E308: Imagine Rabbidz

by JC Fletcher { Jul 18th 2008 at 7:00PM }

I couldn't think of a worse place to demo Imagine Party Babyz than E3. There are no very small children, no casual gamers, and no ... whoever else could conceivably be expected to be in the audience for the Imagine series -- just jaded, bitter journalists. And me.

As far as I could tell, I was the first person to try it (or among the first, I'm guessing, because the attending Frag Dolls didn't seem to have been forced to play the demo hundreds of times, even though I did lose at multiplayer). And far from the nefarious destroyer of gaming you may imagine, Party Babyz is actually kind of a good game. Because it takes its design cues straight out of Rayman Raving Rabbids. Only with doughy little sprogs instead of rabbids.

The minigame I played, in which you bottle-feed your baby character, is exactly the burping minigame from Raving Rabbids 2. You start by shaking the Wiimote to shake the bottle, then you upturn the Wiimote to simulate holding the bottle up. Points are awarded for every second or so that the baby drinks. When the baby has had enough, you lower the Wiimote and hit A to burp the baby. I don't know if it would still be fun if I weren't thinking about Rabbids while playing, but it was definitely actual fun under those conditions.