We Love Wii

Rayman Raving Rabbids 2

Released: November 15th, 2007
Genre: Party Game / Action
Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Publisher: Ubisoft

They’ve invaded the world of Rayman, and now the insane Rabbids have a new objective: invade planet Earth! They have established their base at a shopping mall and begun training for their nastiest scheme yet. As part of this training, the Rabbids must carry out several missions around the globe to help them in an attempt to dominate the world. The Rabbids will also try to study human behavior by mimicking everything we do… but in the Rabbid sort of way, with no logic… of course.

Reviews

IGN: 6.3 out of 10
Gamespot: –
GameSpy: 3.5 out of 5
We Love Wii: 6.5 out of 10

We Love Wii Review

As a huge fan of the first Rayman Raving Rabbids, I was surprised to see how low GameSpot’s rate for this sequel was. I rented it first to see for myself, and I was very disappointed. In the first game, you had to play through the game alone before unlocking all the minigames. Now, in the sequel, you’re allowed to unlock minigames while playing with some friends, which is a great improvement, considering that playing in single-player mode in Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 is very boring. It will take you maybe an hour or two before you’ve played all the minigames available. In the first RRR, all the Wiimote movements were well-used, but, for the most part in this sequel, the only thing you’ll have to do is shake the Wiimote crazily for a couple of seconds, and then the minigame will be over. For the minigames that use more complex controls, some are not well explained and you will have to learn while playing, and some minigames are just dull.

Also, the game is supposed to be based upon the fact that the Rabbids take over our world, so the scenery and minigames should be based on the continent they’re visiting, right? Well, most of the time, you won’t see the link between the continent you’re on and the minigames. Why are they playing with bumper cars on a building roof in South America? Why are they racing in shopping carts on top of a snowy mountain in Asia? And there are a lot of these. Plus, I’m still wondering why Rayman sounds like a Rabbid.

In the first RRR, the shooting games were great. In this sequel, they’re no fun. The scenery is good : they probably took pictures of real places in our world, and made the Rabbids invade this place and walk through it, making it look like they really are, for example, in New York. Unfortunately, the shooting games in RRR2 are not as fun as in the first one. In the first game, the controls in the shooting games were great, so I don’t understand why they decided to change them to weird controls that don’t work well. You shoot with B, which isn’t a problem, but instead of recharging your gun with a shake of the Nunchuk, you have to press A. Plus, you can’t even grab the bunnies and throw them anymore. They tend to put too many attacking Rabbids at the same time and it is hard to aim, too, so you’ll often get hit, considering you have no way to tell you are about to be out of ammo before they tell you to press A to recharge, and even so, there is a slight delay between the press of the button and the action. Fortunately, you can’t die. Finally, you will find that you stay way too long at the same place, and they are some moments where you can’t even shoot, and have to wait.

The Music minigames, however, are really worth playing, especially in multiplayer. You will play a song using the instrument you chose at the beginning. Some instruments are harder to play than others, but playing them is very intuitive, and you’ll get the hang of it the first time you’ll play. The game mechanics work great, and the movement detection is almost perfect – you may experience some times where the game detects two hits of the remote when you only did one, but it rarely happens. If you liked the music minigames in the first game, you’ll definitely love these.

However, most minigames are boring, especially in single-player mode. There are, though, some minigames that are really worth playing, but unfortunately, there are very few of them. Some minigames are only fun when you’re playing with friends, like the one where you have to carry an hamburger to a customer, or the one where you have to talk on the phone during a movie. The latter, however, is only truly enjoyable with many players: you can send text messages to other players by repeatedly pressing the A button, putting them in trouble, but for this to work, you have to play on the normal difficulty, and if there are COM left in the game, they will dial so fast you will have no hope of succeeding, unless they decided not to dial. Some minigames, like the baseball one, the music ones or the one where you have to play the flute to charm a snake, are great even if you play alone. Ubisoft tried to make the game more multiplayer-oriented, but the minigame selection lost most of its quality in the process. There are few minigames – 50 in fact -, and most of them are no fun at all, which means you’ll often play the same ones over and over again, and you’ll soon get tired to play them, even the best minigames.

The customization of your Rabbid’s outfit is a great addition. You can dress your Rabbid the way you want, selecting through a large variety of outfits. Unfortunately, unlocking the costumes taking a long time and require you to play the minigames a lot of times. You can also customize a trip of 6 minigames of your choice, which is a great idea, too.

The franchise has a lot of potential, so it’s sad that its quality is already lowering that much after only the second entry. I played the first Rayman Raving Rabbids for months, but I grew tired of its sequel after a few hours of playing. If you were a fan of the first one, you may try this one, but I strongly suggest to rent it first before buying it.