded onto the train were supposedly responsible for neutralizing their powers. We didn’t see how that worked, but that still sounds like the technology’s already been implemented elsewhere.

And did Bugs really think a super-genius wouldn’t lock them somewhere they couldn’t just zap their way out of easily? Then again, this is the same guy who thought she wouldn’t lock the obvious ways in after taking over their headquarters, too. Way to go, idiots.

Sypher asks to be allowed to steal the Loonatics’ powers—and thus no more superheroes to bug them--but the other villains still don’t trust him and leave him to stand guard while they go to track down Daffy and Roadrunner. The three villains easily get inside Loonatics HQ by having Mastermind use a hologram to make herself look like Daffy.

That’s another element of bad world-building I probably should’ve touched on before. That is, when super high-tech stuff is everywhere, these gadgeteer types likes Mastermind and Wile E. don’t seem so special. These characters are a lot more notable in a modern setting where things like laser rifles and hoversleds aren’t commonplace. Or if they are available, it’s only to people like large-scale peacekeeping organizations or well-funded criminal enclaves.

With how little focus the aspects of life in Acmetropolis that don’t involve super battles get we admittedly haven’t seen a lot of examples, but they’re still there. Like how antigravity technology’s used for snack carts in this show. For these kinds of characters to stand out still in this kind of setting, you should probably make an effort to show where the lines are drawn between common future-tech and super genius future-tech. But of course, they didn’t do that.

Massive plugs Optimatus’s gizmo into a slot in a computer bank because “That looks like a fit.” Would it even have mattered what it was plugged into? Probably not, with the shitty decision-making with future-tech I just got done whining about.

Right about then Daffy and Roadrunner come back after having given up on looking for the villains. The door refuses to let Daffy back in because it thinks he already is in, but opens up when Roadrunner lets it scan his face (good thing there are no other anthropomorphic animals on the entire city-planet).

But that’s another thing. As they go in we see these meters on the wall behind them that say “New Acme” and “Los Acme.” What the hell are those? Are those the names of places on Acmetropolis? If they are then once again, why in the flying fnck is every location the Acmetropolis reservoir/zoo/power plant/jail/mini mart?

As they head into the meeting room Zadavia pops onto a monitor and warns them to get out, but this seems genuine since right then the villains attack them. So what did Optimatus’s chip thingy do?

Since we’re farther into the episode now the villains start becoming less of a threat. Massive and Weather Vane take each other out with their respective blasts, giving Daffy and Roadrunner  the chance to escape. Never mind that their powers are teleporting and super-speed, meaning they should have the least trouble of running away from people of any of the Loonatics. In any event they give the villains the slip, and Roadrunner magically figures out that their buddies have been captured and taken to Mastermind’s old cell.

Chipped meeting table...

...intact meeting table?

Cut to the cell and it looks like Bugs and Wile E. were trying to disable the cell from the inside. Which is yet another stupid oversight for a super-genius, and doesn’t matter anyway because that’s when Daffy and Roadrunner show up. Bugs rather loudly tells Daffy to keep Sypher busy while Roadrunner tries to hack the security code to get the rest of them out. You make me glad I’m dead by the time all this happens if you’re the one I’d be counting on to save my life, Bugs.

Luckily for them Sypher’s a moron and falls for it, jumping around trying to catch Daffy like a clod without all the speed and agility he took from the zoo animals. And whatever he took it from has to touch him again to take it back, so did Mastermind make him climb back into the zoo cages and give back everything he stole?

Eventually Daffy slips up and Sypher absorbs his powers, and threatens to zap into the bubble and do the same to them. Luckily for them he’s still a moron and decides to wait on the easy pickings when Roadrunner reminds the villain he’s still there too. While he chases Roadrunner around, Wile E. realizes he knows the secret code to open the cell after all, and tells it to Daffy. The code? Mastermind’s old locker combination, which she shared with Wile E. back when they knew each other in college. The resolutions in this show are so dumb!

The other villains show up and the expected battle royale begins, but the Loonatics soon decide discretion’s the better part of valor. Both groups make it to the surface but then Optimatus appears in a menace-destroying rainbow beam just like Zadavia’s. He berates the villains for failing to do their job and creates another wormhole to send them back to the asteroid from the beginning (and when they come out the other end it’s the exact same footage as before).

