Kombo’s Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don’t waste your time. This is why we’ve split our reviews into four sections: What the Game’s About, What’s Hot, What’s Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game’s About
Rabbids Go Home is the very first time the mischievous, villainous little bunny type creatures star in their very first game without Rayman. The Rabbids want to make a journey back home and they think that home is on the Moon. To get to the moon, the Rabbids devise a plan to collect junk, pile it on top of each other and set foot on the Moon. Since this article is going on the internet, I’ll put it in internet terms: 1. Rabbids want to get home, 2. Collect stuff to pile up, 3. ???????, 4. PROFIT!!!!
Those “?’s” are what the gameplay is all about. You play as two Rabbids who run around the world putting things in a shopping cart to bring to the rest of the Rabbids. That might sound like Katamari Damacy type game, but Rabbids Go Home is more of an adventure game with platforming elements that thrives on the frenzied, chaotic and scatter-brained Rabbids personalities.
What’s Hot
The first couple of minutes will have you laughing and you won’t stop until you beat the game or you set the game down for the evening. There is this wonderfully off-kilter humor that is so irreverent that every gesture of the Rabbids could be considered as funny. The art style plays a lot into that. While not technically impressive, the simplistic nature of the gameplay graphics mashed in with the cartoon cut scenes create a vibe that only the Rabbids could pull off. The music is a mix of oldies and some allegro brass music that is best described as a carnival on meth. That brass music is what gives Rabbids Go Home its unrelenting, high energy that compels you to keep adding stuff to your shopping cart.
For a game that doesn’t seem to have a serious bone in its body, the developers at Ubisoft Montpellier stealthily added what I thought of as an interesting critique of the modern human. This game comes from the same people behind Beyond Good & Evil so some sort of message being sent shouldn’t be totally out of the question. The humans that are in the game are all rank and file and seem to go along with what the nice lady on the loud speaker tells them. They go about their business without having a dash of fun. Then along came the Rabbids.
The core of the game is about collecting stuff and piling it in a central location. If you think about it, human do the same thing just not to the frantic extent as Rabbids. These Rabbids seem to be the personification of the human Id (Wikipedia time!), the unrepressed, impassioned instincts deep within the human psyche. In this instance, they stand for the consumerism that took place before the economic downturn. Ubisoft Montpellier are masters of game development to have this higher level of thinking contained in a game you’d swear should be carted off to the loony bin.
The gameplay is unique because it is like taking the oddball Katamari Damacy, simplifying the collection process and throwing in a heavy dose of platforming elements. The level design is great and you are encouraged to go as fast as you can. The levels themselves are very entertaining and have lots of diversity. Some levels will have you going through hospitals kidnapping sick patients inside a bubble enclosed gurney and others will have you taking the jets off airplanes as you run amok through an airport terminal. The high energy pace is kept the entire time through the game. The best part is you’ll fall in love with the game the more you play it.
What’s Not
Rabbids Go Home is not a game for everybody. The humor might wind up being annoying to some people. I can’t imagine that crowd being too large but it should be noted you need to be in or posses a wacky frame of mind to play this game.
Some of the platforming moments are clunky. In the hospital level, for example, you’ll get boosted by some air vents and you’ll need to make the leap to another platform. In that same level, you use a special item to jump and there are some massively tricky jumps that require more than a little finesse. If you don’t hit it just right, you’ll likely fall to your demise. There are two forces at work with this issue. One, the game creates too much of a rush, forcing you to hurriedly make choices, good or bad. Two, the moments where it is old school, the precise jumping platforming sections needed to have the kinks massaged more.
The camera for the game is stationary. The only time you have the option to tweak your view point is when you take in-game pictures that you can save to your Wii or send to your friends via Nintendo Wi-Fi. At first, not being able to control the camera is maddening but you learn to adjust. However, there will be moments where the camera angle is awful and there is nothing you can do about it. The worst is when you can’t see anything because something is blocking the entire screen.
Final Word
Rabbids Go Home is a crazy game created by wildly creative people. The energy and sense of fun is omnipresent to make Rabbids one of the most entertaining games this year on the Wii. If you have any inkling to play this game, you are likely to be caught in its zany madness and love it the more you play it.
