Previews// Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 - Preview
What better way to spend an afternoon in central Paris than pretending to be some kind of manic, hyperactive space rabbit?
Each one worked really well and left me wanting to play them again. Indeed, if I hadn’t been obliged to let the queue of waiting journalists behind me have a look in (not to mention having only limited time to get a quick gander at all the other Ubisoft titles on show) I probably could easily have whiled away a whole afternoon playing just these four games over and over again. What better way to spend an afternoon in central Paris than pretending to be some kind of manic, hyperactive space rabbit? It certainly beats traipsing around the Louvre yet again looking at boring old rubbishy paintings!
The first game, Beer, seemed to be attracting the biggest crowds of spectators around the screens dotted about the massive Rabbid statue in the middle of the conference hall.
In the game, not the hall, bar tending Rabbids at the bottom of the screen line up glasses for the player at the top of the screen to fill up with that lovely carrot juice that they don’t seem to be able to get enough of.
However, in order to produce the carrot juice, you have to shake the Wii remote to make your player chew rapidly on their veggies. You then need to spit your gloopy orange-coloured juice down into a glass below, again shaking the Wii Remote as if you were an insane baboon in order to get a nice long globule hanging from your mouth. The further away the glass below, the more points you score for a successful spit-hit. It’s puerile, yes, but nobody who I saw playing this game could hold a straight face for more than a few seconds.
Next up was Rodeo, particular fun as one of my own personal all-time favourite sports has to be riding mechanical Rodeo bulls. I particularly enjoy this ‘sport’ after around three pints of strong, continental lager – the glorious minute that you hit that perfect level of inebriation, lose your inhibition and fear of pain and consider riding a steel bull in front of total strangers to be the best idea ever.
In Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 you move the Wii Remote – following some handy pointers at the bottom of the screen – in order to counter the movement of your mechanical steed and thus stay on top of the metal beast for as long as possible.
Next I had a shot at Baseball, which I enjoyed considerably more than I expected I would, as this is a game that I am useless at, both in my real life (I dreaded the softball as a schoolboy). I am also crap at it in my virtual life (otherwise known as Wii Sports).
Luckily, in this version of the game there is very little fast hand-to-eye bat-to-ball co-ordination required. One rabbid holds onto a ball and you launch him around the four bases at speed by shaking the Nunchuck and Wii Remote as fast as you can, in order to make him launch both himself AND the ball at the batting rabbid.
The bats-rabbid then attempts to knock him into the outfield for a home run. This was a laugh, although, because I despise Baseball, it was my least favourite of the four mini-games on show and the one I cannot imagine returning to so often. This is mainly because it's turn-based so you have to wait while you watch one of your competitors shake his thang. This is opposed to the other games I tried, where you were able to all play together simultaneously. To be fair, when I pointed this out, a Ubisoft PR rep told me that most of the games would allow you to play together at the same time.
My personal favourite of the mini-games on show at the Paris showcase event was the Burgers game. Partly because, being a greedy, fat bastard, the mere mention of burgers triggers off multiple zones of pleasure in my brain – so anything involving burgers in whatever capacity equals some form of intensified gratification. In this game you play a tottering waiter delivering increasingly large burgers (mmmmmmmmmm BURGERS!) to a big fat Godfather-a-like rabbid to the right of the screen. You do this by carefully tilting the Wii Remote to move (and pressing [A] to stop) without dropping your pile of steaming meat before you reach the table. The difficulty (and fun) levels increase as more players take part, and you jostle and bump into each other (both on and off screen) in your attempts to get your burger mountains to the fat rabbid on time.
All in, a very solid demo of a game that has clearly taken a lot of the criticisms of the first one on board. With all that exertion I was famished, so I headed off in search of a big, filthy burger. And you know what? I never enjoyed it half as much as I had enjoyed playing Rayman Raving Rabbids 2. And it’s hard for me to offer any higher praise than that! I really look forward to getting stuck into some more of the mini-games soon, hopefully at E3 next month and/or at Leipzig in August.