Mostly known for his excellent platforming outings, Ubisoft's most charming limbless mascot, Rayman, changes gears and decides to tackle the Raving Rabbids with a flurry of short and silly mini-games; the consequences are, more often than not, hilarious. Ideal for the Wii's motion-sensing controls, "Rayman Raving Rabbids" is casual enjoyment for both solo and multi-play, but is that enough?
***The Story***
While enjoying an innocuous pic-nic with his friends the Globoxes, Rayman is suddenly attacked by the freakishly comical Raving Rabbids. Outnumbered and overpowered, Rayman finds himself incarcerated for the better part of his days, permitted outside only to participate in various ridiculous mini-games. With the Raving Rabbids filling the arena to watch him fail spectacularly, will our hero manage to overcome his bizarre tasks and devise a way out?
More importantly, will I stop ending paragraphs with question marks?
Dramatic questions aside, this setting would have left me perfectly happy, having reasonably low storyline expectations from a mini-game oriented title. Sadly, it's all quite badly presented, with an unreal amount of raw, relentlessly repeated cut-scenes carrying out the plot. I was hopelessly disappointed from all the repetitions the first few in-game days and eventually resigned to the idea of enduring the exact same videos for the duration of the campaign.Miraculously, things are spiced up a notch as Rayman's triumphant performances start winning the crowd over, and the presentation ends up being decent enough not to detract from the humour of the experience.
Still, rendering a few more cut-scenes in place of some of the less polished "shake-remotes-up-and-down" mini-games would have been much appreciated.
***The Gameplay***
Day after day, Rayman is thrown inside the arena to face four new challenges. Succeeding in three of them is enough to open the door to the main event, but accomplishing all four unlocks special costumes and songs. There are some tricky mini-games, but nothing too frustrating; it's unlikely you won't be able to succeed in the 3 mini-games needed to proceed in any day and completing all of them is certainly possible if you put a fair amount of effort into it.
The "main events" are larger mini-games, so I guess you could call them "little-games". Most of them are First Person Shooters, where Rayman moves on his own while you are required to aim and shoot plungers at the hostile bunnies; a lot like the light-gun arcades. I was often seen spending my coins in those, so I found the FPS levels here very enjoyable.
The other kind of little-game is the racers, where you ride warthogs. It's a fun reference to the ever-popular jeep from Halo, but, in a very Rayman way, you ride the actual wild-boar-esque animal. The tracks aren't anything special, but the warthog's steering is unusual enough to keep things interesting.
Finally, a free-fall mini-game is interestingly used once as a little game. You jump from an airship and try to navigate your descend through numerous smoke-rings, which is fine for a mini-game but I'd prefer to have seen yet another of the slightly more complex FPS or racing challenges as the end-of-day extravaganza.
The little games are pretty much as easy as the mini-games, which allows for a very casual completion of the game. Very fitting, as you are able to get through the amusing story quickly and unlock the games for multi-play. Beating the records of your friends or the internet champions is going to be a much greater challenge.
***The Mini-Games***
While the mini-games manage to use the Wiimote and Nunchuck in most ways possible, the novelty of the controls often isn't the high point. It is the hysterical get-ups and antics of the bunnies that steal the show. Each mini-game has a mildly-to-outrageously funny intro sequence and most of them have a similar denouement. They are unfortunately the same every time you play and while some mini-games have different endings for success/failure, a few don't have any at all and abruptly cut to your Rayman dancing. Still, I'd say that the Raving Rabbids more than fulfilled their quota of laughs.
As much as I thrive on long-winded reviews, rest assured that I won't be detailing the 75-strong games found in "Rayman Raving Rabbids", rather list their categorization in Score Mode and mention a few of the highlights.
--Bunny Hunt!--
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"Bunny Hunt!" contains the First Person Shooter little-games found in Story Mode. As mentioned before, I find them very well done and here you can additionally play them cooperatively with a friend. Time attack and Survival alternatives are also added to the standard Score game.
You aim with the Wiimote and fire with the trigger. The nunchuck is used for reloading and launching the grappling hook to catch hapless bunnies. Elite bunny units and bosses are the cake's icing, it's all good fun.
