The team at Ubisoft Montpellier demonstrates a masterful grasp of flow. While Legends is mechanically a simple 2D platformer - you run, jump and hit things - there's a great deal of variety designed around that core. It behooves you to explore each level for more, since you need copious amounts to progress. Some are in plain sight, some are hidden, and still others are tucked away and require you to master short puzzle sections to nab them. In every stage - including boss battles - you need to collect lums and find and rescue teensies. There are five main worlds here, spanning storybook castles, a land inspired by a manic Day of the Dead party, an undersea world that recalls a cartoon version of BioShock’s Rapture and more.Įach world has a number of regular stages, a boss fight, and a "musical" stage, which plays like a race set to music. The premise is nothing more than an excuse to throw dozens of intricately designed 2D courses at you, and that serves fine.
There isn't much of a story - Rayman and friends ("heroes" in Rayman parlance) must save adorable characters called "teensies" from an army of. With impressive variety, excellent stage design and gorgeous art, Legends is sure-footed, only stumbling when its considerable challenge level spikes out of control. These levels are a reward for conquering the boss level at the end of each world, and they involve an elongated sprint whereby every crucial punch, jump or slide is performed in time with a modified musical classic.The sequel to 2011's franchise re-imagining, Rayman Origins, Rayman Legends proves developer Ubisoft Montpellier's mastery of the genre.
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It’s almost like learning a musical score, something that is possibly alluded to in a series of bespoke musical levels where actions respond in sound.
There are some levels where you practically have to give yourself a pep talk beforehand, verbalising the route ahead - "jump off the doughnut, dodge the centipede, leap over the toad, don’t balls it up like the previous 30 times" - and it is essentially rote-learning, incrementally working out what you do next. It most definitely isn't exclusively for kids - if anything the little ones won't get very far at all.
It's a blister-inducing white knuckle ride in which life or death hinges on split second decisions, thanks to the perennial encroachment of fire, water, quicksand, time, dragon, giant (really giant) fish, or other bodily threat.įor those whose gaming skills have been diminished by years of playing glorified movies, it’s a sharp wake-up call, and one that instigates no shortage of foul and abusive language that is somewhat at odds with the game’s cartoonish graphics, and 7+ rating. In keeping with its retro-stylings, Rayman Legends is what is known in the trade as bastard-hard. It’s a gleefully old school approach, and a reminder of when games were more than a joyless trudge through a grey and brown war zone. Just like Origins, Rayman Legends keeps its all-important gameplay intact: a finely honed classical approach that unashamedly encompasses all the facets of the traditional platformer, a throwback to a time when that wasn’t a dirty word. There’s a largely non-linear structure in place, enabling you to visit the worlds at your leisure, a broad church that encompasses all points from the Mexican Day of the Dead festival to "20,000 Lums Under The Sea" - Lums, of course, being the luminous collectibles that make up the game’s currency. Absolute guff, of course, but reason if reason were needed for Rayman and his cohorts to restore order to the universe via the time-honoured method of jumping, gliding, sliding, swimming, punching and kicking their way through a series of highly imaginative fantasy worlds.
Story boreyįor what it’s worth, there is some kind of back-story, the crux of which is that our heroes have taken a much-needed 100-year kip, thus enabling nightmares to infiltrate the Glade of Dreams. In fact, a large chunk of Origins is included as a bonus, part of an inordinately generous package that simply keeps on giving, encompassing numerous unlockable levels, a vast array of characters, and new content in the form of weekly and daily challenges.ĭoes the game play as generously as its content? We've been battling our way through Rayman Legends to find out. To the untrained (or even trained) eye, Rayman Legends is the same game. Too French? Whatever the criticisms aimed at the Rayman series over the years, they were swatted aside by 2011’s excellent Rayman Origins, a defiantly traditional 2D platform game that saw the limbless character celebrate his 16th birthday by blossoming from an awkward Gallic Aldi-Mario into a genuine gaming icon.
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