Rabbids Land Review

Rabbids Land is Ubisoft’s first party game for the new Wii U console and uses some of the new hardware’s functions well. However, it is far from being the perfect party game.

At the game’s main menu, players have the option of selecting three game modes: the board game, one-player mini-games, or two-player mini games.

The premise of the board game mode is straightforward; a player throws a dice and lands on a square to determine his or her fate. Because there’s only one board game layout, this mode quickly gets old.

Up to four people can participate in a board game, but everyone playing shares the same controllers. If multiple people are playing, they have to pass around the same Wii U GamePad, Wii Remote and Nunchuk. This gets annoying as players want to stick to the Wii U GamePad, but are required to pass along the controllers to progress in a board game.

The goal of each player on the board game is to obtain a certain amount of trophies, most of which are awarded to players for winning mini-games and correctly answering random quizzes, and to reach the center of the board. Players with the most trophies should not expect to win, however.

For example, if players are required to obtain a minimum of 10 trophies to win, a player with exactly 10 trophies will win if he or she reaches the center of the board before a player with 26 trophies reaches the goal. Regardless of how many trophies you obtain, you may very well lose to a player with fewer trophies and minimal gaming experience.

There are less than 30 mini-games in the game, and all of them are strictly for two players. If you are playing the game with three other people, there will always be two sad spectators who await their turn.

Because there are only a handful of mini-games offered, you’ll more than likely encounter the same ones multiple times within a board game, which gets very repetitive, because there are only a couple mini-games that are actually fun.

You can play a board game by yourself, without any additional players. For the majority of the time on the board, single players are staring at the AI moving around and making choices. Fortunately, the single player modes feature off-TV play, which helps as you can watch something else on the TV screen while anticipating your turn to roll the dice.

Rabbids Land initially provides fun to new Wii U players, but the short-lived experience quickly gets dull. There isn’t much to do in the game, and instead of feeling like an actual theme park, ‘Rabbids Land’ feels more like a desolate wasteland inhabited by disturbing yet somehow cute bunny-like creatures.

5/10