Daffy jumps in after them and gets pulled along for the ride, trying to get his powers back from Sypher, but evidently grabbing his legs doesn’t count and Daffy doesn’t get his powers back yet.

Zadavia appears to the rest of the Loonatics in person then, and says Optimatus is her brother. They’re completely blown away by this, even though from everything we’ve seen they barely know anything about her, either.

That's how I look in reaction to anything this show wants me to believe.

Join us next time for part two!

The Labyrinth of Time (Real Review)

When I’m asked what my favorite videogames are, the answers I give usually draw confusion even among people who play videogames themselves. My tastes tend to run to the obscure, for one reason or another, and to give one example, I’ve never really seen what the big deal was about the Super Mario series. One of my favorite, most oft-replayed games, is a case in point when it comes to obscurity.

You’re an officer worker living a dreary life represented by a monochrome filter. On the subway ride home one Friday night, you suddenly find yourself pulled out of your nice safe place in the space-time continuum by a strange man with wings. This proves to be Daedalus. Yes, that Daedalus, the legendary genius who created the Labyrinth of Crete to imprison the Minotaur. His old boss King Minos has indentured him again, taking advantage of his supernatural abilities as a ghost to create a new labyrinth. One that crosses time and space. With it, Minos can invade all eras and conquer them all at once. But not if you can find a way to destroy the labyrinth before he has the chance. With that, Daedalus vanishes.

As promised, the game does bridge various locations and eras from history, although some of them you’d only really know from the decorations on the walls and name on the text bar above your interface icons. You’ll be in a hotel one moment only to go through a door and find yourself on an abandoned fairground with a gigantic clown face complete with menacing laughter daring you to enter a hall of mirrors. Or in a 50’s diner one second and as soon as you try to get into the bathroom, suddenly in a hedge maze.

Yes, there are a lot of mazes in this game. It’s a labyrinth, there have to be. Let me hasten to assure anyone who hates mazes that it isn’t as bad as it probably sounds. In general, I don’t like mazes in adventure games myself, since I’m not a big fan of mapping. Particularly, because it usually involves tons of dying and reloading because of traps. The nice thing is, the game maps its play area for you as you explore it. There’s a fair bit of backtracking in this game, but as soon as you’ve solved a maze once, all you have to do is click the button on the bottom right of the screen to see how to do it again.

Even the part about lots of deaths to find where not to go is absent. This was around the time when the people who made point and click adventures started deciding, as a group, that it was rude to repeatedly murder the people who shelled out money to buy their games. And so, the long-running series that hadn’t been murdering their customers since the 80’s started not murdering them at all. There are two or three ways to make the game unwinnable, but in general if you seem to have hit a dead end, you just haven’t looked in the right corner or tried a key in the right lock yet.

Also, it's nice to see a game about saving all of creation that still has a touch of humor about itself.

The adventure game maxim of “save early, save often” to avoid getting killed or stuck is something of an awkward proposition in Labyrinth. Instead of doing what most games did and giving you a save game interface where you could type in a little description of the file to serve as an instant reminder of what you were doing at the time of the save, instead you get nine little check boxes. The only real way to have any idea of your progress is to open up a game and flick through your inventory and map to see how full they are.

While the game isn’t easy by any stretch either, the puzzles do make sense when you step back and think about them, and take the time to read the couple of notes and books there are to find. And ultimately winning the game does involve you finding a way to change history. Which it really should, you know? What’s the point of going back in time if you don’t get to dick around with it, after all?

Where the game really shines is in its soundtrack, however. Every track on it alternately made me feel like I was on a quest in a strange place and needed to do some investigating, or that I was alone in a place outside of space and time and that literally anything could happen if I wasn’t careful. I don’t mind saying that even though I enjoy this game plenty, the music is what really transforms it into something memorable.

But being memorable was the game’s biggest problem, in a way. It had the misfortune of hitting store shelves at about the same time as Myst and The 7^th Guest. Those games hogged all the attention of the crowd that plays these kinds of games, leaving The Labyrinth of Time ignored. Just to pour salt in the wound, they always intended for it to go to sequel.

Still, guess we’ll always have…whatever that 50’s diner was called.

Oh, and in case you're stuck, here's a walkthrough.

