Over on the left is a boardroom full of people with spreadsheets debating whether Nintendo's pursuit of the casual market is a betrayal of serious gaming. On the right, there's a room full of people hitting rabbits over the head with giant frankfurter sausages. Now, which one sounds the most fun to you?
Surreally, really good Whether you loved or hated the first iteration, there's no denying that this edition has made some serious improvements on last year's effort. The laborious stadium premise has been lost in favour of straightforward skippable instruction screens and menus, letting you leap straight into play. There's no plot to follow here, just minigames, because Rabbids don't need plot. In fact, Rabbids don't even need Rayman - unlock a furry costume for him to wear and you don't even have to look at the sleazy nerd.
Give it a quick play through (in single or multiplayer) to unlock the games, and you can then tailormake your own minigame compilation: play the ones you love, ignore the ones you hate. It's fantastic not to be forced to play the dross; we wish more games did this.
And all the games do, quite simply, come alive with two to four players all playing at once, knocking each other off buildings, bumping each other in a fart-race competition, or washing rabbid pants in a mountain stream. The shooting-on-rails ranges are back as unlockables in their own right, too.
The emphasis has shifted dramatically from a wrist-crackingly repetitive single-player to a bespoke multiplayer experience, with more quirky touches and customisable elements than a packet of Salvador Dali fuzzy felts.
With a suitable amount of toilet humour offset by surreal minigame design,1 we defy anyone not to enjoy a good chunk of these little slices of lunacy. Some of the games are slightly clunky to control, such as the sliding around on ice games, but you'll be having so much fun with other people playing along, you won't care.
Overall, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 is a pretty good minigame party option. Unfortunately the simple controls mean single-player's a slightly indifferent experience; be sure to play it with friends.
Rabbids provide multiplayer lunacy and joy in a minigame collection that's one of the nicest on Wii at the moment. Does what it said on last year's tin.
I recently replayed the excellent Hoodlum Havok and it still dissapoints me that Rayman has been reduced to a random assortment of minigames. Bring on Rayman 4.
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