First Impressions: Rabbids Go Home

There's only one possible conclusion to be drawn from Rabbids Go Home - it's mental. Anyone involved in its development should probably be sectioned under the Mental Health Act, such is the scale of the crazy acts featured in this first traditional adventure game for the Rabbids. Of course, if you've been following our exclusive Behind the Scenes Developer's Blog you'll already know that the team are insane, but you can only fully appreciate the depth of their madness when you play Rabbids Go Home. It's a work of crazed genius.

The premise of Rabbids Go Home is very simple. The Rabbids have spent so long partying on Earth that they've become a bit homesick, so they decide they want to go back to the Moon, but naturally being Rabbids they've got no astronautical or rocket science experience between them. How can they get back home? Collect all the items they can and pile them high enough to reach the Moon, of course! Thus the scene is set for a manic adventure where you control two Rabbids filling their shopping trolley with everything they find before cramming it down a toilet to reach their ever-growing lunar ladder.

The recently-revealed Rabbid editor was on display but we decided to get stuck into the main game, so we started up the game's Baltimore level and began pushing the trolley around. The controls handle as you'd expect - pushing the control stick moves your trolley, holding A gives you a speed boost and a flick of the Wii Remote either fires your object or unleashes a "Bwaah Attack", which will destroy many obstacles in your way, incapacitate vicious dogs and, of course, strip all nearby humans completely naked. You can also fire the Rabbid inside your Remote by aiming and pushing Z, but otherwise the controls were refreshingly slim, although this was only an early level so the potential for extra moves and controls is still there.

Rattling around in your ever-filling trolley is a joy - it handles similarly to a regular character in a 3D adventure, and although it slows down subtly as you fill it with items it very rarely becomes cumbersome or unresponsive. The range of objects available to collect is a source of constant surprise - at one point a Rabbid finds a packet of Capri-Sun, which is shortly speared by a swordfish who then replaces the Rabbid's head, before everything reverts back to normal (in Rabbids world, at least) and the game continues. There's toilet paper, bottles of water, burgers, dogs, clocks, ladders and practically everything that isn't nailed down. As it fills up and slowly becomes less responsive, you can "bank" your objects by locating a tuba-playing Rabbid and pushing A, which transports all your items to the level's end where they'll be added to your stack.

Writing about what makes Rabbids Go Home isn't enough to convey what a genuinely funny and enjoyable experience it is. The gameplay is traditional enough to pick up quickly but so full of originality it feels completely fresh, with a sense of humour and level of ieas that few other games come close to matching: humans perch on top of magazine spinners, spinning wildly if you unleash an attack, and one level sends a swarm of chihuahuas at you that you can dispatch in one go and load up into your trolley.

There's no doubt that Rabbids Go Home is set to be one of the most satisfying and laugh-out-loud funny games yet to appear on Wii, and should become a classic when it's released in November.