Ashley Davis and I played Rabbids Go Home with only one expectation: it would be odd.
In this sense, our expectations were met.
Though we didn’t really know what genre the game would be, or what its premise was, or how it’d play, we (after watching another player grab a Rabbid’s head in what appeared to be a character customization menu, contort it using screws, and inflate one of his eyes using an air pump) played through what can only be described as Jackass…with bunnies.
Hit the jump for our impressions.
Ashley: And I had always assumed it was a platformer. I think we were both quite a bit wrong.
Anthony: Yeah. So, according to the dude at the booth, the plot is that the Rabbids believe they are from the moon (for some reason), and are now determined to build a tower of garbage to reach it.
And you only play as the Rabbids. The guy said Rayman wasn’t in it at all.
Ashley: That makes me a bit sad, but I like the Rabbids enough as characters to give a game starring them a shot. Because they are such strange creatures, there was sure to be interesting gameplay to compliment them.
Anthony: Yeah, I love em. Fuck Rayman.
Ashley: The booth guy told us that each level would play very differently than the last. The demo level that we played felt a lot like Katamari Damacy, except you are controlling two Rabbids in a shopping cart to collect random junk.
Anthony: Yeah. You just sort of run into stuff using the analog stick to collect it, though you can’t collect as much of the environment as you could in KD.
There was, however, something I found interesting — everytime you “attacked” a pedestrian using a Wiimote shake, all their clothes would fly up and you could collect their clothes.
The entire game was literally a de-pantsing-a-thon.
Ashley: The booth guy liked that comment.
Ashley: You can also knock smaall enemies, like dogs, into your cart after attacking them.
Anthony: If you combined this game with the Milo demo from Lionhead, you’d have the ultimate To Catch a Predator dream game.
But how did it control to you?
Ashley: Well, the booth guy was French, so I couldn’t quite understand what he was telling me to do through the loud music on the show floor. But from what I could understand, I really liked the controls.
Anthony: It felt about as fluid as a game where one Rabbid pushes another around on a shopping cart could be.
It felt kind of simplistic to me and got dull really quickly, but the sense of humor — again, de-pantsing — was entertaining enough that I never really got bored.
Plus, if the guy is to be believed and every level controls differently, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to JUST show us one level. Maybe it’s meant to be more like the minigame compilations, where you play a bunch of really short, really different levels that sort of act as more than the sum of their parts.
Ashley: I also found it a little dull after a while, but the level didn’t last too long, and with the promises of each level playing differently, the game probably never wears out its welcome. Rabbids Go Home is about as close to its minigameish roots as it can be without actually being a minigame compilation.
I think as long as the rest of the game keeps the player surprised with new types of humor, it could actually be quite good.
Anthony: And I really wanna know what the hell that guy was doing who kept contorting that Rabbid’s face.
Ashley: I believe that’s the game’s character creation mode that we saw. He was inflating and deflating the Rabbid’s face to make him appear different in-game.
Anthony: Right, because he looked like that in the cut scene we saw midway through where the Rabbid found a doll and started dancing and freaking the fuck out.
Ashley: That’s what I want to know the hell about. That was weird.
Anthony: I guess the game reached its intended goal, then. It sufficiently confused me.
Ashley: I wasn’t initially very interested in the game, but I think it’s going to stay up on my radar for now. It looks like it could be another great Wii game.
Ashley: After three party games, I like that Ubisoft is taking the Rabbids in this direction.
Uh, it was three, right?
Or two.
Whatever.
But, yeah. I do sort of dig the vibe that these guys are the stars of the show — it’s like, if you don’t dig their weirdness, get the hell out because you have no choice but to be totally immersed in it.
There are no straightmen in the game to counter their style of humor apart from all the naked people you spank.
Ashley: Did you notice that one of the Rabbids is wearing nothing but a thong?
But thanks for putting that in my head.
