Rayman, the goofy character with no arms or legs is back, making the jump from Nintendo Wii launch title to 360 port this April. Those who didn’t keep tabs on the Wii title may remember Rayman has a charming little fellow that partook in long single-player adventures across various colorful environments. In order to make the most use of the Wii’s motion-sensing functionality with the limited development time they had however, Ubisoft opted to make Raving Rabbids a collection of mini-games, all imbued with the rather wacky sense of humor gamers have come to expect from the franchise. In porting the game to the Xbox 360, Ubisoft faced the tough challenge of loosing the motion-sensitive controls but maintaining the game’s entertainment value.

Now, how can you port such an entertaining video game that worked so perfectly on the Nintendo Wii to a console with a traditional controller? Well Ubisoft has a couple tricks up their sleeves, the most notable being the implementation of the Xbox Live Vision camera as a control device. Remember that thing? Microsoft made a big deal about it awhile back, and everybody promptly forgot about it. Not Ubisoft though - the Vision Camera will be featured in 37 of the 70-plus mini-games you will come across and should keep people with innovation on their minds happy.

Unfortunately, the addition of Vision Camera controls feels like a major patch job and serves a strong reminder of just how far ahead of the motion-control game the wii-mote really is. Anyone that has ever played the XBLA title Totemball can attest to how inconsistent and unresponsive camera-based controls can be, and Raving Rabbids doesn’t fare much better. The Vision Camera picks up the outline of the player’s body and the game displays it onscreen to provide the player of an idea of where they need to move. Unfortunately the camera isn’t particularly good at picking up subtle or overt gestures. No, players will need to exaggerate literally every movement in order to trigger the action they hope to, and even when they do they’ll being crossing their proverbial fingers. The Vision Camera is on track for a 0 for 2 record as a control device, but the success of the equally imprecise Eye-toy controlled games on the Playstation 2 indicates that there is an audience such experiences.

Thankfully, the Vision Camera isn’t required to play the game. All of the mini-games can be played with the standard Xbox 360 controller, but playing the game in this manner only leads to the realization that under all the nifty uses for Nintendo’s controller, Raving Rabbids is a very shallow game. None of the games require any actions beyond what can be accomplished by hammering three buttons at different intervals. The most complex mini-game, control wise at least, is effectively a track-based first-person shooter that arms players with toilet-plungers. The reticule in this game is extremely jittery, but hopefully that’s a hold-over from the Wiimote and will be ironed out before the game is released Each of the mini-games are creative to say the least, with events ranging from moo-sketball – basketball with a cow replacing the ball, to cow-tossing, to satiating the ravenous appetites of psychotic bunnies by squirting carrot juice down their throats. Some of the activities border on addictive, most of them are charming the first time through but quickly grow tiresome, and a few should have been left out entirely.

Gamers going solo will have to wade through each of the mini-games at least once in order to complete the story-mode, which is really nothing more than a circuit of mini-games broken into stages with bits and pieces of a story about Rayman being captured by psychopathic bunnies sprinkled throughout. Multiplayer was the primary source of entertainment in the Wii version of the game, and that’s likely to be the case for the 360 version as well. The addition of Xbox Live play is a welcome one, but party games such as this are rarely if ever particularly fun when the competition isn’t sitting on the same couch. Some extra downloadable mini-games would be a more interesting use of the online service provided the price is right.

It’s ironic considering the console the game originated on, but the strongest element of the game at this stage is the presentation. Make no mistake, the game wears its Wii roots on its sleeve so players can expect relatively poly-counts, texturing, lighting and special effects. That said, the game’s art-style is unmistakably Rayman, full of lush colors, unique designs, and wonderfully lovable atmosphere. The game also drips with humor. The very concepts of many mini-games are often silly enough to elicit a chuckle, and every movement on screen is bursting with personality. Sure, the game doesn’t push the Xbox 360 hardware, but it doesn’t really need to. Rayman’s world doesn’t need layers upon layers of bump-mapping or pixel-shading to look great – the art style carries it further than any next-gen engine ever could. Of course, should the fine folks at Ubisoft ever make the incredibly intelligent decision to make another proper Rayman adventure, they should definitely make the most of the hardware available (hint hint, Ubisoft).

AMN will have our final verdict on the port of one of our favorite Wii games later this week.