It’s common practice for celebrities to be showered in new and upcoming products when lounging before or after a big awards show. They like free stuff and sneak peeks just as much as you or I. Can you blame them? No, but you can envy them if that will make you feel better.
This past Monday we managed to slip Dre, our L.A. correspondent, into the Mattel Celebrity Retreat at the Teen Choice Awards to see what happens when a few celebrities step onto the Wii Balance Board for the first time. Though Dre got the boot before all the celebrities came through, she was able to check out a few sampling the first public appearance of Ubisoft’s holiday Wii release Rayman’s Raving Rabbids TV Party.
I can think of no better way to lure male celebrities over to a product than with two disarming young hip cute girls in matching Wii t-shirts and jeans. In this case their victim, I mean participant, was rapper/actor LL Cool J. LL found himself watching the girls dancing away on the Balance Board to one of TV Party’s 50 mini-games. Apparently LL has had no previously exposure to the Wii as he wouldn’t pick up the controllers, but the girls were able to lure him into breaking out some moves on the Balance Board. “Maybe I could put on a better show” (with more practice) he offered, probably wondering why he was dancing on a glorified bathroom scale.
Reno 911 and Backstage Teen Choice Awards correspondent Carrie Keegan found her way over to TV Party and had no issues jumping right in with Nunchuk and Remote in-hand. “This is fun! Can I just stay here the whole show?” Ubisoft PR Manager Michael Beadle and his team would have loved (watching) that all afternoon, or even Aundrea Fimbres and Shannon Bex from Danity Kane (pictured below) busting moves. Something tells us Carrie went straight from the after parties to Best Buy hoping to sweet talk a stock boy into bringing a Wii and Balance Board out from the back room.
Even Dre, a fellow young girl and relative gaming novice, could not help but feel compelled to join in on the fun when asked by the Ubisoft dancing duo. Hypnotic, those girls are. Anyways, here are Dre’s hands-on impressions in her own words of Rayman’s Raving Rabbids TV Party from a casual gaming perspective.
“I took time off from video games after the Nintendo 64 which was some time in the mid-90’s, I believe. These days, the 360-degree views and first-person shoot-’em-ups are a little too much for me. However, Wii is definitely bringing back the fun for people like me that like games but feel like there’s been too much that’s gone by since we last really had an interest and the skills to play.
From what Ubisoft has built so far, Rayman’s Raving Rabbids TV Party looks like it’s going to be a big hit this holiday season! TV Party is the third installment in the Rayman series on Wii featuring Rabbids, a bunch of alien bunnies that are big fans of Earth culture but just can’t seem to get it right when they try to participate.
TV Party is going to have about 50 mini-games so that players have a variety of options similar to those one might have surfing through endless TV channels. Players can customize their Rabbid avatar with costuming, etc. before jumping in. The different games will use various permutations of the Wii Remote, the Nunchuck controller and the Balance Board. As there are so few games as yet released for the Balance Board, I was told that this is another huge selling point for TV Party.
I previewed a multiplayer (up to 4 people can play simultaneously) dance game from the Dance/Music channel using the Wii Remote and the Nunchuck; a sledding game from the Sports channel where I actually sat down on the balance board in order to “steer” my sled with my butt; and a sky-surfing game, also from the Sports channel, where I stood on the Balance Board. Overall, the games are all easy enough so that even the non-experienced gamer can play. They are G-rated with the most violent aspect expected is a “shooting” game that involves the Rabbids launching toilet plungers at their “enemies.” (This game was not yet available for preview.) So this newest installment of the Rabbids is pretty much going to be fun for all ages, all demographics and all levels of play. Pretty wide-spread appeal, eh?
The dance game has about 15 popular songs licensed as a soundtrack. I boogied a.k.a. demoed the game with the ladies to “Jungle Boogie” and the theme song from Austin Powers. The movements are simple enough to grasp, and because they are all conveyed to the game using the hand-held controllers, it’s conceivable that players could participate while seated. However, it’s more fun to be on your feet and improvising steps.
Similar to Guitar Hero or any one of the DDR-type rhythm games, players see the upcoming steps, as modeled by a stick figure, previewed first as they scroll across the top of the screen from right to left. When the stick figure gets to the left side of the screen it is highlighted in a box, letting the player know that it’s time to “hit” the move. A scorecard helps players track their success or failure for each movement with a running points tally being kept by each player’s Rabbid judge at the bottom of the screen.
The Rabbid judges are sitting at a panel American-Idol style. As players hit their moves and score, their Rabbid judge begins to cheer and dance in his seat. So even if you were to play alone, you have a pint-sized buddy rooting for you on-screen. If players miss steps and are unsuccessful at scoring, their Rabbid judge slumps in his chair uninterested. It’s pretty cute.
In keeping with the Rabbids’ distortion of pop culture, the sledding game features the player’s Rabbid avatar seated on the belly of a live bull while cruising down the snowy slopes on a course of flags and ramps. Steering with your butt sounds simple enough, but when the game sped up, and the flags started whizzing by at opposite sides of the screen, I found myself leaning from side-to-side with my entire body. I had a similar experience during the sky surfing game as I found myself teetering from my heels to my toes as I leaned forward and back in an effort to avoid space debris and satellites along the course. Maybe I was just new at the games and the controllers, but I found myself consistently exaggerating all of my movements for each of the games. I imagine, however, that in a group setting, those waiting to play would be quite entertained to watch other players make fool of themselves.
One of the coolest functions in these games is the “Sabotage.” It’s an opportunity for a second player to pick up a Remote and participate while the first player is taking their turn on the Balance Board. For example, during the sledding game, a second player can pick up the Remote, and when a pop-up appears in the bottom left hand corner of the screen announcing the “Sabotage” opportunity, that player can shake the Remote toward the screen to create blasts of fire to distract/block the primary player from viewing his course and targets. It keeps everyone involved and promotes some healthy competition when players are comparing high scores.”
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party should arrive exclusively on the Wii sometime this holiday season.
– Dre Birskovich with foreward by Dan Bradley
