Rayman Legends

Rayman Legends itself is a good game, not as good as Rayman Origins but a good game.

However on PC you get only one safe file unlike the console ports. I love to play Rayman with my brothers so I was very disappointed when I realized we cant each play on their own. I did not refund the game but I decided to emu**** the PS3 port that lets to create as many saves as you want.

I dont blame the developers and I got the game on sale but I still felt pretty ripped off that this wasn't mentioned in reviews or anywhere else.

TLDR. uplay sucks and Ubisoft sucks I recommend that if you can don't buy the game on PC if you plan on sharing the game.

Great game with lots of content. Tons of levels and things to do and work towards. I love the overworld and all the different levels you can play, especially the music-based levels. It's not without its flaws, but when it plays well it plays well. Great time overall, and a solid game all around

My first exposure to Rayman was in the late 90s when my parents got me the original game for PS1 and it was hard and it took me over a year of playing it on and off to finally get past the first areas. I beat the game and played through it a few times as a kid, actually it was probably behind Crash Bandicoot, Gex, and Spyro the Dragon as my favorite childhood game. I just loved the design and it was difficult but addicting and I liked Mr. Dark as a villain. Looking back the original Rayman may not have aged as well as my childhood memories woudl fool me to believe, but it still is a game I look fondly back on playing as a kid.

Outside of that though I never really cared for the series. I completely ignored the Rayman sequels and only had that terrible Rayman Rush cash grab game. I remember in college a friend told me how much he loved Rayman 2 and I couldn't relate since I only played the first game. I knew there were other Rayman games on PS3 but I honestly didn't know much about what they were, I thought maybe they were co-op focused games that were dumbed down or simplistic, I had no clue, Rayman is something that hadn't meant anything to me since the early 2000s and I thought the series was bad.

I really had no interest in checking those newer Rayman games out, despite hearing they were decent games and to be honest looking back, it was a little close minded of me, I guess I just had such fond memories of the first game and these new ones just looked so different that I never gave them a chance. Well just last week I finally decided to check this out since its the highest rated of the Rayman's and I was able to check it out from my library.

Rayman Legends is a lot different than the older games, in this you can run fast and there is more heavy emphasis and wall jumping and levels are more streamlined and designed to run through easily. There are still collectibles and hidden areas in the levels and what I like best about Legends is the variety. There are different kinds of levels, the normal platforming levels, the chase levels, the boss levels, music levels, and there are 6 different Worlds each with there own theme and that have their own set of enemies and gimmicks.

That's really what makes Legends good, the variety, sure there is some repetition, each World has a chase level, a boss stage, a music stage, and some of the platforming stages do feel slightly recycled, but for the most part each World feels unique and the levels mostly have their own identitiy and stand out.

The main reason though I decided to give Rayman Legends a 4 over a 3.5 is simply due to the massive amount of content. The game has roughly 80 levels each that have collectibles inside, on top of that there are daily challenges you can compete with other players from online, a soccer mini game for co-op, tons of skins for the 4 different characters you can play as, and 40 levels that were redone from Rayman Origins, which is amazing that they even bothered to bring them back for this game, its almost like 2 games in one in a way.

The game is pretty challenging, the hardest levels being the time trials where you have to reach the end of the stage in 40 seconds to rescue the guys. You can also unlock skins for the viking girl through unlockable stages within each World. Its a bit weird though since she's sort of sexualized and feels out of place in this game, but honestly I heard it was worse in Origins but it just feels so weird having sexy characters with cleavage in a series like Rayman. The final 2 World's have some really challenging levels, especially the time trials, which will have you really frustrated. But the final World is a mixed bag.

There are music stages which are among the best stages. You basicall platform and run through the stage to the beat of a song, some of which include Black Betty and Eye of the Tiger and these stages are super fun and easily the most well-designed stages in the game. Now the last World you replay all 6 of these stages but the catch is you play them in a pixelated 8-bit World. Now this on its own sounds annoying, but the worst part is the game will try to mess you up, the screen will get distorted and have static cover the whole screen, the screen will become so pixelated you can barely make out where your character is, and it just takes the fun out of these stages, and the worst part is if you die you have to restart these stages from the start. Since this is the final World and has the greatest requirements for unlocking you think these levels would be more interesting than replaying levels you already beat only with an annoying gimmic, I wish they did something like Super Meat Boy and gave you a new World with entirely new platforming levels and a new boss.

Rayman Legends also has co-op which is a great bonus since you can play with your friend, although it does make the game easier since if someone dies you can ressurect them. Overall, Legends is a good game that even surpasses the original games in terms of variety, design, and replay. There is just so much to do in this game from the collectibles, the challenges, or playing co-op with friends, and it presents enough challenge that it doesn't get boring, plus the levels are designed in a way that encourage you to find the fastest route through it. I'm just surprised by how much I enjoyed this and even I'll admit it has less flaws than the original games.

Rayman Legends is a beautifully-made platformer. Its art style is infallible, its music is brilliant, and its mechanics are well-implemented and fluid.

The game is also a bitch. Its levels are designed in a manner that you're required to both move quickly through them, as well as execute almost perfectly-timed button presses in order to navigate chains of obstacles in your way. This is exemplified by the many levels which push you forward from beginning to end, either with an advancing wall of death or a timer. As such, unless you have cat-like reflexes, you'll die repeatedly throughout the game and have to replay portions of each level over and over, essentially until you memorise a string of visual cues and button presses.

There's enjoyment to be had here, but infuriating trial and error isn't always my thing.

3.0 stars / Decent

Slightly meh side missions and a generally easier and less interesting campaign put this below Origins, but for pure flow and the simple joy of jumping on things, Legends is still oh so good. Riding a line between the beautiful perfectionism of a Tony Hawk and the explorative attitude of a collect-em-up, it occupies a unique space but pays acceptable tribute to the classics. The understated informative aspect of Origins also carries over, making it truly engrossing.

Rayman Origins isn't my favourite game of all time, but it might the one that comes closest to being genuinely perfect; there isn't a single thing I'd change about it, and I find it basically impossible to imagine a game in the same genre being better. So the question for Rayman Legends is one that's simple to ask but impossible to answer. How on Earth do you follow up perfection?

As much as we all want innovation and to experience something new, I would have happily accepted a game that was essentially identical to Origins, but I can absolutely understand why Ubisoft didn't do it (they were liable to have been criticized for it in the first wave of reviews if nothing else, and game publishers notoriously put far too much stress on Metacritic scores). So instead, there is an attempt to add new features and add twists to the existing mechanics.

Some of these additions are fine. The new online features, which include weekly challenges and leaderboards, is great for those who like that sort of thing and easily ignored for those who don't, and the wider variety of characters to play as is nice. However, it's hard not to feel at various points that the teams that developed this simply tried too hard to interfere with a great thing. The absolute nadir of this is the final level, where the screen flips upside down, splits into multiple identical sections, gets put through a wide angle lens, gets completely bitcrushed, goes black and white and gets completely covered with static.....all while you're flying through a level where literally any sort of mistake will see you die. It's absolutely fucking horrible, and I'm truly gobsmacked that anybody thought any of this was a good idea. The game simply cannot have been focus tested if this garbage slipped through the net into the final product. The final level of Rayman Origins was seriously difficult too, and finally completing it perfectly was honestly one of the most fulfilling experiences I can remember ever having in a game, so the developers are clearly capable of composing a final challenge that isn't a complete bag of wank. How and why, then, did they arrive at this?