The Rabbids are seemingly stuck in a time thanks to Travel in Time 3D's antiquated platforming mechanics.
Rabbids Travel in Time 3D is a port of the Wii game by the same name, sans the 3D. The game's split up into four different thematic worlds: Prehistory, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Rome, and the Middle Ages. The first problem with the game is that there's a gaping hole where creative direction should have gone. The designers have pretty much done nothing interesting at all with the material. There are no introductions to the worlds, no unfolding events, nothing that makes the levels interesting in the slightest.
The gameplay is as basic as a platformer can get. Every staple of the genre is here. You have gold coins and ducks to collect for points (extra lives awarded at 1000 points), moving platforms to jump on, hazards to avoid, levels that forcibly push you along, and tedious water levels. There's nothing inventive, creative or innovative about the gameplay whatsoever. In fact, the only -ive the game does well is repetitive.
The first world is a set of introductory levels that get you accustomed to the gameplay, but they are so dull, and they don't really get interesting until the last world. What makes the game even more boring is the lack of any kind of difficulty. Every time you take a hit, there's always a roll of toilet paper (yes, your life bar is made up of TP) to restore your health just down the road. The level design very rarely offers any challenge, so you'll become increasingly bored jumping from the same tired set of platforms.
There are suits for power ups, such as invincibility and a propeller hat that lets you jump high, but the game never provides you with opportunities that make full use of these suits. The enemies that you encounter prove to be pushovers, and actually annoyances because they require too many hits to take down. There are also a ridiculous amount of breakable walls to bash through whose only purpose is to make you press the X button every now and then.
The game tries to goad you into playing the levels over again by giving you challenges to complete. You can do speed runs on most of the levels, and if you get a gold trophy, you're awarded one of four pieces to a picture, with 10 pictures in total. You can also do missions, which are nothing more than collect this, bash that, beat up X number of rabbids for more points. There are collectible figurines that unlock once you get a certain amount of points, but several of them are far too similar to one another, making it really hard to care about wanting to collect them all.
The real disgrace of the game is the total waste of the Rabbids license. The Rabbids are inherently hilarious characters, but they're never given moments to really entertain. The only time you see cinematics are at the opening and closing of the game, and even then, they're only chuckle-worthy. In between worlds, you're given the same generic cutscene of the rabbid riding his washing machine to the next zone, with no introduction to the new world he drops into. During the game, there's hardly any interaction with other rabbids that provide laughter. When you meet a new rabbid enemy, there will be a quick mini-cutscene that shows them attacking you, but then it's over and you're beating them up. There's nothing interesting at all that happens in the game that involves true comedic use of the Rabbids.
There are also glitches and control issues abound. To make your rabbid pound the ground, you pull down on the circle pad, but since the pad's so sensitive, you'll slam the ground on accident frequently. The rabbid will sometimes slip off edges of platforms, react to inputs too sensitively, or be completely unresponsive at times. Glitches range from spouts of sand not going off to falling through the floor and into oblivion, causing you to restart. The physics engine is also atrocious, making things too springy, and heavy objects far too light.
Rabbids Travel in Time 3D's strongest point is its visuals. The game's really nice to look at. The environments are rendered well, and your character animates as smoothly as a cartoon. The multilayered scenery adds a lot of richness to the backgrounds, and the 3D effect lends itself rather well to them. The 3D itself, though, does very little to enhance gameplay. In fact, its most prominent effect of having a bug fly right at you and rest itself on the screen only serves to distract you, usually blocking your vision.
Whether or not you'll enjoy the audio depends on how well you can tolerate the Rabbids' non-stop yelling and undecipherable gibberish. Even if you loved them in past games, you might end up getting tired of hearing your character constantly yell the same thing. There's nothing revolutionary in any of the other sound effects, such as collecting ducks or bashing walls; it's all so average. The music is decent, matching the themes of the worlds well, but there are only a couple of catchy songs.
It's just really disappointing to see such a lively license as the Raving Rabbids placed in a such a bland and uninspired platformer. There's too much emphasis on point collecting and too little level diversity. It's a poisonous combination that yields a sleep-inducing concoction. Even if you're a completist, you'll have quite a hard time being compelled to finish the game one hundred percent. To add insult to injury, the Wii version of the game is 20 bucks less, and the only difference with the 3DS version is that it's in 3D. If you can honestly justify paying 20 dollars more just to experience a generic platformer in 3D, go ahead and pick it up, but you'd be better of putting that 40 dollars towards the Back to the Future trilogy if you really want to travel in time.