--Sports--
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The bulk of the mini-games are generally labeled "sport", although I doubt we'll ever see them in the Olympics. They are further divided in four sub-categories:
~Workout~
The most tiring of the bunch, workout mini-games usually have you frantically waving the remotes up and down. Not all of them are as simple as that, however, and "Bunnies Have Natural Rhythm" should probably belong in another category. My absolute favourite is the very first one, "Bunnies are addicted to Carrot Juice", where you shake the Nunchuck to spray carrot juice and aim bunnies emerging from the sea with the Wiimote.
~Precision~
Most Precision games require you to think before you act and are some of the most enjoyable in the collection. "Bunnies can't slide part 2" is a great multiplayer game where you are required to stay as close as possible to the centre of an ice ring after three rounds of bouncing off cows, fences and the other players. In "Bunnies have a great ear for music" a chorus of bunnies is performing and you have to find the mischievous one that is singing off-key and slap some sense into him. "Bunnies like to stuff themselves" is another winner; a bunny imagines what he wants for dinner and drawing an outline of it has it magically appear.
The title's most annoying game, and its sequel, are also part of the Precision Lineup.
"Bunnies are heartless with pigs" has you listening to the Wiimote's speaker for warning sounds from the pig you are trying to carry to his mother. The road is filled with hidden bunnies ready to jump at you and while it might be an interesting concept, the bunnies are too many and the time constraints too tight for it to work.
~Get Going!~
The 5 warthog racing and sky-diving games appear here, with the racing being quite the multiplayer fun.
The trend of witty titles continues here as well, with "Bunnies only fly downwards" being an indicative example.
~Skill~
Hand-eye coordination is tested in Skill mini-games with vastly different mini-games. From getting a grey cell from point A to B, to cow-tossing and rope-jumping, there will certainly be a lot of favourites in this category.
It might be worth noting that the event I had the hardest time to complete in Story Mode, "Bunnies never close doors", is situated here.
--Challenges--
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Challenges are interesting groupings of three or more of the previously played mini-games. Since it's more of the same, they are more useful in multiplayer, as a way to spice up the competition, as you will need consistent performances in a series of events to come out on top.--Shake your booty!--
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It's a scientific fact nowadays that everyone enjoys rhythm games and "Rayman Raving Rabbids" takes advantage of just that by having the each day's fourth arena event being a dance mini-game.
Rayman takes center stage with his crazy disco moves and it's up to you to keep in rhythm and entice the Rabbids, who just happen to be fantastic dancers, to join in. You simply shake the Wiimote when a bunny comes from the right and the Nunchuck when it comes from the left. When you have to shake them both simultaneously, the bunnies are conveniently coloured blue. It's pretty easy to get into, even if it might take a little practice to find a way to hold the Nunchuck so you don't accidentally shake it too much. It's certainly very fun to watch, with different sets of moves depending on the type of the music.
There are 7 songs with 2 or 3 variations of shaking patterns each, making for a total of 15 "Shake your booty!" mini-games. My favourite has to be "Missirlou", but all the songs work quite well. The only gripe is that the patterns aren't always perfectly synchronized with the song, presumably in an effort to make things a little easier.
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Multiplayer-wise, up to four players can enjoy Score Mode, even if there aren't any extra controllers. This makes perfect sense, as most mini-games don't feature simultaneous play anyway, so the users need to take turns. Some of them do, however, and you'll need the additional controller/nunchuck equipment to take full advantage of them.
***The Other Versions***
"Rayman Raving Rabbids" appears in multiple platforms, yet the Wii version is clearly the best of the lot. The comical graphics don't require any particular processing strength, so they appear virtually the same in all versions, but the mini-games really shine only when played with the Wii Remote.
After all, we've seen variations of most of them before and it's the unique controls that, as much as the innumerable bunnies, make them fresh and enjoyable to play.
***OVERALL***
Although I would have personally preferred another great Rayman platformer and waited for the upcoming "WarioWare: Smooth Moves" to cover my mini-game needs, "Rayman Raving Rabbids" is a decent effort that retains most of the series' charm. The bunnies undoubtedly are a memorable bunch and the Wii controls get you inside the game to do some pretty remarkable activities. It is also a good example of the "casual gaming" Nintendo promises with the Wii. The title could have used, however, a great deal more polish and finishing touches. Console launch periods traditionally offer few worthy games and "Rayman Raving Rabbids" is one of them, which is a pretty high honor; but if you restraint yourself from buying it now, a better version of the concept is likely to manifest in the following months.
Rabbids Just Want to Have Fun 
