Rayman Raving Rabbids

[The Tingler]

What... the... hell? So it's not going to be a cheekily-bizarre and humorous platform game? Which is what I expected and thought looked quite fun? Instead it's just a big Minigame Collection?!?

Remember that Official Trailer? You know, the one with the strange spiky-haired girl in it? At no point in that trailer (which is playing in game stores up and down the country right now) does it suggest "minigame collection". It looks like a big adventure, not loads of little party games. I thought those minigame videos were, well, minigames! Fun additions to the main game, like Super Monkey Ball! Not the whole thing!!

Dammit, this has just fallen off my wishlist. Michael Ancel, creator of Beyond Good & Evil, deciding that what the Wii didn't need was a fun and surreal platform game that redeems the Rayman series, and instead gives us another minigame collection for Wii. Just what it needed.

Great, now I have to think of a new third launch title to get after Zelda and Red Steel.

[n0wak]

http://forums.idlethumbs.net/showthread.php?t=4476

The new trailer actually moved it up in rank on my wishlist. I like collections of mini games because I like games and I do not have 80 hours to finish them.

Similarly, I just saw a movie that was 20 short films strung together. I liked it because the pace kept me from getting bored when one of them sucked.

[miffy495]

I'm with you. A game taking more than 15 hours to finish pretty much guarantees that I will never be able to finish it. Full time student, 4 nights a week at work. All I play with regularity are my portables. My gaming time comes on the bus. I love my consoles, but unless I can finish a game without devoting too much time to it, it'll just end up sitting there anyway.

[Roderick]

The pace of the game and its length have nothing to do with whether it's a collection of minigames or an actual adventure or whatever. I like shorter games too, but I still like it if there's an overarching narrative and an idea of obtaining a real goal that is not 'finish all the games'. Since Rayman appears to have this however, I don't see any problems with it, even though I would have liked a nice platformer as well.

Let's not bring up iffy arguments however. And in my eyes, minigames-games run a greater risk of being only occasional diversions instead of memorable games.

[The Tingler]

I guess it's just disappointment in that it's not what I wanted from this game. There's a Mario Galaxy-sized hole in the Wii launch, something non-serious that you can play about with yet still has a broad storyline.

I don't mind games like this for most of the reasons you guys suggested (even though I prefer them on handheld), but as I suggested at the end, hasn't Wii already got plenty of minigame collections?

[Aussie Ben]

Get the GBA version:

[The Tingler]

Okay, now I'm REALLY confused. Is this actually an adventure/platform game or a big minigame collection? On one side we've got CVG, the other Planet GameCube. One's played it, the other's got an interview with Michael Ancel about it. Both are a bit contradictory.

[vimes]

Well, as I understand it the game will take place in a universe dominated by rabbits; rabbits that you'll have to kick out from several locations spread across this world... and you'll be doing this via Minigames.

In other words, I feel a platform-exploration gameplay leading to mini games rather than traditionnal bosses.

But I'm not sure I would trust journalists saying they got an interview with Ancel and spelling his name wrong.

[BigJKO]

The game CVG is describing sounds a lot more like the game before they went for the minigame-angle. Where it was all about dancing and infiltrating and hypnotizing.

I believe Planet GameCube's report. I think it's just minigames.

[elmuerte]

You know what would be a nice joke? Dressing up like Elmer Fudd and visit the ubisoft building. And when they ask what you're business is simply answer "I'm hunting wabbits."

[Aussie Ben]

It's a crazy developer Blog!

http://blogs.ign.com/raymanravingrabbids

[lobotomy42]

It's definitely mini-games. This has been known for awhile.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/728/728359p1.html

[Kolzig]

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22809.html

The crazy trailers are back again.

[miffy495]

Fuck yes. :tup:

Thanks for that. Just got some pretty awful news and that really picked me up.

[Roderick]

Ahh, that was great. Miffy; hope it isn't bad news of the lasting type!

[miffy495]

Unfortunately no, as my cat gets put down on Monday. Still, the bunnies can make me smile, so they get much appreciation.

[elmuerte]

you can always get a new bunny

[miffy495]

I'll name him "Blaaaargh!"

spoiler tags for those who aren't interested in my current pet situation.

Happily, my cat died in his sleep last night, meaning his last moments were curled up next to me rather than terrified at the vet's office. A bummer, yes, but the best of all possible bummers. I'm alright with it this way, as he basically went out on his own terms.

[DanJW]

Can we have his name so that we may remember him?

[JoannaDark]

poor miffy, that sucks. i had a cat named *miffy's cat's name*, she died, she died.mom said she went *insert canadian euphemism here*, she lied, she lied. it is really sad but that's the best way to go, yeah? all curled up!

[miffy495]

The name was Hobbes. (I know, cliche. I was 6 when I named him, alright?) Sorry to derail the thread here. Thanks for the sympathy though.

[Roderick]

Here's to you, Hobbes! *clinky glass*

[Kolzig]

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22810.html

WABBITS!

[DanJW]

WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGG!

[syntheticgerbil]

So I finally got to this just now. As a big Rayman fan, I have waited too long and my goal next year is to catch up on most Rabbids games (the ones that aren't just a menu of minigames). I'm playing this on 360 by the way, so most games are easier, but the shooters are a little bit harder than the Wii.

The problem is if you want to unlock everything past story mode, Rayman Raving Rabbids is cruel. You have to be so near perfect in so many minigames where many are just left up to just one missed twitch button press or some kind of randomization you have no control over. I have no idea what audience they were targeting with this kind of toughness.

I have some kind of completion type OCD for many things that I don't fully understand, not just games, but it's definitely a compulsion. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. It usually means stress though. I cannot stand when designers expect me to be perfect or do something incredibly hard just to get the fullest out of the game. I usually end up prevailing out of time consumption and memorization, but Rabbids I might have to compromise for once and do 80% score completion even though in the back of my head I'm going to have the game still marked as incomplete.

Luckily I've read about the rest of the Rabbids games as well as asked around and it seems 100%ing the laters ones ranges from ridiculously easy or fair enough. This is a relief for me once I just get past this hump. Plus I've always wanted to get to Rabbids Go Home, I hear it's good.

Otherwise I enjoyed the story mode of Rayman Raving Rabbids besides the cop out ending. There's a lot of inventiveness that is fresh to me have not having played any other Rabbids games outside of the platformer GBA, Cell phone, and DS knock offs which are based on the original premise for the Raving Rabbids game where it was basically Rayman 4.

And that leads me to my next point. In a way this game makes me very sad. I know Rabbids was completely transformed into a minigame fest for Wii controls, but I never realized how much was scrapped or just repurposed. Upon playing it, I see so much of the platformer Ancel was going to create back in 2006. I now recall how excited I was back then upon seeing the screenshots and videos while coming directly off of finshing Beyond Good and Evil. The story goes the game that the execs forced the game changed, Ancel got angry, and it became the project of other hands. He was given Beyond Good and Evil as a green light but that project is still so much in limbo and rumor mode.

So what you get left with is a bunch of strange minigames taking place within dark environments and stranger creatures mixed in with a bunch of obviously later added cuteness. The robots in the shooting levels are extremely cool, but I see compromise when you are just hitting them with plungers instead of something much more epic. Even then there are some other environments that seem very fleshed out more than a game like this would ever need.

If you want to know more about this, these links are very interesting:

http://raymanpc.com/...lled_prototype)

I guess this post is halfway about my personal issues though, so I'm sure everyone else got very different mileage out of the game.

EDIT: I read the thread after here and saw the platform game change was already mentioned. Don't feel like editing. Oops.