Rayman Raving Rabbids - Bottom 12 / Top 12 Minigames
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 DS - Bottom 12 / Top 12 Minigames
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 Wii - Bottom 12 / Top 12 Minigames
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party - Bottom 12 - Top 13 Minigames
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 DS - Bottom 12 / Top 12 Minigames
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 Wii - Bottom 12 / Top 12 Minigames
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party - Bottom 12 - Top 13 Minigames
The
game opens on a beautiful sunny day in... uh... whatever's the name
of Rayman's world. Rayman was enjoying a picnic outside with some of
Globox's children (I guess that weirdo is quite the breeder).
Actually, I have to admit that the baby Globoxes are rather adorable.
Just wait till they reach maturity, they'll be a lot less cute.
Anyway, the ground starts shaking, apples fall from the tree... the
baby Globoxes are pulled underground, one after the other. And then
from those same holes come out creepy white bunnies. Trying to
understand what the Heck is going on, Rayman tries to offer food to
one of those bunnies... but then a giant, black, Juggernaut bunny
with a mask comes and grabs Rayman by the body piece, dragging him
away.
There's another door on the far left, by the way. |
That's
the modest introduction to Rayman Raving Rabbids. No dialog, no
backstory, just the most bizarre happening in a world that is already
pretty strange. Were those bunnies always underground? Are they
aliens? Monsters? Aliens, probably not, because then they'd need to
be an intelligent life form. To see that intro, you had to pick Story
Mode on the main menu and create a save file. There are other
options, like Score Mode and Gallery; I'll look at those later.
First, the plot.
Your performance deserves one thumb up. Er... One raised plunger. |
The
first three minigames (the two on the left and the first one on the
right of the center door) are always the same, in that is you play
through Story Mode once and replay it again, the same minigames are
always gonna be on the same days. Minigames on Day 1 will only be
found on Day 1, minigames on Day 2 can only be played on Day 2, and
so on. There's no shuffle, the minigames you play on each day aren't selected randomly.
Rabbids are guh-rooo-vy! |
Likewise,
the fifth minigame will usually be a Bunny Hunt minigame (like, 4
times out of 5). The game switches to first-person perspective. You, as Rayman,
must shoot all the Rabbids (or, at least, as many Rabbids as
possible), using your trusted plunger gun. ...No, really: A plunger
gun. Have I mentioned that the Rabbids weren't very high-brow when it comes to comedy? So, go ahead and shoot Rabbids!
They love to dress up, they love to play... There are special Rabbids, too, like Clark, the
Super-Rabbid who pretends to be Clark Kent (no, not Superman; Clark
Kent. He doesn't understand the concept of secret identities);
Rabbids running around with bombs in gifts; big, grey Rabbids that
take a few hits to take down (but if you hit them in the face first,
they're a lot easier to defeat); Rabbids wearing armor made of
kitchen plates and casseroles (You first have to break their armor
off); Professor Barranco, a poor little one with bandages on the
head, because he always gets hurt (even RAYMAN willingly hurts poor lil' Barranco... Our hero, everyone!)... It's also in these minigames
that you'll fight the game's bosses, like the large bipedal machines used to
conquer Rayman's world, or Pink, a mysterious Rabbid droid... Sadly,
the hulking black Rabbid at the start of the game (By the way, his
name is Serguei) is never fought in those matches... though he'll
often participate in the minigames. At the end of each Bunny Hunt
minigame, Rayman saves a baby Globox.
Clark thinks he's good. Yeah, sure. His records? 7,500 feet of descending flight and 1.5 feet of underground flight. |
Well, gee, this doesn't look very great... Hey everyone, I totally need an interior decorator! |
The
next day, Serguei comes to get Rayman out of his cell and throws him
in the arena again. Lather, rinse, repeat: Three odd minigames, one
music minigame, one Bunny Hunt (or maybe something different), one
saved baby Globox, one new plunger for the room. On the third day,
Rayman looks towards the window and gets the birdie's little gift,
once again. Screw you, bird! He then looks at the plungers, and an
idea pops up. He starts sticking the plungers to the wall near the
window. A makeshift ladder! He's gonna escape by that window! He just
has to get more plungers. And hey, a few days in there isn't so bad,
as long as he gets to bash Rabbids every now and then in the arena's
minigames...
As time goes by, the Rabbids get happier and happier.
