Review: Rayman Raving Rabbids 2

Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 sees you returning as Rayman and in an attempt to stop the Raving Rabbids from taking over the world, you’ll have to infiltrate their secret society and beat them from the inside. But along the way you’ll also have to play in their series of games, sing songs, and plunger shootouts.

Not too long ago, the crazy minds at Ubisoft brought us an unusual little game called Rayman Raving Rabbids, a party game made for the younger casual gamer that was filled with zany and insane white rabbit-like creatures.

Well, the evil bunny things with buck teeth and an obsession for the almighty plunger are back and this time they mean business.

Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 sees you returning as Rayman and in an attempt to stop the Raving Rabbids from taking over the world, you’ll have to infiltrate their secret society and beat them from the inside. But along the way you’ll also have to play in their series of games, sing songs, and plunger shootouts.

The party games in Raving Rabbids 2 are often loose parodies of TV shows or movies. The amount of in-jokes in the game stretch from titles to some of the scenery seen throughout the game. The team who created this have obviously gone to great lengths to make the experience of playing Raving Rabbids 2 as fun and unusual as they can possibly manage.

There’s over 50 games to play and almost all of them pull off a great variety of Wii controls so it’s not just one of those simple games where you press a few buttons and you’re done.

But while the game box will gladly say that there are “50 Unique Games”, there’s probably only around thirty or forty unique games with the remaining numbers being little more than what you just played in a slightly different environment.

The music games also present an interesting experience as the crazy white bunnies are back singing classics like the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”, James Brown’s “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag”, and Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water”. While these are fun and insane, the timings are often off by just a little so if you or your kids are masters at Guitar Hero, don’t be surprised if you never really hit perfection on anything other than an easy one-star instrument.

Strangely, none of the problems really matter because Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 does something which few party games really achieve: a constant sort of fun that keeps you coming back for more.

By going for some cheap laughs and zany humour, the characters and their misfit activities show that they can always provide a burst of energy for anyone who’s a kid or maybe a kid at heart.

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Still, you can’t help but wonder what they’re putting in the water supply at Ubisoft Paris, the place where this insane new game was created. It’s almost as if someone saw Lilo & Stitch and thought that an even more insane version of Stitch without the fluffy blue coating would make an excellent character for a game.

The Rabbids are insane and because of it, they’re a load of laughs. You really have to stand up or sit down with your kids to play this game because it’s just one of those games you can all laugh about. The sheer lunacy of things like belching an explosive and destructive burp to take out Paris, dancing and falling in the rain, pretending to be Spiderman and swinging through a city while dodging obstacles, and a whole lot more.

Simply put, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 is childish humour at its best and provided you leave your maturity at the door, you’ll have a blast.

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Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Classification: PG
Formats: Nintendo Wii & Nintendo DS
URL: Rayman Raving Rabbids 2

Reviewed by Leigh D. Stark