Hopping Fun or a Hare-Raising Hassle?
In Rabbit Raid, you play as a goofy looking rabbit that is trying to save a trio of rabbits who were kidnapped at the start of the game. It’s as much of a plot as you’d expect in this kind of platformer.
Gameplay wise, Rabbit Raid is an incredibly short and linear game, and if you’re focused on just completing the levels, the entire game can be completed in under an hour. The gameplay mechanics as a result are also fairly shallow. In fact, beyond running and jumping, the only other way to interact with the environment is by pulling up vegetables and throwing them at enemies.
However, outside of the boss fights where throwing vegetables is required to progress, it’s not ever a mechanic that needs to be engaged with; not unless you are spending your time in Rabbit Raid going for collectibles.
Floaty Controls and Forgiving Levels
This leaves the merits of Rabbit Raid to be dependent on the platforming mechanics and they miss the mark. The controls are about as floaty as can be, and while some levels require a certain amount of precision, the majority of them are forgiving enough where it won’t be an issue.
Levels are broken down into individual areas; large rooms that have a signpost at the rightmost edge of them. Progressing to the next room serves as a checkpoint, and completing every room clears the level.
At the start of the game, rooms are incredibly open. In fact, it’s possible to sprint and blindly jump forward to make progress. Even if enemies are in the way, half of the time it’s not uncommon to bounce off their head and defeat them. Or if risking the damage isn’t worth it, the fall speed is slow enough and the controls are loose enough that it’s possible to easily dodge and avoid them.
Rabbit Raid’s Level Design and Challenges
Throughout the game there are ice and water levels that make the controls even looser. In these levels trying to target specific platforms or move with purpose feels more tedious than anything. Then Rabbit Raid switches things up in the final stretch by making the levels incredibly cramped. In these rooms enemies are packed in, so much so that jumping around them requires incredible patience.
Or at least it would normally. See, the invincibility frames are incredibly generous in Rabbit Raid and it’s not hard to make it halfway through one room of a level after taking a single hit, especially if you know how the room is laid out.
In the last levels, it becomes easier and more practical to just run straight through most of the enemies to progress. Losing all of your lives will reset you back to the world map, but beyond that there is no penalty. It also gives back all of the lost lives and refills health back to maximum.
Health can be upgraded by finding pickups in different maps, and even without trying, one or two are bound to pop up throughout the game. This is plenty enough to allow you to just rush through the last levels without taking the time to tediously try to avoid the swarm of enemies that get packed into the cramped corridors.
Forgettable Boss Fights and Repetitive Gameplay
The only time when you are really forced to sit still are in the boss fights. These occur a few times throughout Rabbit Raid and each of them are single screen encounters where the boss can be beaten by either jumping on their head enough times, or by throwing vegetables at them. Either way, the fights are incredibly easy and overall, unmemorable.
Unmemorable is really the best way to describe Rabbit Raid. Everything controls as it should, nothing is unfair and while the gameplay isn’t fun, it’s altogether fine. The most memorable thing about the entire experience though is the silly face that the Rabbit makes constantly throughout the game. Well that, and the soundtrack that plays on a loop constantly.
It’s not a mechanically deep game though, with most of the levels feeling like the same thing over and over again. The repetition doesn’t last long though because the end credits can be reached very quickly. My play time hit 45 minutes right as I got to the final credits of the game.
Rabbit Raid’s Collectibles and Incentives
I did hover around the main menu for a little bit after clearing the game to check out the unlockable outfits. Not because I was necessarily interested in playing around with the different outfits, but because the fruit pickups that are scattered throughout are used as currency to unlock those outfits, which in turn is tied to many of the achievements that aren’t unlocked naturally by completing the game. But by the time I spent all of the fruit I had collected, I still had several outfits left to go.
I didn’t go out of my way to pick up any of the additional fruits scattered throughout the levels, so I wasn’t able to unlock everything in Rabbit Raid from the get-go. But fruits respawn when replaying a level and they serve no purpose outside of unlocking outfits. If there were fewer fruits that relied more on platforming challenges or precision to unlock, then there may have been some incentive to collect them. And while it’s always nice to hit that 1000 Gamerscore in a game, Rabbit Raid doesn’t provide enough of a gameplay incentive to go back into it to hit it.
Forgettable, with Limited Appeal
Overall, Rabbit Raid is a forgettable experience that only really has one gimmick – picking up and throwing vegetables. But even that is barely a factor throughout the majority of the game, only being utilised during the even more forgettable boss fights.
Hop To These Links
Hop into Adventure with Rabbit Raid on Xbox, Switch and PlayStation – https://www.thexboxhub.com/hop-into-adventure-with-rabbit-raid-on-xbox-switch-and-playstation/
Buy Rabbit Raid on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/rabbit-raid/9PC0690BC98G
