Rabbids Go Home (Wii) Review
If there’s one word to describe the Rabbids, it is silly. Their appearance in the Rayman’s Raving Rabbids games is all about goofy fun, and their first solo adventure, Rabbids Go Home, fulfills that goal to the max. This bizarre and whimsical platformer will have you racing through offices and airports, scaring the clothes off of anyone passing by, all in an attempt to collect enough junk to build a tower to the moon. And you do it all in a shopping cart. It may not be particularly long or deep, but Rabbids Go Home is a fun and funny platformer that is sure to make you smile.
The Rabbids are having a usual night in the junkyard, sleeping atop spherical lamp posts, when one of the notices the shining full moon hovering just overhead. From that point on, the ridiculous lagomorphs make it their goal to reach that celestial body by creating a tower of junk that they collect from the junkyard and the nearby city. If that’s not silly enough for you, some of the items they decide to collect for their pile include: jet engines, truck tires, and cows. Brief cutscenes add a lot of humor to the already absurd and entertaining plot, and comical skits pop up between the two Rabbids when you pick up a particular item, reminding you that the entire game is meant to be played laughing. The story doesn’t try to be anything more than it is: goofy, making for an entertaining plot that loosely ties together the game.
Dogs: a Rabbid's natural enemy. A good scream should send them running with their tails between their legs.
The game is divided into short levels, where the goal is to pick up one large piece of junk as well as a variety of smaller items along the way. Most levels have a fairly straight-forward path, but you’ll want to slow down to collect the smaller pieces of junk in order to earn prizes for a side mini-game. Additionally, the game throws in some changes in some levels. When you pick up a jet engine, you’ll be able to shoot through the level with incredible speed and little control, or when you pick up a tire, you’ll slide down the entire level, bouncing off of walls. When pursuing a cow in a pick-up truck, the game becomes a race to catch the cow. The variety is nice, but even so the game feels incredibly repetitive by the time you finish. Both large items and locations are repeated throughout the game, so it can’t help but feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over.
In addition, Rabbids Go Home is a pretty easy game. You may die from falling off a cliff occasionally, but for the most part the dangers are minimal, and almost all collectible items are highlighted with a big circle so you are almost never stuck on where to go next or what to pick up. This simple and straight-forward game design isn’t really a problem in the game, but it does contribute to its short length. Approximately seven hours will take you through all the levels the game has to offer, and the one bonus level is so ridiculously tedious to unlock that it acts more as a deterrent to replaying the game rather than an attraction. You’ll have to collect every single item in the game to open up the last bonus level–a feat that is as dull and repetitive as it sounds.
Even when zipping by on a jet engine, it's easy to see what you can collect from the large white circles.
Still, the Rabbids have a few other incentives to keep playing, such as co-op mode where a second player assists the main player a la Super Mario Galaxy. The second player can shoot Rabbids out of a cannon, stalling enemies or hitting the occasional target to open up a new path. He can also collect pieces of junk by simply pointing at them, making hard to reach pieces much easier to collect. Overall, though, this two-player mode is pretty superfluous and fails to really contribute to the game, especially since the second player is essentially a viewer to everything the first player does.
Surprisingly, the most compelling reason to collect as much stuff as you can is to earn presents with which to customize your three Rabbids’ appearances (which takes place, interestingly enough, within your Wii remote). Like most character customization features, it doesn’t alter the gameplay at all, but you can do some pretty crazy and cruel things to your fuzzy white characters. You can distort their appearances by putting their heads in vices to stretch out their features, change the size of their eyes and ears, draw on them with a variety of tools, or give them accessories like a rubber chicken. Depending on how much junk you collect in the main levels, you can unlock more items and features, which is the real incentive to slow down in each level and pick up everything. Playing with the Rabbids’ appearances is a lot more fun than it has any right to be, especially when you shake them around inside your Wii remote. It’s not a terribly fancy side game, but playing with the Rabbids can be a fun distraction, especially with friends.
Controlling the shopping cart is a little unwieldy, not unlike real shopping carts. It feels slippery and imprecise at first, but once you get used to it, you’ll find that you actually have pretty good control over it, and can use its slippery feel to slide around turns smoothly. The other controls are fairly basic, though you do shake the Wii remote to have the Rabbids scream (their only form of attack) and you’ll need to keep your controller pointed at the screen for those occasions that you need to shoot a Rabbid at the screen. The motion controls are pretty responsive, though, so screaming at humans and attack dogs is a breeze.
With the customizing Rabbids feature, you too can create abominations against nature such as these.
The game’s presentation fully emphasizes the silly tone of the game. The graphics are simplified into basic, sharp shapes, but the environments are comical and often satirical of every day life. The backgrounds do repeat themselves a lot, though, so there isn’t a lot a variety in the scenery. The Rabbids, of course, look great and are adorably creepy as they make crazy expressions and bounce around the game in shopping carts. Human characters are also funny looking with their simple, cookie-cutter appearances and general lack of facial features. Their oddity is complemented by the humorous sound clips they sometimes spout out, or the satirical comments that issue from office speakers and PA systems. The rest of the music is so bizarre and eclectic that it also is pretty funny–the sporadic appearance of old pop songs can’t help but make you smile. Overall the graphics and sound may not appeal to everyone, but they’re essentially just goofy not meant to be terribly elaborate.
Rabbids Go Home never takes itself seriously, resulting in a light-hearted and comical game. The gameplay doesn’t really develop and overall the game can be fairly short, but this platformer is really about making you smile, either at the absurd yet stereotypical city, the cute and simple graphics, or just the crazy Rabbids themselves. For a quick and simple platformer, Rabbids Go Home has a lot to offer, and will hopefully make you laugh along the way.
Rating: 
