Rayman Origins is a classic
2D platformer that does not try to do anything special and just focuses on its
core gameplay element – platforming. This is ideal as it means that you get a
solid gaming experience that, if you like platformers, offers you more of the
same gameplay at increasing difficulties. That’s not to say it is without its
flaws though.
The story follows Rayman and his friends as they go about trying to
save some pink things from an evil thing or something like that. The storyline
is frankly bizarre and occasionally crude in its delivery. You free princesses
as you go and each of them grants you an extension to your abilities such as
being able to punch things and run up walls. However, there is no reason at all
for all of these ladies to have ample cleavage on display at all times they are
present… yet they do, apparently trying to appeal to a teenage boy fantasy
crossed with anime.
Gameplay wise, while the control scheme is sensible, there are many
mechanics that are either designed to deliberately irritate the player, or they
are just poorly designed. Firstly, there’s Rayman’s speed of movement which is…
changeable if I’m being polite about it. Using the run and jump buttons at the
same time leads to Rayman slowing down and jumping high some of the time, but
doing a longer shorter jump some of time. When this appears to be changeable at
the drop of the hat, it becomes frustrating, especially when you are doing
timed runs where you can’t die.
The jumping function by itself is frustrating to say the least for the
exact same reason as the running. The press of the button will result in a
massive change in speed if it’s not timed to perfection and again this becomes
severely problematic when doing timed runs, especially when going after the
skull teeth.
All that said though, the only reason I noticed and had a problem with
these things was due to my striving to 100% the game – playing it casually,
most players wouldn’t likely notice.
Moving on to the graphics, it doesn’t do a lot wrong and keeps a
constant whimsical theme throughout, if not a little obnoxious at times
(princesses with massive tits). The music is severely divisive though. Rayman
is a game where you have to be invested in the game play to do well, which
means full concentration on what’s going on. Even though that’s the case I
could still notice that the music would not be appealing to many as there are
lots of repetitive, annoying and babyish noises throughout.
Achievements – 1,000 Points – 36
Achievements
Only five achievements are earned naturally through playing the game
but there will be a few others that will naturally unlock through playing and
if they don’t, they are easy to target. Outside of this the achievements can be
categorised into two distinctive areas – miscellaneous crap and collecting
everything.
Firstly, the miscellaneaous crap. Certain levels have achievements tied
to them where you have to perform certain actions like killing all of a
specific type of enemy. The most frustrating one of these, for me anyway, was
for jumping into piranha-infested water and jumping out again before being
eaten. This became ridiculous quite quickly as I constantly died. It’s also one
of those ones where watching a video won’t help in the slightest as it will
show you what to do but trying to recreate it feels luck based. And coupled
with the jumping control issues mentioned above, this just adds to the
frustration.
As for collecting everything, thankfully you don’t actually need to do
everything. You do need to find all the hidden cages and collect the lum targets
to complete each medallion but you don’t need the lum medals and this is
massive let off as this would have made it a difficult completion. Getting a
lum medal essentially means clearing the level gathering everything and lums
appear from many sources and disappear if you don’t collect them fast enough.
You also need to get all the skull teeth, which is a requirement to
beat the end game levels, and complete the speed trophies in each level. This
last one offered a bit of challenge in some levels – again, due to the running
and jumping issues mentioned above, however these are nowhere near as tough as
the ones in Legends.
Downloadable Content – N/A
Despite some of my negative comments, I actually had fun playing Rayman
Origins and it felt very satisfying to complete it. Depending on your platforming skill, it takes
around 15 hours to get all the achievements and that’s 15 hours well spent.
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