Rayman raving Rabbids
Rayman Raving Rabbids is the fourth major installment in the popular Rayman series, and was a launch title for Nintendo's Wii console. The game's development was led by Michel Ancel, the original creator of Rayman, at Ubisoft's Montpellier studio. The game was brainstormed while Montpellier worked on the King Kong video game, and began full development shortly after King Kong went gold.
The game consists of more than 70 'trials' which aim to make innovative and varied use of the Wii's unique controller. There are two main gameplay styles: Story Mode (which unlocks the trials) and Score Mode (which unlocks challenges and bonus material). The minigames can be replayed in Score Mode to better one's score or compete against other players either in multiplayer or through the use of a "web code" system for online standings at Ubisoft's Rayman website.
Release and development history
Raving Rabbids is currently available for the Wii, Playstation 2, Game Boy Advance, Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS. Rabbids has been announced for the Playstation 3, and Playstation Portable. 【3】
The game began development in Ubisoft's Montpellier Studio, during the later stages of making King Kong, when the developers were looking to create the "ultimate enemy" for use in the next Rayman game. The studio head Michel Ancel sketched an initial concept for a rabbit character, and from there, the idea of a mass invasion of bunnies grew.
The team then began work on a traditional action adventure platformer. However, upon receiving development kits from Nintendo, the team began focusing on implementing a wide range of gameplay types. When it became clear that these were not going to fit into a traditional platformer game, Rayman Raving Rabbids was altered to become a game consisting of separated trials.
Before the game's release, some of these trials and concepts were revealed. Some of them did not appear in the final game, such as hawk and tarantula riding.
Features
There are two different modes of play in Raving Rabbids: Story Mode and Score Mode. In Story Mode, the game follows fifteen days of Rayman's imprisonment. Each day, Rayman must complete at least three trials, followed by one special 'boss trial', such as an FPS or a racing game. Completing trials earns Rayman plungers. When he accumulates enough of these, he can build a ladder up the edge of his jail cell and escape to freedom. Completing trials also earns Rayman different music and costumes. In Score Mode, a player can repeat past trials in an attempt to improve one's score or as a multiplayer party game.
Rayman has a few costumes, each with a matching song. Gangsta, Latino, Disco, Goth, Caramba, Rock'n Roll, Granny, DJ, and Rabbid.
Storyline
Rayman is having a picnic with the local Globox kids, and there is an earthquake. Suddenly the kids sink into the ground and the Rabbids appear. Rayman offers them food, but they ignore him and their commander Serguii kidnaps Rayman and throws him in an arena where there are raving mad Rabbids, several with weapons at hand. After completing his first trials Serguii drops by and gives him a plunger. As the game progresses, by completing more trials he becomes popular among the Rabbids, and in the end manages to escape, but realizes he forgot the Globox-kids, and attempts to return to one of the holes, but ends up stuck. The Globox kids are supposedly being tortured, though there are several references there will be a sequel.
Characters/Bunnies
Main article: Rabbid
The Rabbids are the common enemy in this game. Their technology varies from the advanced (giant robots) to the insane (plunger guns).
Characters do not have the voice acting that was first used in Rayman (the magican). Instead, voices becomes regular gibberish, except for a few words like "Hey" or "Wow".
Although it was stated that "most of the loved characters" will return, but will be used for the rabbids' "strange purposes," the only familiar character from preceding games were the baby Globoxes. But, in the GBA and DS versions of Rayman Raving Rabbids, you will see Murfy, Ly and some Teensies pop up throughout the game.
Besides the Rabbids, there are also some strange elephant-like creatures with horns (Seen only in minigames that take place in a graveyard, plus all races), and various animals (Sheep, cows and pigs). One of the minigames actually requires the player to point the members of the same species out.
Mini-Games
The minigames are divided into 4 categories:
Bunny Hunt: First-person shooter stages. All of these Show Up in Story Mode as "boss" stages. You can play them in 3 different ways:
Score: Go for as high a score as possible.
Time: Clear the stage as fast as possible.
Survival: Get as high a score as possible, with only one heart!
Sports: The other games played in Story Mode, divided further into 4 categories:
Workout: Games that require rapid movement of the Wii remote and nunchuk.
Precision: Games that involve the Wii remote's pointer.
Get Going!: Racing stages. There are 4 warthog racing games, and a skydiving race.
Skill: All the other games. They don't really have anything in common.
Challenges: Various games, one after another. Go for a high combined score! There are 3 different Challenges:
triathlon: 3 games in a row
pentathlon: 5 games in a row
Decathlon: 10 games in a row
Shake your Booty!: Dancing games. One can be found in Story Mode on each day, always in the door furthest to the right from where you start.
You can also play Co-op Bunny Hunt. Survival is not available in this mode.
Reception
The game has generally been received positively. IGN and GameSpot complimented the game's "sick sense of humor" and a heavy emphasis on fun, as well as the design of the bunnies and the game in general. Reviews highlighted the story, music and sound, and said that gameplay is addictive and optimized for the Wii. A few critics claimed that other developers of Wii launch titles had simply ported their games and "tacked on" Wii controls.
