Rabbids Go Home

Collected items are piped into the tubas of occasional Rabbids to store them, accompanied by the most invasively catchy 'oompah-oompah' snatches of brass band since Sy Snootles and his Cantina Band rocked Mos Eisley. Bigger items, the XL objects which are each area's eventual goal, must be flushed into the toilets which signal the end of a level.

Points are awarded for how many objects are collected during the harum-scarum trolley dashes around the varied environments, with one for each out of a possible total of 1000. Special items can also be picked up, each triggering a short vignette as the Rabbids wear, assault or otherwise humiliate their latest acquisition. These special gift objects correspond to new options in the genuinely brilliant customisation section.

Accessed at any point between levels, this surprisingly flexible tool opens with a shot of the interior of the Wiimote, with a Rabbid trapped inside. This is where you'll get payback for every time one these usually infuriating little lapins has drawn its enthusiastic little claws down the blackboard of your mind. Turn the Wiimote upside down and the interior on-screen moves correspondingly, with the Rabbid thumping onto what was previously the ceiling. Go on, though. Give it a good shake. Send that little guy flying, bouncing off walls and electrics like a furry pinball. Cruel? Possibly. Cathartic? Tremendously.

Enter the customiser proper and you'll be able to inflate features, crush heads in a vice, add a vast array of tattoos or accessories and liberally electrocute the little fella with a loose wire. It's like Abu Ghraib does Krusty's Fun House.

There's a strong feeling of subversion, presumably intended to entertain adults playing with children. Droning safety warnings and capitalist slogans are announced over a City 17-style public address system, and settings like office blocks, gargantuan malls and airports lampoon a culture of inflated consumer values and careerism or a paranoid, invasive nanny government. There's no really serious attempt to smash the state, just the message that life's too short not to be foolish.

The variety on offer is impressive for a game which essentially revolves around the principle of repeatedly collecting stuff. There are timed sections, where areas must be negotiated in a race against a secretary on a mobility scooter, bits where you ride a fully functioning jet engine through an airport, levels of riding an inner tube down a hilly canyon. These aren't just set dressing, either. Each subtly shifts the style of play just enough to make a change without jarring the core concept.

Hazards take the form of cacti, explosive barriers, grenade turrets and various flavour of exterminator, contact with each of which will extinguish one of the 'ideas' on the Rabbids' health bar, which results in a 'freak-out' and a restart once depleted. There's not a massive amount of challenge presented by any of them, but that's not really the point. Go Home is about fun, it's a distraction. In an age of interminable gruff marines, sharp-edged muscle cars and horrific alien threats, more power to that.