When I first heard about a raving rabbids ds game, my first though was "mario party style"! But it's a 3D plat
So when I first heard about a DS version, I really though Ubisoft's going to repeat the same formula, with more insane bunnies jumping trough the dual windows of my DS.
But the game is a 3D platformer. The gameplay is by far one of the easier in the system. It's very much like New Super Mario Bros, but with very nice twists like the special suits. The argument is pretty pointless, so you have to just concentrate in just playing the game. Each stage is basically divided in 3 sub-stages. The first is the classic platformer style, with Rayman jumping, hitting and throwing lumings to his hideous enemies. It's very strange at the beggining, not because the gameplay, but for the fact that there are no rabbids in the first stages. They just make "cameos" from behind and in the lower screen.
Once you finish the pretty linear stage, in most cases you are notified about ready your stylus and play one of many boring minigames the game had.
And then, the best of the game. It's what I call the Touch Challenge. It is a course where you don't control Rayman, you control the environment. You have four special suits (Earth, Fire, Wind and Water) that allows to interact with the boulders and enemies. For example, the Earth suit lets you break boulders and move platforms. The Fire suit lets you burn ropes and enemies; The wind suit lets you move platforms with the power by just rubbin' your stylus and the water suit lets you freeze waterfalls.
In this kind of stage, you have to collect all the trophies in order to unlock new stages and bonus elements. It's by far the reason I didn't score lower this game.
The graphics are not the best in the system, but luckily they aren't the worst. But they're definitevily bad. Ubisfot had great experience in the portable N, so it's no excuse to find a game with graphics compared to a first generation title. Even the original rayman ds have better graphics. About the sound, it's quite funny to hear maddona and pulp fiction at the beggining, but they get boring and repetetive again and again. the critters don't have any sounds at all, except for some rubber duck sound and the rabbid's scream.
Although the game is very short, it has some nice unlockables, like movie-like pictures of the rabbids, and the minigames that you unlock once you play it in the maingame. Apart from that, the game has very little replay value, mainly because it doesn't have any kind of multiplayer support. it would have been very nice to play all of the crappy minigames with your friends.
What it's missing? The rabbids. They simply aren't enough rabbids in this game.
Worth buy? Try to rent it first, or ask a friend to do that. It's really not a good buy.
Good luck with the rabbids... If you manage to find them.
Javier Rivera
Gamespot Chile (lol)