Round 2! In this corner, a Wii-mote and me. In the other corner, zany bunny rabbity things (lagomorphs if you will). I hadn't really been following Rayman much leading up to the launch of the Wii. In fact, truth be told, I was only really interested in Zelda and Monkey Ball. I can't wait for Metroid and Mario, but most of the launch is really kind of uninspiring. That said, I was very pleasantly surprised with how much I have enjoyed this game so far.

Basically the story is: You, Rayman, have been kidnapped by a bunch of weird, crazy, Psychonauts-reject-looking rabbits (to be fair Rayman has always had a kind of unique art style, but it definitely feels like it’s been "kicked up" a notch). Their purpose for you? Why, coliseum-style entertainment, of course. Each day you are placed in the coliseum with four doors to choose from. Each of these contains a new, Warioware-ish, mini game. Some are as simple as flicking the nun chuck in time to jump rope, while others are like entire levels of House of the Dead. Beat all four games of the day and get to enter the main gate that leads to one final game. So far it's always a music rhythm game with actual licensed songs that don’t suck, but I only played a few day's worth.

As you play through the multiplayer, a story is slowly revealed via nightly cut scenes and of course mini-games are unlocked for use in multiplayer. I haven’t done much multiplayer but I believe it supports up to four players and if it’s done well could easily serve as the go-to party game in my house for a good long while.

To sum up, I really like the style of this game -- it's actually one of the best looking games on the system right now. The games are very creative and fun with a lot of variety and it really just has that certain something that feels right about the whole thing. Oh yea, and the Rabbids are fantastically twisted little things and great to hit in the face with a plunger. Unless you’re a Madden or Tony Hawk nut, I would place this very high on my "to-buy" holiday list.