Rayman Origins Review

Rayman Origins is a 2D sidescroller by Ubisoft Montpellier. In it you play as Rayman, an armless, legless, but not footless or hand-less, man-thing, who wears a hoodie and sneakers, OR you play as one of his three friends: a frog, or one of the twin "teensies." Your mission (in the game) is to save the world from the bad guys who became bad because you woke them up with your snoring. Does it make any sense? Yes, for snoring is evil. But later on the narrative doesn't make sense. And who cares? THE STORY DOESN'T MATTER.

[Disclaimer Thingy: I played the game by myself (i.e. not with another living thing, dead ones yes). The game offers up to four-player, local co-op, and many game critics celebrate this fact at parties.]

As for my overall opinion of the singleplayer experience: Is my answer meh? Yeah. Meh sounds about right. Which once again puts me in opposition to the professional game critics of the world, although there is a lot of good in the game.

For one thing: it looks beautiful. In fact, it might be the prettiest 2D game ever made. Think of lava levels, storm clouds levels, flying robot world levels, ice levels, desert levels, jungle levels, and swimming levels, imagine them done in paint (and painted by professionals and not by kindergartners), played in 1080p at 60 frames per second. Or you can just click on this hyperlink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_fz4m74nJw

Are the level themes cliches? Yes. But although the level themes are cliches, what Ubisoft fills them with are not. There are giant didgeridoos you can fly through, there are flying spinal cords that make a different sound per bone. You will fly a lot on a mosquito that fires phasers and sucks in enemies. There are undead safari adventurers. And the faires you must save are dressed like pornstars and have boobies that jiggle.

Yes, there are indeed at least a couple reasons to get the game. It is one of the almost charming videogames of our century. It has a light sense of humor and never seems obscene, at least not to me, which means that it is probably obscene; but note that it's rated E10+, so I am right, which makes everyone else wrong...

Moving on to the sound: The sound in the game is filled with cliches, too, but also does it in a fresh way. It is filled with cartoon explosions and martial arts movie punches and a fake language in which most words end in "aye." And the music covers various genres -- Jazz and Asian Mountain Monk and Australian and Sleepy (I'm not a music expert). And, in short, the presentation of the game is only marred by the disco music that you're exposed to when you collect enough "electoons" in any of the levels. Said terrible music is played in a three second loop every time you collect enough "lumes (AKA sonic rings)."

Now the volta of this review: Yes. The presentation is great; but we don't buy games just for presentation (at least I like to think we don't). And unfortunately for Ubisoft and its players, Rayman Origin's game part of the game is its bad point: I find that the first half of the game is too easy and that the second half of the game is too annoying, making the whole feel like a chore.

The basic gameplay mechanics, though, are very good. You are given the ability to slow your fall and sometimes fly; you're given the ability to swim without oxygen, and the ability to run up curved walls, and something else. Fairy boobies! Rescue a fairy (you must) and you'll be rewarded one of those abilities, giving you time to master the previous one you just learned. My mechanics quibbles center around: not being able to jump while in the middle of a run-attack; and also never having a use for a fully powered-up punch. The Popeye the Sailor Man punch certainly looks more powerful and reaches out farther, but I never needed to hit anything so far away nor with so much power. And one more quibble: probably the lamest mechanics issue occurs when you think you should be able to grab onto a ledge or a platform -- Rayman's done it so many times before -- and then he doesn't and dies. (It's just these weird ledges or platforms that you can be on -- walk on, run on, etc. -- but you can't grab onto. But this issue occurs few times.

Again, the real problems with the game part of the game is that the first half of it is too easy --unless you're trying to speed through the levels to win the trophies -- and that the second half of the game is too infuriating.

Why is it infuriating? Well, a lot of the last half of the game requires you to move quickly through levels or die. It seems that Ubisoft France failed to realize that human beings are incapable of reacting to things when the distance between the person and the thing closes too fast. (This is elementary driving school knowledge) You'll be running at 60mph, and then a bunch of stuff will appear in roughly the direction you're running, moving more or less in your direction at up to 30mph (AKA 90 mph). You won't have enough time to react, and you'll die. And it gets really annoying when you die far away from the previous respawn point, making it so you start up to a minute behind the point of death. And to add insult to irritation, after dying a bunch of times in the same spot, the screen turns black, and a stupid-looking fly tells you "Yikes! This place is really dangerous!' Do you want to STAY here?" And offers you to "stay" or "leave."

I sweared a lot playing this game.

And that's really all that needs to be said, minus the note that says "I liked the first (jungle) levels." Therefore, if I had to rate the singleplayer experience based on how enjoyable it was, I'd give it a 6.1923801/10.

[Rayman Origins is available for XBOX 360, PS3, and Nintendo Wii (the last one if you don't want it in 1080p); it will soon be out on PC. At this time it can be purchased for around $30.00 U.S. on Amazon.com]

[Tips: Play it with a friend, or you're likely to suffer instead of enjoy. And play as a character who looks best to you, because mechanically they're all the same; I think that the frog is better at grabbing stuff and hitting things and getting hit due to his large size, while the teensies are the opposite, and Rayman's somewhere in between. Also, look online to find out how many electoons you need for the "rewards" you want. You will probably only want enough electoons to get the skull teeth, which lead to the annoying-but-thankfully-lume-less Undead World]