Game Reviews

Time travel is always an interesting point of discussion. Special relativity, wormholes, parallel universes, Hawking's chronology protection conjecture, flux capacitors – it's the kind of thing that fuels heated debates late at night, usually after watching something like Lost or Donnie Darko. It's accepted that the laws of physics permit time travel to the future - theoretically speaking, of course - but travel to the past is both technically and theoretically impossible (discounting the theory of travelling to the past of a parallel universe). The Raving Rabbids aren't concerned with such limitations, however – they have a time travelling washing machine and aren't bothered in the slightest about changing the course of history. They frequently do, in fact.

This is the basic set up for Ubisoft's latest Rabbids game, which sees the strange little creatures flitting through time and disrupting key moments from Earth's history along the way. Travel in Time is a return to the party game formula that defined earlier games in the series, an excuse to rally some chums together and merrily flail your limbs about in front of the TV. Yes, it's a mini-game collection, but it compiles its activities with such a refined mixture of absurdity and charm that even core players are likely to have a good time. Once gimmicky and annoying, the Rabbids have now come into their own as established video game characters –a symbol for silliness in otherwise serious times.A museum in 2012 acts as the game's anchor in time, or to use more gamer-friendly lingo, its hub world. At the start you'll choose a profile by walking into one of four toilets, of all things. After entering your name and preferences, your Rabid will emerge in the main hall of the museum, a roll of loo paper trailing behind him as he waddles about. As well as being quite humorous, this serves as a rather ingenious game mechanic: When playing multiplayer (which is of course how the game was designed to be played), each player will find themselves entangled with the roll of toilet paper. It ensures that everybody is kept on the same screen at the same time; you can only wander off as far as the bog roll will allow. It might be very silly, but it's also rather clever.