Rayman Raving Rabbids
- December 05, 2006 14:55 PM PST
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Rayman: Raving Rabbids is nothing more than a thinly veiled collection of minigames, and that's not necessarily a bad thing but it lacks a sense of cohesion that would have made the game a truly worthwhile title.
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Bunnies Gone Wild
The brain maze.
The main protagonist, Rayman, and his friends have been captured by psychotic, screaming rabbits with a penchant for plungers. That is, in essence, the entire story for the game. Apparently, our hero has to complete a variety of totally inane and insane tasks for the deranged mammals' amusement. It's really an excuse to devise a bunch of strange minigames that involve different ways of using the Wii-mote, but it gets the job done.
The basic structure of the single player game provides you with four minigames which you can complete in any order. Once you complete three of them, you move onto a final fourth game; beat that and you unlock the next set. A decidedly quirky sense of humor runs through the entire game, whether you're shooting at bunnies dressed up as Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell, plucking worms from a bunny's teeth in an homage to Ren & Stimpy, or rolling a ball through a tilting maze representing a rabbit's brain. The humor largely works, though the Rabbids' trademark scream can become pretty annoying after a while and when the jokes fall flat they usually do so by making absolutely no sense.
Plungers Are My Weapon Of Choice
Shake the Nunchuck to torture the bunny!
However, these quite enjoyable minigames are definitely counterbalanced by the rest of the offerings. Most of the games are simple and only mildly entertaining, while some border on the extremely painful. The multiplayer is rather thin as well, as you can play with other people to compare scores. What's the point of beating your friends at something if it doesn't reward you properly?
Without something to tie it all together or a stronger multiplayer component the whole Rayman minigame experience just feels rather empty in the long run. It's a neat show of some of the inventive ways developers might be able to use the Wii-mote in the future, but it's not really worth the 50 dollars unless you really dig its quirky style or absolutely love minigames. It is, however, the perfect game to rent in order to check out both the unique controls and the wacky sense of humor.
Swing Bessie 'round and 'round!
