Whiplash

The chain is the whole joke, and also the whole game. Spanky the rabbit and Redmond the rabbit are not the pair; it is Spanky, a hyperactive test-subject rabbit, and Redmond, a depressed rabbit with a gloomy outlook, shackled together by a length of chain. That tether is what the designers built everything on.

Correction of that muddle: Whiplash, released in 2003 by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos Interactive, pairs a ferret named Spanky with a rabbit named Redmond, and the chain between them is both weapon and tool. You swing enemies, grab ledges, and use the rabbit as a hook, a wrecking ball or a shield. The conceit is that the animals are escaping from Genron, a company that tests products on them, and the levels are built around that corporate setting.

What gives it a second look is how the tone and the mechanic feed each other. Genron treats cruelty as a cost center, and the game answers with slapstick violence that is a bit crude but pointed. Smashing things is rewarded, and destruction is tied to a scoring and collecting structure that pushes you to wreck as much as you can rather than just reach the exit. It is a platformer, but the physics-minded chain keeps it from feeling like one of the usual mascot runs.

The era shows. The camera can lose track of the action, and the tether sometimes behaves like a bad idea you have to fight rather than a tool. Mid-2000s mascot platformers were often caught between cartoon charm and an attempt to be edgier, and this one leans on that edge harder than it can always support. Some of the humor has dated.

Still, the central idea has not been copied much, and that counts for something. A game that makes two characters share one leash, and then lets you abuse that leash for laughs, remembers that the PS2 platformer crowd was always willing to try something strange. It is rough, but it is recognizably itself.