Rabbids Go Home

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.