If you'd asked me a week ago if the Wii needed another mini-game collection, I would have laughed at you. Unless you're big and scary, then I would have pretended I couldn't speak English. The point is, the Wii has something of an overabundance of mini-game collections. Wii Sports, Wii Play, WarioWare, Mario & Sonic… the list isn't endless but it is long, so a game has to be very good to stand out in this extremely saturated market.

Enter Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, the sequel to one of the most successful launch games for the Wii. Ubi Soft have been under a lot of pressure to recapture this success for the sequel but, as all ready indicated, the game has to be significantly different from its predecessor to stand out from the crowd. So they've tried to satisfy both requirements by keeping the mini-game format but collecting them into groups of six games to create a series of tournaments, the end result being that Rabbids 2 is more of a party game than its predecessor. The mini-games, as in the original, are surreal and usually hilarious, ranging from a bizarre twist on American football to a game where you have to throw paper balls at a teacher and then pretend it wasn't you!

Graphically, Rabbids 2 is pretty standard for the Wii. It doesn't look gorgeous in the way that the new Super Mario Galaxy does, but it's certainly not an eyesore either. The visual style is very cartoony and works really well - there are plenty of animated pastiches of iconic locations such as the temple from Raiders of the Lost Ark and the New York streets from the Spider-Man films. It's all charming and lends a lot to the atmosphere, but it's unlikely you'll find many people gushing about how brilliant they are in terms of quality. The animations, on the other hand, really are brilliant though; the Rabbids ooze character as they react in bizarre ways to everyday situations. Their movements are always over the top and stylised, which further augments the humour; even their constant prat-falls are somehow endearing, because the Rabbids look so beautifully clueless!

The sound is a different story though and whether you like it or not largely depends on your sense of humour. The Rabbids are constantly screaming and making their trademark Bwabababababa noise, and while personally I find this hilarious, as did all the people I played with, I'm sure that some gamers out there will find it childish and annoying. The best way to figure out whether the game's wacky sense of humour is up your alley is to watch the trailers. The music that accompanies the game falls into the usual 'good but forgettable' category. You won't find yourself humming the tunes on the way into work every morning, with the exception of a couple that I'll come to in a minute.

The controls tend to be a bit on the simplistic side - take the game where you throw paper balls at the teacher that I mentioned earlier for example. To throw the paper balls, you just make repetitive throwing motions with the Wiimote, then you stop moving when the teacher turns around and then point and click on one of the other Rabbids to blame him/her/it. It's quite basic, but the controls all work well, unlike some of the more bizarre control systems of other Wii games. There are around sixty mini-games, although a lot of them reuse the same concept and there are a few duds. There are about thirty really good ones, which is a pretty healthy number, and the majority of them are made up of eclectic games set in various locations around the world.

Let's take a look at some of the best on offer. In one mini-game you play a Rabbid in the front seat of a car. The back seats are stuffed with child Rabbids, each of which are jumping up and down on the seats and generally behaving in an irresponsible fashion. Your job is to shoot the ones that are misbehaving - you point at them with the Wiimote and slap them by making the appropriate motion with the nunchuck. This is exactly as fantastic as it sounds [I can hear haggard parents everywhere scrambling to get a copy of this game! Ed]. There is also a brilliantly strategic mini-game where you play a waiter Rabbid who has to get a very tall sandwich from one side of a room to the customer on the other side. When four players are trying this at once, the skilful player can bump into the other Rabbids, knocking their sandwiches over whilst keeping theirs rock steady. Many of the mini-games are just as fun and different as these two, and discovering all the gems within the collection is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game.

One example of a game that doesn't work, on the other hand, is the sack race. The idea is to wave the Wiimote at the right time to make your Rabbid jump, then get the timing right so that you wave it again as he lands. The controls are too unforgiving in this game, building up a good chain of bounces are almost impossible.

The minigames of Rayman 2 aren't all entirely unrelated, though, as there are two recurring types of mini-game that are treated as special events. The first type is borrowed from new game Rock Band. You and three other Rabbids are in a band, each controlling one instrument. The instruments are usually drums, guitar, keyboards and vocals, but there are variations. These games play in the time honoured shake the Wiimote/nunchuck when told to tradition and they feel much more involving and fun than the rather poor Dance Dance Revolution rip off in the previous Rabbids title. Thankfully, the songs available for these games are fantastic; there's a version of Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water for example that, thanks to the squeaky and often hilarious Rabbid vocalisations, is almost better than the original! The second recurring game is the traditional first person on-rails shooter. Sadly these games are quite disappointing. The graphics are fantastic; the environments have been filmed and then had Rabbids added digitally, which you can shoot. However, thanks to slow reload times and unsatisfying weapons, you're never quite as engaged as you should be.

Whilst we're on the subject of disappointments, I should make something clear at this point. The focus in this second game is very clearly on multiplayer. You can play each of the games in single player, but the enjoyment is mainly to be found in competition with other players. Also, Rayman himself has been almost completely sidelined - he isn't even on the cover of the game! You do play through the single player as him, but most of the time you're playing as a Rabbid. I welcome this however, as the Rabbids are far more interesting and funny than Rayman, but these changes will no doubt disappoint some Rayman fans.

In order to make up from the deviations from the first game, Ubi Soft has included masses of unlockable content. You get a score for every mini-game you play and if you score above a certain number of points, you unlock a new costume for the Rabbids or Rayman, ranging from classics like a French Maid outfit to loving send ups of Altair from Assassins Creed, Indiana Jones and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, among many others. This means that there is a genuine reason to do well in each game and while some of the costumes are a bit naff, they're all fun and it's nice to be rewarded every time you do well. This also makes up for the lack of any story.

The most important question about Rabbids 2 is whether or not it's any fun, and the answer is an overwhelming "Yes!" The mini-games are funny and well thought out (particularly the epic 50cm snail race). There are endless opportunities to sabotage your friends too, which we should all be thankful for. Most importantly though, the games sport an infectious sense of fun; I've been running around the office screaming BWAAAAAAA for days now. Rabbids 2 is a very easy game to fall in love with.

If you have more than one friend or family member to play Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 with then there are few excuses not to own it. If you have a hatred for surreal and slightly puerile humour then this game probably isn't for you. Likewise, if you love the first game more than life itself then you might want to rent the sequel before committing yourself. For the rest of you though, I simply can't recommend this highly amusing and enjoyable mini-game collection highly enough.

Reviewed by Mike Morwood for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).