Rayman Review

Oh boy Rayman. We made it past the dark age. Origins came out last year bringing Rayman back into the spotlight of platformers and Legends comes out next week which looks even better. Rayman may be back in the game but he was back then too, before the Rabbids had a TV show and ruined everything for a nice six years. In hype for Rayman Legends, let's take a look back on how the legend began.

Rayman's story begins back in the far off land of 1994, when Michel Ancel made some sketches of Rayman's character. Ubisoft decided to fund Ancel's project and development began on the Super Nintendo. When CDs became all the rage, development was changed from the Super Nintendo to CD based systems like the Atari Jaguar and the PlayStation. The CD format led to Rayman's graphics to have over 65000 colors and run character animations at a hefty 60 FPS with CD quality music and sound effects, so switching to CDs wasn't wasted. Rayman was released in 1995 to critical acclaim
due to its graphics and gameplay, winning awards for the presentation as a whole, even becoming the best selling PlayStation game in the UK, beating out the likes of Tomb Raider 2 and Gran Turismo. So Rayman was pretty popular before Rabbids went and ruined everything, but is the first Rayman adventure still worth experiencing?

The story takes place in Rayman's world, well duh. Here the people and nature live in peace with the Great Protoon maintaining peace and harmony in the world. One day the creativity named Mister Dark steals the Great Protoon, defeating its guardian, Betilla the Fairy in the process. The Electoons that gravitated around the Great Protoon lose their stability and scatter around the world. With Rayman's world unbalanced strange and hostile creatures appear capturing all the Electoons they can find, with no one to stop them. Except Rayman! Its up to Rayman to free the Electoons, find the Great Protoon, defeat Mister Dark, and restore peace to the world.

Rayman is a 2d platformer where your goal is to guide Rayman through a variety of colorful levels while defeating enemies and saving the Electoons. Rayman may be the hero of this world, but he can barely do anything at the beginning of the game. All he can do is run, jump, and make little noises with his face. By getting through levels, Betilla will grant Rayman powers like being able to punch, grab onto ledges, swing from certain things, and even glide. During levels, Rayman can collect tings which, when having 100, grant an extra life, and also grant access to bonus levels where you collect tings to get another extra life. Rayman starts with three hit points which can be increased by finding power ups in the level. They disappear along with all the tings when you die so watch out.

In order to make it to the last world, you need to find all of the Electoons, meaning you will have to backtrack in order to find them all with your new abilities. The end of each world contains a boss that you must defeat by punching them in the face. Speaking of punching, one problem with Rayman's otherwise flawless controls is that you can't really influence where the fist will go. It will only go straight forward, then come back to Rayman. You can't punch while ducking either, so enemies that are shorter than you are missed. Also, and I'm glad time has forgotten about this, knockback. When Rayman is hit by anything, he will jump back. In early levels this is fine, but as soon as you enter world 2, you'll be knocked into pits and instant death spikes constantly. In fact, that's another problem, the difficulty spike. Now world 1 is nice and comfortable, with plenty of space and let's you get used to the game. As soon as you get to world 2 however the levels get much longer, and MUCH harder, with areas with enemies you can't hit dangling over bottomless pits. On area in the first level of world 2 comes to mind, where there are four moving circles that are moving clockwise that are over spikes that instantly kill you. Halfway through the ride there's a flying enemy that will hit you, knocking you into the spikes killing you, which you couldn't hit because of the punching controls. I understand that a game should get progressively harder, or should start hard if its in the genre, but you can't start easy and get really hard in one fell swoop! That's like if I was playing Kirby and then suddenly Touhou popped out of the sky and fired 5372 bullets at the same time.

Now one thing that stays good throughout all of Rayman is its presentation. The graphic look beautiful, running at 60 FPS with nice little foreground events and little animations on things like flowers and water making this world feel alive. The music as well is also great with catchy level tunes that stick with players. Also, that tune that plays every time you clear a segment of the level is so catchy. I'm just saying.

Now, Rayman is available on many systems, such as the PlayStation 1, 3, Portable, GameBoy Advance, and even DSiware, but should you still play it? That's a tough question, because while the game is fun, it is punishingly difficult very early on, and that can alienate players. Diligent players however, will find a fun, pretty, and rewarding platformer. Just be ready for a challenge, because there are some parts that can put even the original Mega Man to shame.

The Silent Protagonist wonders why Mister Dark bothered to steal the Great Protoon when the only ones in his way are Betilla, which he can easily defeat and the Electoons which can't do much of anything.