Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party

You have to wonder why the sidekicks of some of the world's biggest icons never make a break for fame in their own right. They certainly have their own merit - wouldn't we all have tuned in week after week to see Robin dressed up in spandex without Batman? And why on earth haven't Luigi and Tails ever teamed up to take down Mario and Sonic? The licensing deals they could have picked up would have bulged their bank accounts no end.

No doubt aware of this, the Raving Rabbids - who star here in what is supposedly a spin-off to Ubisoft's ever-popular Rayman series - are actually in danger of overshadowing Rayman, who for so long has been the publisher's de facto mascot. The anthropomorphic fluffy bunnies certainly don't lack character, and everything from the menu screens to the games themselves (which total twelve) are lifted by their manic presence. However, even lavish decoration such as this can't hide the fact that Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party is a collection of largely uninspired and derivative mini-games.

Mini-games that, rather than being entertaining in their own right, only serve to open up other mini-games. In each of them, golden carrots are on offer, and it's your job to collect as many as you can, enabling you to unlock all of the games and Rabbids that make the line-up. Initially, only one game is available, where the focus (aside from carrot collecting) is on releasing pink bubbles that capture rabbids falling through the sky before they plummet off the bottom of the screen.

To do so, all you have to do is hit the '5' key as your own Rabbid skirts from side to side at the bottom, launching the bubbles when targets are in line - and that's literally it. Attempting to employ some form of strategy here is pointless - far more success comes from simply hammering away at the key until the whole of the screen is full of floating pink bubbles, capturing literally everything they come across. That kind of purile play is repeated throughout, with the second game (although, once you've earned enough carrots, the games can be unlocked in any order) serving as perfect proof.

Taking the form of a 2D platformer, this mini-game involves you telling your Rabbid when to jump as he runs through a Persian-esque level. The key here is to time your jumps, or double jumps, so that you avoid circular saws and spike balls that litter your path. There's no lives system employed - if you get hit, it's all over. Incredibly simple in practice and painfully easy when all goes well, the game has a habit of interrupting the process and getting in the way, freezing when you 'level up', and resulting in it ignoring any jumps you make during that time frame.

If that ends up with you walking straight into a blade, then it's a fault that becomes incredibly frustrating. It might be forgiveable if the other games in the package, which can only be unlocked by partaking in contests such as these, were any better, but the fact that most of them can be resolved simply by either hammering or making timely taps of the '5' key makes Rayman Raving Rabbid's latest TV Party fall way behind in the mini-game league.

And that's the game's biggest weakness. It's entering into an arena where mini-game packages are the mainstay. Though there's no doubt that the Rabbids – cute and crazy in equal measure – are the perfect vehicle for this type of game, the lack of creativity employed here means that this is a mish-mash of poor ideas presented in a rather swish manner. If style over substance if your forte, then the Rabbids will be your new best friends, but for the rest of us, this one party where a good time isn't guaranteed.