Several shortcomings were cited. Some of the minigames were said to be "duds", being unenjoyable or broken; the game could not run in progressive scan mode (see below); and not all of the trials had multiplayer opportunities, "reducing the game's potential as a party game". Nintendo Power stated that a lot of promised features had been cut out.
The following ratings were delivered for the game:
IGN: 8.3 out of 10【4】
GameSpot: 8.0 of 10
Game Informer: 8.5 of 10【5】
Nintendo Power: 7.5/10
G4's X-Play: 4 of 5
Progressive scan support
One common criticism of the Wii version among US reviewers was that the game was unable to run in 480p mode. The game's manual mentions a menu item entitled 'Options', where one could configure the video modes, however the actual game only featured an "Audio Menu" with volume options. Ubisoft acknowledges this error in a support article on its website:
Unfortunately, there is a misprint in the game manual. The video option was removed from the game, but was not removed from the manual. The reason it was removed from the game itself is that you have to use the Wii console Menu to switch video options such as the 16:9 aspect ratio.【6】
Regardless of the Wii video settings, the North American release is limited to 480i running in standard 4:3 proportions. The PAL (European/Australian) release of the game features support for 480p progressive scan, but still does not support the 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio.
Software bugs
According to a FAQ writer at Gamefaqs 【7】, there are a few bugged dancing minigames, in which you cannot get the maximum amount of points, even if you get a perfect score. The songs in question are Bunnies Are Fantastic Dancers Part 2 and Bunninos Dansa La Bamba. Also, the minigame Bunnies Have Natural Rhythm stops responding to movements after a while if the framerate is set to 50 hz.
Additionally the PC-Version of the game suffers from serious bugs, some most likely related to a flawed copy protection mechanism 【8】. On numerous systems the copy protection will cause the games' main executable to crash and the game cannot be started. The copy protection also seems to frequently identify genuine installations of the game as illegal copies which cause the game to subtract 20% of the score of each part of the game rendering these significantly harder or unbeatable. The games' JADE engine is incompatible to current CPU power saving technologies like AMD's Cool'n'Quiet and Intel's SpeedStep. The developers of the PC-Version reused the installer of Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie without changing the Globally Unique Identifier. This causes failure to install Rayman Raving Rabbids on systems where Peter Jackson's King Kong is also installed while corrupting the previously installed game in the process. While at least one employee at Ubisoft is aware of the problems 【9】 as of today there has been no official statement and whether a patch has been announced nor released.
Cultural references
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Les Choristes: In the minigame "Bunnies have a good ear for music", the layout of the chorus and the appearance of the 'Raving Academy' sign is identical to those seen in the poster for the French film.
Whiplash: Reymond may look simaliar and sound simaliar to the Rabbids.
Time Crisis 2: In one of the On-Rail levels, Rayman jumps onto a train and ducks behind boxes to avoid fire in a similar fashion to the arcade game.
Superman: The Clark character is a parody of the famous superhero. His name is a reference to the name of Superman's secret identity. In one of the ads, a rabbid wearing a Superman costume can be seeing flying across the background.
Gradius: If you wait on the title screen, a bunny in a position similar to that of some Moai heads from Gradius will come by. Rayman swims above him, through the air, while the bunny shoots orange energy rings. When Rayman is behind him, he does not turn, he simply shoots them backwards.
Splinter Cell: The attire of some of the bunnies in the on-rail levels strongly resemble that of Sam Fisher.
Metal Gear Solid: In the "Bunnies Think They're in a Movie" minigame, you will come across 2 bunnies with their back turned. They will then notice you, and two green exclamation marks appear above their heads. In addition, the "Bunnies Can't infiltrate Game Convention" video that was released on the web by Ubisoft a while ago can be UNLOCKED in the game.
Pulp Fiction: In the "Shake Your Booty!" minigame selection menu, the 3 puzzle pieces for Bunnies Are Fantastic Dancers Part 1/2/3 have a regular bunny and Kong Bunny dressed as Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield, respectively. Bunnies Are Fantastic Dancers also features the song "Misirlou", which plays in the film. Also, when you unlock "Misirlou", Rayman does the Vincent Vega dance.
Star Wars: An early piece of concept art portrayed the Bunny Emperor as resembling Jabba the Hutt, complete with a slave girl on a chain.【citation needed】
Thriller: At the end of some of the dance stages, Rayman and the Rabbids perform the famous 'zombie dance'.
The Raymaninho costume is a reference to the Brazilian soccer player Ronaldinho.
There is an obvious reference to The treachery Of Images. If the player upgrades Rayman's room to a "Royalty" level, then a painting with a carrot drawn and an inscription "Ceci n'est pas une Carrotte" (Possibly) will appear by the sink. In French, it roughly means "This is not a carrot".
