Looney Tunes: Cartoon Conductor / Nintendo DS : 4 of 5

I know I'm pretty weird when it comes to games, but I've enjoyed playing Cartoon Conductor more than any other game in the past several weeks! At last I have that great feeling of being addicted to something, and it feels great to pick up my DS for a quick game just about every time I sit down. Cartoon Conductor is a rhythm tapping game pretty similar to Elite Beat Agents, but with several differences. The most obvious is the whole game is themed to classic Warner Bros. cartoons, so as you play each song, a kind of re-creation of the cartoon plays on the top screen. These are done with sort of crappy polygon versions of Bugs and his pals, which may drive people crazy, but I still think it's fun to see these new versions of great tunes, including my favorites: What's Opera Doc? and The Rabbit of Seville! Next, all of the songs are classical music (just like your average cartoon score), which sometimes makes it tough to discover the rhythm at times, but it certainly helps to be familiar with the pieces beforehand. Finally, rather than tapping each numbered note, you have to drag between notes to form long phrases - I guess this makes it seem more like "conducting", but for me it's much more difficult to time a precise drag than a tap! Even though I've passed all of the songs on the first two levels with ease, I still think the game is challenging, and I keep playing over and over to improve my grade for each song. The synthesized music actually sounds great, and the game is just exploding with authentic cartoon sound bites that play all over the place (even when you're just navigating through the menus). Call me crazy, but this is the kind of game I enjoy, and I'll be playing Cartoon Conductor for a long, long time!