Choose Your Own Adventure - The Lost Jewels of Nabooti (Real Review, Scathing)

It's a little hard to be completely honest when critiquing this book, since it was written by series co-founder R.A. Montgomery. On the one hand, Choose Your Own Adventure was easily the most well-known and one of the most influential of the various skeins of interactive book out there back in the 80’s (and even late 70’s). Who knows what other such book series and solo RPG material we may have never seen without him and the boom for this kind of literature CYOA’s popularity helped to create.

On the other hand, we have the books he himself wrote for the series, and to be totally frank, he was easily one of the worst contributing authors the series had during its early days.

Which isn’t to say all of his output was crap. Later he managed to turn out mostly decent if not exactly memorable books, and two of my favorite books to carry the Choose Your Own Adventure brand have his name on them. There’s The Race Forever, and Prisoner of the Ant People (though the same can’t be said for its sequel [?], War with the Evil Power Master).

The problem with most of Montgomery’s books were dominated by lots of meandering nonsense and short, abrupt endings. Somehow the former missed it, and it was less noticeable/obnoxious in a story where you’re a member of an interplanetary scientific task force that shrinks to less than an inch tall and meets talking ants. Not so much when you’re trying to penetrate an international conspiracy.

The plot gets going when you receive a message from your cousins that their father’s gone missing while searching for the Jewels of Nabooti, sources of awesomely vague magical powers. Since these jewels have the power to steer the course of human civilization, and you apparently have no trouble believing in magic rocks, you immediately accept their request to pick up your uncle’s trail.

And I mean that about believing in the magic rocks, because you’re most assuredly not looking for your uncle, but the jewels. And you may or may not be an adventurer yourself like your uncle. Because while the book makes no attempt at all to say so one way or the other, yet at two different points you’re given the option of calling in help from adventuring/secret agent-types. Not that the book does much to explain who these people are and how you know them, let alone what help they can provide. Two of these worthies, Anson and Ramsey, are in fact named after the author’s sons. Maybe so he could show them how they were in a book…a book where they’re already the main character. You never actually see them anyway.

Look, I know I complained about the Zork books and how stupid it was they’d actually build the option not to go on the adventure into the book. But I also complained about how the author would just plunk you into the thick of things without adequately explaining who I’m supposed to be (why do two suburban kids turn into people who have relatives in a fantasy kingdom?) and/or why they should feel like going on the adventure’s a good idea. They’re a daring adventurer-type who’s been doing this for a while, or simply they were in the right place at the right time to inherit the quest and feel a duty to carry it out (whether that be for morality or the promise of a rich reward) are (usually) acceptable.

In this case, why the hell would the person I’m supposed to be the one to go on a chase around the world where there’s every chance terrorists will try to kill me? The only indications my experiences suit me are those times you think about calling in some friends in the biz, and I had to explore pretty thoroughly to find those. I’d say the author got better about it, but he was actually better about it in books that came out before this. I found it baffling the things a seemingly ordinary student was asked to contend with, even in pursuit of magical rocks. I wonder if maybe the author started thinking along the same lines as I did, as out of thirty-eight possible endings, seven are some form of you decide you’re in over your head, give up and say to hell with the spirit rocks.

This isn't a dead end! Ask who bought them!

Which flows into the author’s wordiness when it comes to dialogue. Characters are fond of big gobs of exposition or a bunch of unnecessarily extravagant sentences when a few concise ones might’ve freed up some space to allow for more dialogue from other characters, and given them a chance to feel less like cardboard cutouts. I mean, look at this…

Oh, if only the inanity ended there. At one point, a character asks if you find the jewels in your pocket. You’re given a yes-or-no choice of whether you do or not. No coin flipping, no what time of the day are you reading this book, nothing. You decide that you find them or not. 

In one particularly silly ending you look out over a city at night and realize the jewels are wherever you look for them. What the heck?! At least I could sort of understand the ending where it turns out the jewels are actually important people in the fight for world peace.

Yes, it's "too bad" you died two different, horrible ways.

And then there’s the one with the obscure literary reference.

We have an awkward setup, nonexistent characterization, awful writing, and  limp endings. If not the worst CYOA book ever (and there’s not as much competition as you might think), it’s easily the worst of the series’ first five years.