After a while, Rayman's cell gets re-decorated. He is acclaimed. He
even has a few fans now! Heck, there's a Rabbid on the bridge over
his cell who keeps waving hello at our hero. Awwwww! Meanwhile,
Rayman keeps building that ladder with plungers. It takes him 15
plungers, which means he's stuck with the Rabbids for about two
weeks. Oh well. At least he saves baby Globoxes. Heck, after even
longer, he becomes a Star. Serguei doesn't punch him anymore. There's
a choir of Rabbids singing for him when he leaves his cell, and that
same choir sings for him when he comes back. They even have gifts!
Even Serguei sings with them while twirling a cane! There are more
Rabbid Number One fans looking at him from the bridge. And Rayman's
plungers have almost reached the window. Just a few more days...
Whoa! Thanks, mysterious interior decorator! Look, there are fan Rabbids in the top left corner! |
Day
15. Rayman has defeated the mysterious robotic Rabbid named Pink, and
he's got the final plunger. He brings it to his cell, sticks it at
the very top, and finally catches that goddamn bird. Tonight, you'll
be in a casserole, my little friend. Rayman gets out, enjoys
freedom... until he passes by the place where he had picnic with the
babies. He remembers that there are plenty of baby Globoxes to save
still... and that now that he's gone, the baby Globoxes will become the Rabbids' playthings... His quest is not over! So he decides to head back to the
coliseum... but then he jumps in one of the holes near the picnic
place and gets stuck. The end.
And
that's the plot. There is no better ending in this game. I don't mind it too much,
but you've got to admit that such a downer ending really clashes with
the overall tone of the entire game. Oh well.
Score Mode, with the high score table. P.S. I couldn't find a picture like this with the Wii game, hence the PlayStation buttons at the bottom. Sorry! |
I'm
not exaggerating anything here. I tried beating my own high score on
a minigame called “Bunnies Don't Know What To Do With Cows”. I
played it, what, five times in a row? My back and my right arm ached
for three days after that. What's the minigame about? Spinning the
Wii remote over your head very, very, very quickly to toss a cow, and
pressing B to toss it after you've gained enough speed. Many of the
physical games in RRR will be hard on your muscles. You thought Just
Dance was tiring? Hah! You ain't seen a thing, kid.
Once
you've selected Score Mode, you can also play with up to three
friends. Each player picks a costume for Rayman (out of the nine
alternate costumes; you can even mix pieces of costumes if you want),
and then you can select among the 75 minigames. However, you need to
know that, for most minigames, you aren't playing all at once; No, it's one at a time. As in, you play, then your friend
plays, then your next friend plays, and then the last friend plays.
It's a lot longer that way, but hey, at least everyone gets to enjoy
it.
That
mode is split in four portions: Bunny Hunt, Sports, Challenges and
Shake Your Booty. In Bunny Hunt Mode, you can replay any of the 15
Bunny Hunt minigames in three different ways: Survival, in which you
must, well “Survive” (though you get more points by not being hit
at all); Time, which will calculate your best time on each minigame;
and Scores, in which you're playing to get the highest score by
shooting most, if not all, of the Rabbids.
Workout game: Running like crazy because of an explosive gift! |
Shake
Your Booty contains all 15 music minigames. Keep in mind that to get
high scores, you can't even allow yourself to have a single Rabbid shine in a yellow light. All the Rabbids must disappear in a white
flash. Yellow flash? You've still hit the Rabbid, but apparently you
were off-beat, and thus you lose all score multipliers you had
collected so far. Goodbye high score! This sucks. Sure, it adds some challenge, but dammit, perfection is too hard to achieve!
Last
but not least is the Challenges section. In it, there are many
“challenges”; a “Challenge” is a collection of 3 to 10
minigames that you must beat in a precise order. As is the case for
the single minigames, you can get a score up to 1,000 for each
minigame, but once again, 1,000 is insanely hard to achieve. You
unlock new Challenges by getting a certain amount of points; your
score on 1,000 for all minigames (including Challenges) is added up,
for a grand total of 183,000. Yep. That's a lot of points. But after
a while it's gonna increase slowly... very slowly... because you've reached what is humanely possible to achieve in each minigame and you can't get much higher scores afterwards. And in fact,
since you can't be on your A-game for every minigame and get 1,000 on
every minigame on your first try, it's beyond impossible to get a
perfect score on most Challenges. That's a problem when you want to
unlock more Challenges or Bonus videos... Because those are unlocked
once you collect enough points. And once you've reached your limit,
you're pretty much stuck. And that's the problem with this game: To
progress, you need to show superhuman abilities and always play
perfectly. And it's impossible! So yeah. I'm not a fan of the
Challenges. The are other reasons why I think that “Score” thing
is poorly implemented in this game, but I'll explain in a bit.
