Ah, the Rabbids. In one year, these screaming bunnies have become one of Ubisoft's best franchises. Sure there's the Tom Clancy line, and Assassin's Creed aspires to be the next "serious" franchise, but at the end of the day, if you're not at least chuckling at the slapstick behavior of these nutty creatures, someone should check your pulse. Last year's Rayman Raving Rabbids was a solid selection of very fun mini-games that really tapped into the creative potential of the Wii. This inevitable sequel has some stumbles, but otherwise, it's another fun compilation of mini-games.

In this outing, the bunnies have left their home planet and hit Earth to study human culture and customs. Rayman infiltrates their ranks in a very funny opening cinematic, akin to a wolf in... bunny ears. Naturally, this opens up a floodgate of insanity, and the mini-games are quite awash in pop culture references, from movies to video games.

RRR2 eschews the "five games a day" layout that defined the first game and strikes out in a new direction. You'll play as either Rayman or a bunny whose outfits you can customize, and you'll travel the world playing rounds of mini-games. It's divided into USA, South America, Europe, Asia and the unlockable Tropics. In order to unlock a great deal of the mini-games, you'll need to play some multiplayer. Indeed, the emphasis on the "party" portion of "party games" is much stronger in this sequel. In the first game, you had to play through the single-player game and beat it in order to unlock everything. It's great to see that Ubisoft Paris has put a stronger emphasis on multiplayer this time out.


The themes of each game change according to region (and innocuous but bad stereotyping). The South American mini-games include the Hollywood themed "Fart Wars," which spoofs the Podrace sequence from "The Phantom Menace." In the US, there's Anesthetics, in which you'll beat the crap out of a bunny to put him down for the count. Asia's mini-games include Laundry, in which you'll make a rubbing motion with the Wii controls to "wash out" dirty underwear, and Europe features "Burp," in which you'll shake the remote like a soda bottle, hit A to "open it," then shake it into your mouth to see who can cause the biggest devastation from the Champs Elysees beyond.

Fundamentally, most of the mini-games work very well. The music games emulate the scrolling notes of the Guitar Hero games, although you'll be using your Remote and nunchuk to hit the beats. It's not the most original concept, but it feels more natural than the previous incarnation of music mini-games. "Dial R for Rabbid," which plays on the annoyance of going to the movies in America, is one of the most habit-forming mini-games in the collection.