Taz Wanted
Ages: Everyone

The Tasmanian Devil is at it again. He rants, raves, spins and spits as he breaks out of the zoo and escapes capture to get back home. He is totally an unmannered boor - and herein lies the fun. The play consists mainly of destroying things. You can also race with shopping carts, floor polishers and see how fast you can spin across tricky landscapes. There are lots of cartoon-like wacky levels to play through and a Hub center that makes it easy to navigate back and forth. You don't have to complete a level to save you game, going in and out of Hub center automatically saves.. One problem is the awkwardness of keyboard control of Taz - even with a gamepad, if you want to access all the moves that the character has, jumping, spinning, ranting, and biting you are into button bashing or an unnecessarily onerous learning session that puts a kibosh on the fun. This one is for the consoles. The game comes with an additional CD bonus game, Sheep Raiders. If anyone out there has played it - let me know.

Reviewed by: Editor - 02/03

You are playing as Taz and you are trying to escape from Yosemite Sam's Zoo where you have been captured and sent to live forever. It was enjoyable to play. I especially like it when Taz spins around like crazy and wreaks havoc on everything he touches. He chops down trees and runs into zookeepers and tears up everything he comes n contact with! You can do this whenever you want and as often as you want.

Taz gets to eat sandwiches and if he eats 100 of them, you open up new "mini" bonus side games. You have to destroy seven signs, or wanted posters that say "Taz Wanted" and then you earn bounty money. You can get to a new level. If you eliminate all the posters and your bounty goes away you can get out of the Zoo and back home to Tasmania.

The game play overall is OK. I'll play it for about a half-hour or so but it isn't that exciting, more average. The one part that I find frustrating is when you jump from frog to lily pad. If you don't tap the keys on the keyboard just right, you can slip off the end.

Each time I put in the CD you can pick from the same levels that were saved from the last time you played so it doesn't change. I'd like to try and play it with a friend on two-player mode and see if it's any different.

The graphics are pretty cartoon-like, not too much animation. It's kind of flat, not textured. You really only hear Yosemite Sam's voice and the different sounds that Taz makes when he gets mad. The sound effects are kind of dull when he spins around. There is some music playing over and over in the background depending on what level you are in.

The game is rated E for Everyone. Maybe adults who remember who Taz is from the Looney Toons would like this, or some younger kids, but it wasn't particularly exciting.I didn't have any problems playing it with the keyboard controls, nothing tricky to learn except for the frustrating lily pad jump!

If I made this game over I would like to hear more music options and I'd change the graphics so it looks brighter. I don't play that often on the PC format because things look so much better on the Game Cube. It really has to look cool or be really interesting to play on the computer in order to make you want to stay on the PC rather then switch to the Cube.

Reviewed by: Josie S. Age 11 - 07/03