The
last two options are Audio Menu (in which you can change the volume
of the music and the sound effects), and then Bonus. First there's
Credits, and then a gallery of videos and concept art. All the items
in the gallery are unlocked as you increase your total score in Score
Mode. The final item to unlock in the Gallery requires 183,000
points. Yes. ALL the points. TO UNLOCK THE FINAL REWARD, YOU NEED TO GET A PERFECT SCORE ON EVERY SINGLE MINIGAME, INCLUDING CHALLENGES. And you can't even get it.
This one minigame destroys all of your hopes and dreams. Or, at least, it prevents you from getting 100% completion. Man, this sucks. |
Thankfully,
this game doesn't. Final thoughts? It's actually pretty good. Look,
of course there are problems. I'd even say the problems are big.
Physically-straining minigames. Insane high scores, which you have to
beat in order to unlock everything. Challenges that have the same
insane requirements, except you must excel at every single minigame. In most cases, the gamers don't play all at the same time, instead they play each minigame one at
a time, regardless of the minigame's length (that's for... about...
90% of all the minigames). Glitches that prevent 100% completion.
Yes, those are problems. Some are HUGE problems.
MAYHEM! That's great. |
That
leaves my second major issue: That freaking glitch. The team at
Ubisoft really should have checked that to make sure it was corrected
before the game's release. That's what beta testers are for. This
should have been dealt with. But considering how hard it is to reach
1,000 in most minigames, I don't think a lot of people will notice.
Heck, it took hacking the game to find out about this glitch. But
yeah, if you don't play to achieve 100% completion, you're fine.
The
graphics in Rayman Raving Rabbids aren't of the highest quality; I
would expect such quality to be in a GameCube game, but I guess it's
not so bad. After all, the last thing we want is an overly-detailed
Rabbid. Thankfully, it's still rather decent. There are some pretty dark areas,
but thankfully the locations the minigames take place in are
beautifully diverse, going from a dark graveyard to a pretty beach to
the Wild West to caves to farms... Yeah, that's great. The music is
very good, too. The songs that can be played in the music minigame
are fun, and the music for some minigames is creative. I especially
like the theme for the racing minigames.
As
for the playability? That's what I like about this game: The
minigames are simple, for the most part. You can pick up and play at
any moment, and you can even explain them to casual gamers and
they'll understand pretty quickly. The tough part is to become a pro
at any of these minigames. There's something for
everyone: Physical minigames for those who treat the Wii like their
own gymnasium, skill and precision for those who enjoy a finer kind
of gaming, race minigames for the fans of racing games, music
minigames for fans of music games, and shoot'em-ups for fans of...
well... you get the point.
I'm
pretty sure Michel Ancel and the staff behind the Raving Rabbids
games at Ubisoft are never going to read this; I am, after all, just
a lowly video game reviewer who yells for no reason and whines a lot.
Oh, and I swear quite a bit, too. ...But if they re-make this game someday,
here are my suggestions:
-Decrease
the score requirement to reach 1,000 points in every minigame, even
if it's just by 10%. That would be perfect. OR
-Decrease
the points requirement to unlock the next Challenges or Bonus videos.
-Maybe
playable Rabbids?
-Maybe
a way to interact with the Rabbids when Rayman is in the Coliseum.
Like, I dunno, shaking the Wiimote to wave at the crowd.
-A
fight against Serguei, the Rabbid Juggernaut.
-CORRECT
THE GLITCH. This is not a suggestion, this is an order. Glitches
aren't bad when they don't affect gameplay, or when they do something useful, but when they cause a
game to be impossible to beat... Yeah, that's pretty awful.
-Maybe
a happy ending for those who somehow manage to reach the maximum
number of points (In fact, a lot of people thought the video unlocked
at getting 183,000 points was a happy ending where Rayman saves the
last baby Globoxes).
Then
again, take those suggestions only if you re-make this game someday.
Who knows, it could happen.
Well,
that's all I had to say. Good game. Flawed. Very
flawed. But
extremely enjoyable once
you look past its flaws and learn to enjoy the crazy world.
Heck, I think I lost precious minutes of my life laughing at those
Rabbids' antics. Though in the end, it's all worth it. It's
one of those games that you can enjoy despite its problems, because
it's just so darn funny, entertaining and challenging. And that's the Rabbids in a nutshell: They're a waste of time, but their games are great, so there are some far worse ways to waste your time out there.
How could I discuss this game even more? Why, by discussing
my favorite and least favorite minigames, of course! Tune in this
Monday, I'm counting down 12 minigames I dislike (if not outright
hate) in Rayman Raving Rabbids, and then 12 minigames I like! Don't
miss that!
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