Giant Bomb Review
30 CommentsRabbids Go Home: A Comedy Adventure Review
4- WII
by Ryan Davis on
The Rabbids get a fresh lease on life by abandoning the minigame format that they're known for in favor of a single-player experience that still capitalizes on both their oddball charm and the unique capacities of the Wii.
So it pleases me greatly to see these manic, furry little agents of chaos trying something new in Rabbids Go Home. Comparisons to Katamari Damacy are somewhat apt here, in that both games revolve around celestial aspirations and garbage collection, but the more significant parallel is the way both games carry a deep-seated quirkiness inherited from their country of origin. In the same way Katamari threw off surreal waves of distinctly Japanese peculiarity, Rabbids Go Home exudes a dizzy European flavor. It's a madcap, screwball game that will probably prove more pleasing to the palette in small tastes than in heaping mouthfuls, but it's still a giddy ride from start to finish.
The underlying premise in Rabbids Go Home is that, having spent the past three years gleefully tormenting the uptight, rule-abiding citizens of Earth, the Rabbids are ready to pack it up and head home, which they seem to freely assume to be the Moon. Apparently lacking the knowledge of how they got here in the first place, the Rabbids tap into the pit-black depths of their ridiculousness and figure that the best way to get to the Moon is to build a giant pile of, well, whatever they can find. And so, a team of enterprising Rabbids grabs a shopping cart and heads out into the world of man, grabbing anything that's not bolted down, regardless of size.
You'll guide this whirling dervish of wobbly wheels and constant, unnecessary screaming through a series of levels set largely in institutions of suffocating banality, such as office buildings, hospitals, airports, grocery stores, and the like. It's a world populated with timid, fearful humans whose frail, boxy frames betray literally just how “square” they all are, and a considerable amount of the fun of Rabbids Go Home comes from the joy of watching and listening to the normals freak out at your antics. The levels are also filled with stuff, and that stuff is divvied up into two size-based categories. Most of what you'll find on the ground--which includes, but is not limited to, octopi, dogs, pigeons, bats, soda bottles, fire extinguishers, toy cars, transistor radios, answering machines, and so on--falls under the XS (small) category. Additional XS stuff can also be found hidden in bushes, soda machines, and the like, and you can use the Rabbids' “bwaaah” attack, as well as a dash attack you learn later on, to knock the clothes clean off a person's back and add it to your coffers.
The style of the gameplay in Rabbids Go Home doesn't easily conform to anything you've played before, and while the item collection concept remains a constant, unique twists are regularly introduced to keep it fresh. Sometimes you'll be presented with a time limit to race against as you try and collect as much stuff while still making it to the other end before time runs out, making it feel a bit like a racing game. Other times, it feels more like a platformer, with the challenge coming from simply navigating serpentine platforms and dangerous obstacles. You'll do some light puzzle-solving as well, such as figuring out how to use a trail of pea soup to get a janitorial robot to create passage to the next area.
If the gameplay was the defining characteristic in Rabbids Go Home, it really wouldn't be much to write about. It's got a snappy pace to it, and it rarely gets hard enough to kill that momentum with frustration, but it's the free-wheeling insanity of the Rabbids that makes this game so easy to like. The manic behavior of the Rabbids is reinforced by a desperate brass band soundtrack that sounds like it was conducted by John Philip Sousa on a piping-hot speed bender, which contrasts nicely against the occasional bits of corny licensed music that you'll hear the humans listening to. Suffice it to say, John Denver is well-represented there. The shopping cart careens everywhere it goes, with the stuff you've collected swaying about precariously as you turn. The Rabbids' innate curiosity will occasionally bring the game to a halt as they take comic interludes to poke and scream at some particular bit of whatever they've picked up.
It's fair to say that Rabbids Go Home is a pretty shallow experience, and I'm uncertain if the novelty of the formula can support the weight of annualized sequels. But these facts do nothing to diminish the fact that I spent nearly the entire eight-or-so hours with the game wearing a stupid grin on my face, probably looking something like the Rabbids on my screen.
