Rabbids Go Home review

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

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The most obvious touchstone is Katamari, but Go Home never feels like a rip-off or a cynical attempt to ape its ‘wackiness’ (which is to the game’s credit, when you consider that a straight clone of Katamari would no doubt be a big seller). It’s a genuinely funny game. The Rabbids in particular have the sort of unrelenting manic energy we’d need a thousand cups of coffee to replicate. Every stage begins with a charming short cartoon, and ends with joyous big band music; in between, you’ll battle robots, wreck a supermarket and explore a radioactive government facility, to name just a few of the game’s varied activities.

Stages are structured similarly to any other 3D platformer, but nearly every location offers something new. One minute you’ll be floating around under the inflated quarantine bed of an infectious hospital patient, the next you’ll be racing through an office after a secretary on a scooter.

After that, you could be careering through an airport lounge on the back of a runaway jet engine. Some games rest on their laurels; Rabbids Go Home vigorously stamps on its laurels and then flushes them down the U-bend while laughing like a maniac.

Levels vary in set-up and duration – some are linear and on-rails, while others are bigger and more open. You’ll likely grab most of the collectibles on the first playthrough, but you can always revisit stages later. There are a good number of levels, too, and although the same locations and activities do start repeating, they will at least offer something new each time.

Pushing acart around seems a bit weird at first, but it handles exceptionally well, and it’s always amusing watching it skitter and almost topple over when you happen to take a sharp bend. Without the aid of the bubble bed, you don’t have the ability to jump, but you can whack things by snapping the remote and fire Rabbids by aiming the on-screen cursor and hitting Z.

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.