Rabbids Crazy Rush is a popular action-runner game featuring the lunatical Raving Rabbids, which are crazy and eccentric rabbit-like creatures.
The Raving Rabbids are a spin-off from the Rayman series also by Ubisoft, but the Raving Rabbids saw their popularity spin into their own series of video games and merchandise.
Though the Raving Rabbids are immediately comparable to the Minions of Despicable Me fame, it’s worth noting that the Raving Rabbids predate the Minions (though the space aliens of Toy Story certainly predate them both). Tiny, cute, nonsense-babbling characters tend to sell well, and there’s no shortage of funky outfits and vehicles for you to unlock or purchase in Rabbids Crazy Rush, and the hijinks are pretty high! It can also be quite hilarious when you mess up during a run, as the crash animations and nonsense spouted by the rabbids are full of grin-inducing silliness.
Running games like Run 3 and Temple Run a growing way for developers to utilize an existing game formula while featuring titular characters – the Minions, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spiderman, and many other iconic characters have received similar mobile games. Rabbids Crazy Rush offers unique gameplay for a running game that sets it apart from other titles, with a barrage of action-packed features. A variety of vehicles can be unlocked and customized, to be used throughout the course of gameplay. This includes wacky vehicles such as rocket-strapped shopping carts, fan-propellers, and even a hang-glider made entirely out of pink pants.
Gameplay is broken into levels, and each level has unique challenges for you to complete. These challenges can be either total distance covered, the number of pepper cans you collect, grabbing special objects, a specific number of air blasts or ducks, and using the aforementioned vehicles. Of course, the longer you run, the more difficult it becomes to stay alive. You are awarded a number of stars based on your run performance, and the stars can be used to unlock new levels, or converted into plungers. Plungers can revive you during a failed run, or be converted into cans for vehicle upgrades. You can also, of course, purchase plungers through the game’s in-app store.
Aside from specific level challenges, the game also special energy-limited maps to complete. Upon successful completion of these additional levels, you will unlock a special suit, but you can also unlock suit parts through other means. The suits can also be upgraded into higher tier versions. Each suit has a unique power that only lasts a few seconds, but they can certainly make a big difference during a run. Suit powers are divided into three categories – the Destroyer, Jumper, and Bling-Bling. The Destroyer allows you to barrel through objects you would otherwise need to avoid, the Jumper allows you to perform double-jumps, and the Bling-Bling will double the amount of cans you collect. If you combine the Bling-Bling suit with the glider magnet power-up, which sucks up all the cans in your vicinity regardless of your lane position, you can collect a surprising amount of cans in a short amount of time.
If you feel like grinding up coins to unlock things, you can also try the lucky laundry levels. You need to be level 20 to start unlocking them, but these levels spawn a much higher rate of coins than the normal levels, and are fairly easier to complete. You can replay them as many times as you want, so their purpose really is to allow you to grind your way to unlocking things you would otherwise purchase. The lucky laundry also acts as a random reward dispenser, to unlock further bonuses, such as additional coins or suit parts.
Familiar action-runner gameplay aside, the game’s 3D graphics are fairly impressive, with lots of pretty on-screen objects and background scenery. It may sound insignificant, but if you’ve played Temple Run or Subway Surfers, you’ll understand the point I’m making about visual details, which those two popular titles are lacking. Rabbids Crazy Rush levels are sprinkled with lots of little details and background objects, with minimal aliasing. It almost feels like a PC graphics card should be powering the game. You’d think all the extra scenery being drawn on-screen would be a massive resource drain, but Rabbids Crazy Rush performs rather smoothly on newer devices – the key word there is newer devices.
Overall, Rabbids Crazy Rush feels extraordinarily similar to other running games in core gameplay, but it offers plenty of its own unique mechanics and challenges to feel like a fresh addition to the genre. It currently has a 4.2 star rating on Google Play store, with some users complaining of stuttery gameplay or game-freezing glitches. No game freezes or stuttery gameplay were experienced during the gameplay for this review, which was performed on two separate Android devices – an Asus Zenfone 3 Max, and a Samsung Galaxy J5, which are both mid-range phones.
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