Love them or loathe them, if you were even remotely interested in Wii this time last year there was no way you could have ignored Rayman and his terrifying Rabbid chums. The original game was probably the most high profile Wii launch title except for Wii Sports and Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and although we weren't all that taken with it at the time, it proved to be a big success for Ubisoft.
The sequel, we're happy to report, fixes practically everything we found annoying about the first version and looks set to stand head and shoulders above every other minigame compilation we've played. We visited Ubisoft's Paris studio for some extended hands-on time with Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 and came away suitably impressed by the amount of party-loving fun the developers have managed to pack into it.
The biggest change is that it's now an exclusively multiplayer experience. We tested it with a full complement of four players, which is the way almost all of its new minigames are designed to be played. A handful are hotseat games, in which players take turns, but if there are ever less than four people playing in the rest of them then AI characters will fill in.
Where's Ray? Also, instead of having to play as Rayman himself, you normally play as a customised Rabbid. There are thousands of possible combinations, including spoofs of famous videogame and comic book characters that may or may not make the final cut. Your personal Rabbid avatar will appear on the online leaderboards, which are updated directly via the Wii rather than through the clumsy website code system of the original.
Custom 'trips' or minigame compilations - so-called because the games are all themed around different global locations - form the real meat of Rayman Raving Rabbids 2. Pick a selection of your favourite games, save the compilation in one of three slots and play all the way through or to a preset time limit.
There are 50 different minigames, including new plunger-shooting levels, two-on-two team-up games and a wide variety of energetic physical challenges. We sampled more than a dozen of them, and whether or not the developers were deliberately feeding us the pick of the bunch, the overall quality level seems much higher than in the previous game.
Several use the remote as a 'real' object. For example, one minigame sees players being disruptive in a cinema, with the aim being to talk on a mobile phone for as long as possible until the manager walks in. You hold the remote's speaker up to your ear, to hear a Rabbid babble, then put it down when the lights come on and start hammering the A button to send a text to all the other players. The slowest players receive a text from the fastest and a beating from the cinema boss.
Another game involves making a scrubbing motion with the remote and nunchuk to wash a pair of boxer shorts. Raising both hands lifts the pants from the water so you can see whether they're clean or torn to shreds. There's also one where you take turns making Rabbids burp by shaking a bottle of lemonade before tipping it upside down to neck it. The person who generates the gassiest blast wave (off the top of the Arc de Triomphe) wins the round. Apparently some of the younger game testers would actually stick the remote in their mouths to 'drink', so watch who you play with on this one.
Among the skill-based games we saw was a dodgems thing set on top of a building, which is exactly like several Mario Party scenes, except with a slippery control system that uses the tilt function of the remote. We found the American football mode to be much more satisfying - as the ball carrier you simply run away from the other players in an effort to hold on to the ball for as long as possible, while everyone else tries to tackle you or fights among themselves.
Our favourite sports minigame was probably the baseball one. Pump your fists to make the Rabbid run around the bases, then swing to smack him in the face when he flies towards the batter in slow motion. And on the two-player co-op front, we played a tricycle racing game in which one player pedals energetically while the other player steers and throws things at the rival team.
Free for all You can choose different sets of rules for your custom tournaments. The most unusual one awards zero points for finishing second, which adds a different sort of tactical element as players decide whether to keep pushing for the win or give up on chasing the leader and try to finish last instead.
The new music games are probably the best part of the whole four-player experience. It's a little like a simple version of EA's forthcoming Rock Band, with each player controlling a specific instrument. You keep time with the music by shaking your hands to match the symbols that drift down the screen, and your movements actually control the instruments - you can add drum flourishes during quiet parts or make the singer squeak in the wrong places to prove it.
The songs are pretty hilarious once they get going, with the tuneless bunnies making a suitably ham-fisted effort at covering famous tunes. We played Smoke on the Water, Funky Town and Celebration. The finished game will have two additional songs. It's an impressive sequel that's certainly a lot more polished than its rivals. With user-friendly features such as the ability to jump straight into a game within a couple of clicks from the title screen, and automatic skipping of certain games if one or more players lacks a nunchuk, this is a well-crafted effort that should see a lot of action at multiplayer parties.
Maybe I'm lowering my standards, but with this and EA Playground it looks like mini-games are actually getting...I can't say it. I just can't bring myself to say that they're getting 'good'. I've been fighting them for months!
But I think RRR2 (3R2?) is one of those games that you'd play with a bunch of friends and the more drunk you got, the funnier it'd be.
Although I'm a bit concerned that there's not going to be enough songs to keep the musical games interesting.
They've missed the opportunity to have that Chas & Dave song in there. You know the one..'you buy one, you get one..', no not that one sorry, 'Rabbit, rabbit', etc.
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
