Review

Let’s face it: the French aren’t exactly renowned for their great sense of humour. Their idea of great sophisticated comedy begins and ends with Mr Bean, so the fact that the latest Rayman title turned out to be one of the funniest games I’ve ever played was not only a pleasant surprise, but also completely and utterly unexpected.

Whereas the previous Rayman titles have been platform games of varying styles and quality, Raving Rabbids follows the likes of Mario Party and Crash Bash by moving into the world of multi-player party games. As this is one of the launch titles for the Wii, each of the mini-games on offer involves some kind of motion sensitive challenge or precision shooting via the remote. Only as this is family orientated gaming all you’ll be firing here is sink plungers!

In “story” mode the game follows a rigid pattern of four challenges followed by a bonus game interspersed with the odd amusing cut-scene. The plot, such as it is, sees Rayman and his Globox friends having their nice quiet picnic interrupted by the arrival of the Rabbids who promptly kidnap everyone and force Rayman to perform challenges in order to rescue his buddies.

Challenges include the likes of tracing shapes with an onscreen pointer in order to feed a hungry Rabbid; hurling a cow as far as you can by whirling the remote in circles as fast as you can; slapping out of tune singers in a choir and disco dancing. They’re all presented with the charm you’d expect from the Rayman series but it’s the Rabbids themselves with their vacant stare and goofy teeth that propel the comedy meter ever higher. Just when you think you’ve seen the limit to its warped genius up pops another challenge to keep you laughing ever longer.

That’s not all. After successfully completing four challenges you’ll be presented with a bonus stage where the object is to simply shoot as many Rabbids as you can with plungers. These sections are essentially a shooting gallery, what a lightgun title was like before Time Crisis came along, where you shake the nun chuck to reload. They’re also tremendous fun and, hopefully, a great example of what we can expect from the Wii.

The nature of this style of game means that the quality of the mini-games varies but there are more than enough of them that touch on brilliance to make up for the poorer ones. Also with a whopping 75 games in total to plough through there is a fair bit of repetition as you progress through the game with one mini-game resembling another.

I didn’t expect to enjoy this game anywhere near as much as I did and there’s more than enough in it to be recommended but with the likes of Wii Play already available and Wario Ware: Smooth Moves arriving in early 2007 there is a lot of competition for your money.

About the Review

Platform

Nintendo Wii

Developer

UbiSoft Montpellier

Publisher

UbiSoft

Released

8th December 2006