Rabbids Go Home review

A clever, hilarious, varied action platformer – NOT another party game

12DOVE Verdict

Pros

  • +

    Great art style and bright

  • +

    colourful environments

  • +

    Varied

  • +

    fun and pleasantly ridiculous gameplay

  • +

    Witty dialogue

Cons

  • -

    Many of its ideas are only skin-deep

  • -

    Some will find Rabbids annoying

  • -

    Occasional camera problems

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Have you ever stopped to think about what’s in your Wii remote? You might sensibly think it’s batteries, or circuit boards, or jam, or whatever witchcraft it takes to make Nintendo’s motion magic work, but it’s not. Put the remote close to your ear and you should hear something unusual: “BWAAAAAAAHHHHH!”

There’s a Rabbid in your remote. But don’t panic, he’s harmless. Well, so long as you think that pushing people down elevator shafts, bouncing on the infirm, riding a jet engine round an airport or indulging in insane amounts of kleptomania is harmless. We don’t quite know how he got there, but after playing the manic, bizarre, clever and funny Rabbids Go Home, you’ll be inclined to let the toothy creature stay.

This is the fourth Rabbids game in as many years, and we’ll totally understand if you’re sick of Ubisoft’s rabbity mascots by now. Go Home, however, is an entirely different experience from their previous outings. It’s not a minigame collection and it has no multiplayer; it’s a fully fledged 3D platform game, albeit the strangest one we’ve ever played.

Like cheese, the tides and Scientologists, Rabbids originate from the moon. Or they at least think they do. One day, while Rabbiding about in the Earth junkyard where they currently live, they decide to go home, so they start building a tower in order to reach the moon.

Playing as a trio of critters – one pushing a shopping cart, one riding inside it, while the third clatters around in the Wii remote’s innards – you’re tasked with popping into the nearby city to collect objects to dump on top of your teetering mound. Virtually no item is off-limits. In addition to picking up detritus from the ground (traffic cones, bottles of pop, dogs) you can shake the remote to make peoples’ clothes fall off, then shove the clothes inside your cart and trundle off.

The goal in each area is to collect as many small (or ‘XS’) objects as possible, and then navigate your way to the end. There, an ‘XL’ item awaits – like a cow or a car – and a marching band of Rabbids stand by a filthy toilet, waiting to flush everything you’ve hoarded back to the junkyard.

More info

GenreAdventure
DescriptionEven if you're not a fan of the demented bunnies this is the best example of the physics puzzle genre we've seen in ages, though the menu screen music nearly drove us to madness.
Platform"DS","Wii"
US censor rating"Everyone 10+","Everyone 10+"
UK censor rating"7+","7+"
Release date1 January 1970 (US), 1 January 1970 (UK)
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Tom Sykes
When he's not dying repeatedly in roguelikes, Tom spends most of his working days writing freelance articles, watching ITV game shows, or acting as a butler for his cat. He's been writing about games since 2008, and he's still waiting on that Vagrant Story 2 reveal.