In Space Bunnies Must Die, Allison Huxley is charged with ridding Earth of an alien rabbit invasion, and you are she. So you'll get to run and jump and climb and whatnot, killing all these giant rabbits and avoiding their traps and then saving your sister. But the thing is, the wacky premise isn't all that cute, the game has almost as many bugs as bunnies, and Allison doesn't even speak with a British accent.
For what it's worth, the space bunnies themselves are a mean lot. They're rotten, bucktoothed, and ill tempered, and they pack weird guns, bad manners, and even zombie slaves. Sure, they're rabbits and all, but you won't have any moral reservations about putting them away. Unfortunately, the great graphics stop with the bunnies. Not to say everything else looks bad, but the game starts to look a little worn-out after a while. For one thing, most areas in the game are either boring or garish, with bleak mining shafts and long corridors interconnecting a bunch of puke green-tinted rooms. Sure, you've got your lava over here and your giant carrot ray gun over there, but for the most part you'll find it difficult to tell one level from the next. At least the game is brightly colored, and you can easily identify power-ups and enemies, and even traps if you keep your eyes peeled. It sounds pretty good, too. Not all of Allison's one-liners are as dumb as you'd expect, and the evil bunnies sound gross and shriek loud when killed. The soundtrack includes a few big names, but most of the in-game stuff is twangy, ambient, and forgettable.
Lara Croft has yet to battle space aliens, but she's done most of this stuff before. She's better at it, too. The control in Space Bunnies Must Die is difficult to get used to and never feels right; Allison doesn't look like the type who'd jump off a bridge just because you told her to, but sometimes she'll give you the cold shoulder even when you're being perfectly reasonable. You'll get used to the control after a while, and you'll start making the big jumps and so forth, but that's just you getting used to bad control. Things get worse when the fur starts flying, so to speak. There's a lot of gunplay in Space Bunnies, with you having to shoot lots of rabbits who shoot back. You can't really tell that you're getting hit, except to the extent that your health will quickly decrease. Half the time you'll think you dodged a shot, but you'll take the pain anyway. Plus you only have those two guns through the whole game, and though they fire different types of ammo, you'll get bored of the firepower very quickly.
Bunnies are all over the place. You'll round a corner, and you'll start getting shot. You'll shoot back until the bunny doesn't, then quaff a few healing potions. Be quick about it, too, because bunnies respawn indefinitely, unless you destroy the generator in the area. That they keep coming back is supposed to be challenging, but it makes having to backtrack even more tedious than having to backtrack in the first place. For some reason, you can start dancing at will, and the bunnies will lay down their weapons and dance along to make it easier to shoot them, not that they're tough to hit in the first place.
The influence of Tomb Raider on Space Bunnies Must Die isn't subtle. That's not problematic in and of itself, particularly if you liked Tomb Raider and want to play a similar game. But because the premise of Space Bunnies is so offbeat, its weirdness and humor doesn't catch on and instead feels like a strained effort to call your attention away from the obvious. That, together with reliably bad play control, inconsistent hit detection, and plain or frustrating level design, makes for a game that, at least, feels like the sum of its parts.
