Repeating ourselves here (should you want more detail for particular mini-games, please see Wii review), Raving Rabbids was originally intended to be a platformer but was quickly changed to a party game after creator Michel Ancel was first introduced to the Wii’s capabilities. The story pans out during a sunny day when Rayman and the baby Globox are having a picnic. The Rabbids, crazed lunatic bunnies, suddenly pop out of the ground and kidnap them, then force Rayman to perform in a series of trials (mini-games) in their massive colosseum. By performing well in these trials, Rayman eventually grows to the likeness of the Rabbids and secretly hatches a plan to escape their paws.
The mini-games are broken down into three main groups: Shake Your Booty (dancing), Bunny Hunt (on the rails FPS) and Sport (mixed lot of mini-games). The dancing games see Rayman dancing while you shine a spotlight on bunnies who make their way onto a podium. To make things interesting, there are two lines of bunnies (one coming from the left, the other from the right) and when you highlight them, they will either gulp or yell – all in tune to the music. It particularly stands out in the song La Bamba when the words “La, la, Bamba” are spoken. It cracked us up every time. Perform well enough for a certain period of time, a bunny will join Rayman on stage and mimic his dance moves. It becomes more inspiring when up to nine bunnies join him. While the controls no longer have you shaking your hands to the music like the Wii version, to be honest, its charm and gameplay still remain the same. The L2 and R2 shoulder buttons prove to be just as effective.
Go the Fro!
In contrast to this, The Bunny Hunt trails take a little bit of a blow from the console change. Firstly, the crosshair feels a lot slower now and as a result, we found ourselves missing a few hits we easily timed when playing the game on Wii. The controls for reload and shoot reside on the R1 and R2 buttons respectively while the square button is used for the grappling glove. It feels a little out of place at first and will take a fair bit of time to get used too. We cannot help but feel Ubisoft also felt the draw back of the cross hair as they included a function that resets the cross hair to the centre of the screen by pressing L1. Generally, the function hurts the flow of the gameplay a little and feels tacked on, fortunately, you can always ignore it. Other than that, the levels are more or less the same, with the occasional slow down occurring.
Sport mini-games fall under four sub-categories: Workout, Precision, Get Going! and Skill. Workout generally allocates games that see Rayman running or moving fast. Precision requires you to have careful aim or the ability to memorise patterns while Get Going! features racing games on top of a wart hog (and we’re not talking about those vehicles in Halo, we mean the real thing). Finally, Skill is more or less Precision with somewhat more focus and aim being involved. Not only are the Sport mini-games varied, they’re also the mini-games where the controls have major differences both to the advantage and disadvantage of the PlayStation controller. In Bunnies Don’t Know How to Fly for instance, you have to move the analog sticks up and down, one after the other in order to gain enough speed to launch Super Bunny (think Superman wearing rabbit ears) into the air. Using your thumbs to do the motions quickly feels uncomfortable and in order to get the cart to a good speed, you may have to use your palms instead. On the plus side, it is easier to get past the 200m distance rather than moving your arms up and down like a made man with the Wii remote and Nunchuck.
But then again, many of the mini-games are easier because of the controller. Bunnies are Slow to React on the Wii saw you tilting the Wii remote in all directions to move a ball through a maze. While it was a reasonable use for the Wii remote, it still had its difficulty depending on the individual. Obviously, the use of an analog stick is a lot more natural to most gamers because in essence, it has been used in similar circumstances for other games. The maze no longer feels as tough as it was, instead it’s more of what you found on the box of your Happy Meal when you were a kid.
I swear the developers were on something when making this game.
Other times, mainly in the games requiring a cruiser/crosshair on the Wii version, the mini-game’s layout is changed. Bunnies Have No Memory is a prime example of this. The game requires you to repeat the tune the Rabbids have just sung by pressing their corresponding buttons on the remote. Bunnies are Bad at Peek-A-Boo sees you tip toe behind a guard and try to escape the colosseum by jumping under the gates. While we’ve been through the difference in running controls (or in this case, tip toeing), there was a point in the Wii version where you would have to keep the pointer in a circle when the guard turned around to face you. In the PlayStation 2 version instead has you pressing the buttons that appear on the screen.
Generally, it comes down to the overall feel of the mini-games and this will vary from person to person. We actually like both versions of the game (there’s a few factors that reduced the scores though) simply because they have little differences in the way the controls are used. The PlayStation version is by the far the easiest, while the Wii version offers more challenge. The humour and wackiness of the bunnies remains the same, and in the end, that is what makes the game’s experience enjoyable.
There are a few more differences however that stand out and hurt the PlayStation 2 version though, lowering the quality of the game significantly. Firstly, whenever the game saves your progress to your memory card, you are unable to change to a new screen and the TV sounds as if it has been put on mute. Sadly, it doesn’t stop there. The save time takes around 5 seconds to complete, a long time compared to the Wii’s saving speed which we barely even noticed. The loading times between mini-games are also about double on the PlayStation 2. These factors are highly apparent in Score mode, the game’s multiplayer and free play mode, particularly when you have friends over. After each mini-game, the game saves and then you have to wait endlessly for the loading times. It gets tiresome very quickly.
On the topic of Score mode, you can play with up to four players, however you’ll have to take turns with your two (or one) controllers to take advantage of this. Some mini-games will feature full screen multiplayer while others will have splitscreen multiplayer. Sadly, some mini-games will force you to take turns, even with an extra controller.
Splinter Cell references litter the game immensly.
The game’s graphics take a real hit. A lot of the details and richness in colour are left out of the PlayStation 2 version. While the Wii version had some smooth textures, dazzling effects and pretty environments, it was by no means things the PlayStation 2 couldn’t handle; albeit with a lower polygon count. Bunnies are Addicted to Carrot Juice caught our eyes with a surprising change. When a rabbit’s mask was filled with carrot juice, their eyes were no longer visible, as if masked by a cloud of smoke. In the Wii version, the eyes could clearly be seen. It’s just a simple water effect that has been done many times over on all consoles, current-gen and next-gen alike. The FPS trials at times don’t look as smooth either. Sometimes it even looked like the bunnies were made from some sort of cheap plastic. Then there’s the problem with slow down. Every time Rayman re-enters the colosseum, the game has a little bit of slow down for no reason at all. The area isn’t in particularly detailed enough to justify it. The mini-games in general all have detail missing and look a little plain, with the exception being the dance trials, which look as great as they do in the Wii version, even then, they still manage to have slow down when there’s a lot of bunnies on screen at once.
Sound wise, the game hasn’t changed at all. You’ll still be laughing at the insanity of the rabbits and the famous songs in the dance trials including Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, what we think suits the lunatic bunnies the best. However, there is the slight problem with the game’s music and sound being muted when saving your progress, but its bearable.
Overall, the PlayStation 2 version of Rayman: Raving Rabbids retains a lot of the Wii version’s charm and still manages to do a good job with the mini-games, however the feeling you get when playing them does change significantly. Sadly, the graphical downfalls, loading and saving times hurt what could have been a decent port.
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