Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Rayman Raving Rabbids mini-review



Here I have is a review of Rayman Raving Rabbids for Nintendo Wii. Jennifer decided to buy this game after we downgraded the Wii to a 'party console'. The last console we had that was designated as such was the GameCube. It got dusty very quickly and only got cleaned up when we had guests. Anyway, our decision isn't surprising. The majority of the Wii library are made up of generic party games anyway!


Now, if you are looking forward to a main platform Rayman game then you will find yourself utterly disappointed by the latest Michel Ancel game. The brilliance of 3D platforming that was evident in Rayman 2 is gone.

What you have here from the Beyond Good & Evil genius, are indeed more mini games. To be fair as this was one of the first batch of Wii launch games, you can't accuse Ubisoft of doing a quick and dirty Wii cash-in for soccer mums. This is important because unlike many newer Wii cash-in non-games, the production value of Rayman Raving Rabbids is pretty high (for a Wii game, I have to stress). Visuals aren't that great but equally at least things are bright and colourful.


Rayman Raving Rabbids contains about 70 'trials' or mini-games that requires the use of the unique properties of the motion sensing part of the WiiMote. Some are downright ludicrious (such as swinging a poor would be beef as far as you can), others are brilliant (on-rails FPS can get hectic and fun), while others are just piss poor (drawing over a shape), often hampered by poor controls and sensitivity of the Wii remotes.

While there is a storyline, it only serves to accompany the gameplay. It is pretty basic. Naughty bunnies kidnap Rayman and forces him to complete in Gladiator spoof trials. Uhmm, and that is it really. Complete enough trials a day and you earn enough plungers where Rayman will use to plot his escape. You will also get to unlock secret stuff for Rayman such as clothings and hairdos.

Rayman Raving Rabbids isn't one of those killer titles on the Wii (I am still waiting for those to be announced - glares at Nintendo). However it is a good enough party mini game that I am sure will be enough to entertain guests when Super Monkey Ball and Singstar gets too boring. It is amusing enough, though often dull. It is definitely not worth the admission price of 35 quid though. £20 ought to be the sweet spot, in our opinion, at least for a party game.

6/10

Import it from Play-Asia or buy it from Amazon UK today

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great game. I tend to agree about the price point. There should be a price cap on mini games.