Rayman Legends Review

“How do games journalists do it?” I wonder trying to think up a way to write a video game review. How do they write game reviews? Writing game reviews are a lot harder then they seem. Well writing it in an interesting and entertaining way to be more precise. There are much more obstacles than writing a review for a movie. For one, if your stuck reviewing a bad movie you only have to sit through it for a maximum of 3 hours while a bad game may take days. Games are also an interactive medium so it’s more of an experience than a movie. It’s like describing why riding a roller coaster is fun. You just explain what the experience is like rather than critique certain aspects of the experience. I’ve had many difficulties in making game reviews, which is why I’ve only ever put out a handful and only one of them I actually found kind of interesting. I’ve even cancelled a review for “The Last of Us” cause it didn’t fit my standards. So anyway, here’s my best attempt at a game review in a while and it’s for Rayman Legends, a game which I feel deserves more public attention then your Ass Creeds or your CoDs.

So the story, um, from what I can gather from the opening cutscenes, some bearded guy has nightmares and unleashes monsters all over the world and it’s up to our “legendary” heroes to save the day. Please note the use of the word legendary to justify why the game is called Rayman “Legends”. Wait, wasn’t that basically the plot of the previous game? Well anyway, story isn’t really the strong suit of the game but the lack of any story makes more sense in this game then in the previous game, which in my opinion could have used more story, especially since it had the title of “Origins.” It’s like if the movie Batman Begins was more of an origin story for the Joker like the Tim Burton film.

So that brings me to a point where I have to compare the game to its predecessor, Rayman Origins, which was one of my favorite games of the year it released. When that game came out I thought there was no way that Ubisoft could top it. Then I saw the first trailer and boy was I wrong.

The first one had such great art direction with its bright colours and fluid animation. The second game takes that and adds more effects such as lighting, shadows etc. It’s like a really great deviantart artist figuring out Photoshop. When I saw the first trailer, I was a little cautious about the use of 3D models for some enemies cause in my opinion, using cel-shaded 3D models in 2D animated games or TV shows feels like cheating. But it’s got some darn good cel-shading.

It improves so many things of the original like getting rid of those damn awful mosquito levels. Man I hated those. And instead of just remaking the last game with different wallpaper masquerading as new levels, it actually has some new ideas. Probably my favorite themed level is the spy level where you have to stealth through a level avoiding lights and whatnot and sabotaging the security systems.

So now this review brings me to the point to where I say that no, this game is not better than Rayman Origins. Why? Well they got rid of those nymphs from all the levels and replaced them with warrior princesses. I can’t quite put my finger on why I liked the previous game’s nymphs so much. Sure the warrior princesses have the same “appeal” but there’s just something about those nymphs. Maybe if I stare at fanart of the nymphs long enough I’ll figure it out.

Anyway, sexy fairies aside, Rayman Legends has some great ideas and bits but it feels like they ran out of them when they tried to cram in all the Wii U features that aren’t available in the PS3 version. For one, the game is too short. I managed to finish the main “story” in less than 10 hours when compared to Rayman Origins which had much more levels and all of them didn’t feel padded. You can tell they ran out ideas when there’s one section of the game dedicated to “remixes” of the previous game. The Origins levels don’t even feel like they were changed to a significant degree. Sure you can get away with remixing a few levels but Legends just goes too far with it. Heck even Sonic Generations remixed less levels than this game. It feels like they could have spent the time on these Origins levels making new levels. If I wanted to play the old levels, I would pop in my copy of Rayman Origins. It’s not like the game came out ten years ago. And if your going to have the old levels, you should have kept those singing lums. Man, those guys really brightened up my day.

On it’s own, Rayman Legends feels like the best example of what I would call a modern 2D platformer.  These are games that are 2D and play like classic platformers without it feeling like it has to copy the style of those old games or tack on outdated game mechanics like lives and continues. These games even put in features that modern 3D games put in like set pieces that would be home in other games like Uncharted or Call of Duty. Other games like Super Meatboy and splosionman also come into this category for me. It combines the best of new school and old school and is such a blast to play.