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The original Rayman: Raving Rabbids was one of the first major third-party hits the Wii produced, and since then Ubisoft has consistently produced a new title in the series each fall. They're all mini-game collections, although with each successive Raving Rabbids iteration, there's a little less effort put into binding the mini-games into some sort of coherent narrative.

The big selling point for Raving Rabbids: TV Party has been the inclusion of the Wii Balance Board into gameplay, as part of a very odd sledding sort of mini-game. Ubisoft has also marketed the game cleverly, producing a steady stream of animated shorts that poke fun at popular culture. That said: critics have never cared much for mini-game collections or the Raving Rabbids, and TV Party is nothing new.

As a result, Critical reception to Raving Rabbids TV Party is one of supreme tepidity. It gives the impression that you would need to be a supreme mini-game or Rabbids addict to really get a whole lot out of it... or, alternatively, reviewers are playing these games outside of the party atmosphere they're designed for. We'll let the reviews sort things out.

The high score for Rayman Raving Rabbids... actually it's some review in Spanish I can't read. Then it's from NGamer UK, whose mags I can't get copies of in anything like a timely fashion. So for our purposes, we're going to pretend that the 7.1 awarded by Da Gameboyz is actually the high score, as it is the highest score where I can read the entire review.

Anyway, author Kirby Y's take on the title is legitimately affectionate, and interestingly, credits the Raving Rabbids series for starting the entire mini-game collection concept. I'm not so sure about that, although it is true I can't think of a major mini-game collection that predates the original Rabbids. You'd think there'd be something on the DS, though... anyway, despite Kirby Y's affection for Rabbids, he has some nasty things to say about the graphics:

Technically speaking the game had some really long load times which mystified me. The graphics do not seem to push the Wiis abilities; however the game does take some long pauses to load between the menus and the mini-games. I was also a little disappointed by the fact that it is not true widescreen as there are black bars at the each side of the game which resulted in my TVs real estate not being fully utilized. In this day and age when the more powerful consoles are true widescreen there is no excuse for such. Finally there are a few framerate issues now and then too. Overall, for a game that is on its third iteration, youd expect issues like these to be non-existent.

And just think-- from here we cover the negative reviews!

That said, IGN's 7 out of 10 isn't really much worse than the high score, though the tone of Matt Cassamassina's text is fairly negative when it comes to graphics. His praise for the actual quality of the mini-games is high, suggesting that TV Party is actually an improvement over the previous entry in the series.

I felt that many of the mini-games in Rabbids 2 were ill-developed throwaway offerings. I think that the selection comprising TV Party is much better -- closer to the original in regard to diversity, comedy and execution. There are, of course, the selectables that can be played with the Balance Board. The aforementioned snowboarding spoof in which a rabbid inexplicably rides a bull down an icy mountain path filled with slopes and barriers controls well and exudes surrealism at every carve and jump. In another, a play on Godzilla, you delicately lean on the balance board to send a stream of fire at nearby buildings and advancing infantry. It appears as though you are urinating this fire, not breathing it. I'm not sure that playing with the Balance Board is more immersive, but it's definitely novel.

GamePro's take on the game was a more mediocre 3 out of 5. Will Herring's text is interesting in that it's the one review I found that really talked about TV Party's viability as... you know, a party game. It seems the game comes up short in those terms, in an extremely surprising way.

While it's all fun and games for a while, the shine on TV Party begins to wear thin pretty quickly; it'll only be an hour before you find yourself playing through the same mini-games, only with a new premise and a separate coat of paint. When TV Party works, it really works with fun, innovative challenges that are a blast to play with friends - other times, you're forced to drudge through groan-inducing events that haven't been improved since the first Raving Rabbids title in 2006. On the subject of multiplayer, aside from uploading your scores to Wii leaderboards, there really isn't much else to speak of in the game's teamplay element other than simply comparing scores after completion. And with some mini-games working much better solo than in multiplayer (and vice-versa) it's truly a mixed bag of hit-or-miss games.

The low score is a 5.5 out of 10 from Nintendo Power that just seems disgusted with the entire enterprise. Reviewer Steve Thomason spends a short paragraph discussing the title, but every word drips with... well, boredom.

What its third installment in three years, the Raving Rabbids series is quickly growing stale. Most of TV Party's minigames recycle the same tired concepts from its predecessors, and while the addition of Wii Balance Board support is certainly welcome, the execution is unispired and ofte frustrating. Plus, where the first two games owed much of their appeal to the comic hijinks of the titular bunnies, the laughs here are few and far between. The whole act just feels played out, and the promotional materials created for TV Party parody television and pop culture better than anything you'll find in the actual game. The rabbids still provide some decent fun with friends, but they desperately need to evolve.

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