The vast majority rely on bare-bones, occasionally unresponsive motion controls that don't feel like they've evolved in the least bit since the original game. Unfortunately, freedom of choice and genuinely amusing slapstick humor can take these minigames only so far. One great thing about this system is that it gives you a lot of freedom to choose which games you want to play to advance and unlock more programming variety. Shows are organized by channel, with stations such as extreme sports, music, movies, and reality television all combining for more than 50 minigames.

What that entails is completing a minigame of your choosing to fill a timeslot, which unlocks the next batch of shows to play during the next hour. Each minigame is essentially a stand-alone show, and you're the master in charge of deciding which programming makes the airwaves. The TV format also affects the way the game's solo campaign is organized. These oddball scenarios combine with flashy onscreen graphics and incoherent rabbid screaming to create a rather funny send-up of the squawking chorus of voices that makes up most of cable TV. There's a mock cable-broadcast look and feel to the whole thing that has the rabbids imitating everything from zombie B movies to high-fashion runway shows. It's a thin plot told via a small handful of prerendered cutscenes, but what it does is lay the premise for an entertaining overall presentation. In their effort to continually haunt poor platforming mascot Rayman, the rabbids have hijacked a TV station and are now broadcasting their own twisted programming directly to Rayman's home. In TV Party, the titular raving rabbids are just as insane as ever, but this time around they've extended their reign of terror to the television airwaves. TV Party's newfound focus on mocking cable TV adds a fresh new set of laughs to the presentation. TV Party simply relies too heavily on its sense of humor to mask the fact that the extremely basic motion controls that make up the bulk of the gameplay have collected a thick layer of dust. Although TV Party manages to expand on the series' trademark wacky sense of humor with a newfound focus on television pop culture, the gameplay has remained mired in the realm of diminishing returns by failing to improve in any notable way. Now Ubisoft has released the series' third game, Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party, at a time when the genre has grown bloated and stagnant. The original Rayman Raving Rabbids was released at the forefront of this trend, successfully stringing together a collection of absurd challenges that relied on simple motion controls and an offbeat sense of humor to create a fresh and oddly compelling overall package. In two short years, the Wii minigame genre has gone from relatively novel concept to full-blown phenomenon.

Rayman raving rabbids tv party