I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ adored Rayman Legends. As much as I went into the experience ready to nit-pick all the little ways in which it’s different or worse than 2010’s Origins, I went out with nothing but positive feelings about it. That’s not to say that it does everything just as well as Origins, or that it’s better than that game was; Legends is very clearly the kind of sequel a company puts out when the original was an unexpected success, with all the weird and sometimes out-of-place influence of Ubisoft’s more service-driven approach to games very prominently present, but it’s ultimately a game with enough fresh ideas that it’s a distinct experience from its predecessor.

Rather than featuring the traditional platformer overworld in which levels have to be completed in sequential order, Rayman Legends features the various worlds as themed paintings, each containing individual levels that are distinctly separate from one another. What this means is that whilst there’s a clear ‘proper order’ to play them in, you’re free to sample other worlds before completing the previous one. This is great for those who’re struggling on a level and want to take a break to try something different, but no so much for the overall pacing and difficulty curve of the game. Being allowed to dip your toes into the final world before you’ve finished the rest means that the levels don’t seem to increase in difficulty as you progress in the way most games do, and each world individually features super hard levels sprinkled semi-evenly amongst the other, more kid-friendly ones. Overall, though, it’s a much easier game than Origins, and it’s clear that the super tough platformer tradition that’s upheld in some of the predecessors timed challenges has been largely eschewed here in favour of catering to the new mechanics.

Such mechanics include ‘Murphy’, a sidekick character that activates levers and cuts ropes at the press of a button. At best, switching around platforms on the fly worked really well and didn’t halt the flow of the platforming, but at worst, it did exactly that, forcing you to stop completely and time your button presses to make him ‘draw’ platforms or cut away parts of the environment. Obviously a shoddily-ported touch screen gimmick for a game that narrowly escaped the painful death of being a Wii U exclusive, but one that’s used sparingly enough that it’s never a dealbreaker. As far as new additions go, we’ve also been graced with a weird and kind of perplexing set of rhythm-based levels in which jumps and attacks need to be timed to the beats of the soundtrack. It’s kind of cool, but after completing each there’s little incentive to go back, since you never feel like you’re really playing a game during these levels. Yes, I’m in direct control of my character, but if I make any slight deviation from the timing and execution of each move I’m dead and have to restart from a checkpoint, so why not just watch them on YouTube and save myself the bother of having to retry multiple times?

As novel as it is to run and jump to the beats of a mariachi cover of Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger’, the linearity and lack of meaningful player control speaks to the game’s biggest issue: in the bulk of the levels, you’re not really exploring like you did in Origins. There are some highlights where little treasures are hidden off the beaten path, but for the most part I found myself getting 100% of levels’ collectibles on my first run through, and had no trouble acquiring everything in the game within the 20-odd hours I played. Legends comes up short as far as additional content go, too - once you’ve finished every level with every collectible you’re offered an additional rhythm level plus ‘8-bit’ versions of the others seemingly designed by a person who doesn’t really know what 8-bit means and instead elected to slash the resolution and add a variety of exciting video editing filters to make it difficult to see. My sanity almost broke on the remix of the ‘Eye of the Tiger’ level I mentioned earlier because there’s a section where the player is shrunk down to jump across flying snakes - a totally normal segment in the original made excruciating by the fact that the player character is reduced to a scant couple of pixels in this version.

This is what passes for endgame content in Rayman Legends. Lazily hacked-together remixes of the least interesting parts of the game, coupled with an assortment of highlights from Rayman Origins ported over to the newer, softer graphical style and locked behind a loot box system. It’s a problem not because games have an obligation to hold our attention for hundreds of hours on end, but because what’s here is so good that I desperately wanted more, so much so that I even gave the daily challenges a go; challenges that rotate between being fun little marathons through altered sections of other levels to weird high-speed collectathons where you race directly against other players’ ghosts. These were fun, and I checked in for about seven days in a row before they started to repeat themselves.

The takeaway is simply that once you’re finished with Rayman Legends, you’re finished. Much of what’s written here might seem like an irredeemable condemnation of this game, but what I’m loathe to repeat is that at its core, Legends is good in all the same way Origins was spectacular. Tight, smoothly realised controls, mind-bogglingly unique level design and some of the best visuals and audio to come out of a 2D platformer. What I’m saying is, if you’re just buying one Rayman title, make it Origins, then buy Legends once you’ve finished Origins and come to the conclusion that more Origins is far more important to you than the food for your young children that you may have otherwise spent the money on.

I fucking adored [i]Rayman Legends[/i]. As much as I went into the experience ready to nit-pick all the little ways in which it’s different or worse than 2010’s [i]Origins[/i], I went out with nothing but positive feelings about it. That’s not to say that it does everything just as well as [i]Origins[/i], or that it’s better than that game was; [i]Legends[/i] is very clearly the kind of sequel a company puts out when the original was an unexpected success, with all the weird and sometimes out-of-place influence of Ubisoft’s more service-driven approach to games very prominently present, but it’s ultimately a game with enough fresh ideas that it’s a distinct experience from its predecessor. Rather than featuring the traditional platformer overworld in which levels have to be completed in sequential order, [i]Rayman Legends[/i] features the various worlds as themed paintings, each containing individual levels that are distinctly separate from one another. What this means is that whilst there’s a clear ‘proper order’ to play them in, you’re free to sample other worlds before completing the previous one. This is great for those who’re struggling on a level and want to take a break to try something different, but no so much for the overall pacing and difficulty curve of the game. Being allowed to dip your toes into the final world before you’ve finished the rest means that the levels don’t seem to increase in difficulty as you progress in the way most games do, and each world individually features super hard levels sprinkled semi-evenly amongst the other, more kid-friendly ones. Overall, though, it’s a much easier game than [i]Origins[/i], and it’s clear that the super tough platformer tradition that’s upheld in some of the predecessors timed challenges has been largely eschewed here in favour of catering to the new mechanics. Such mechanics include ‘Murphy’, a sidekick character that activates levers and cuts ropes at the press of a button. At best, switching around platforms on the fly worked really well and didn’t halt the flow of the platforming, but at worst, it did exactly that, forcing you to stop completely and time your button presses to make him ‘draw’ platforms or cut away parts of the environment. Obviously a shoddily-ported touch screen gimmick for a game that narrowly escaped the painful death of being a Wii U exclusive, but one that’s used sparingly enough that it’s never a dealbreaker. As far as new additions go, we’ve also been graced with a weird and kind of perplexing set of rhythm-based levels in which jumps and attacks need to be timed to the beats of the soundtrack. It’s kind of cool, but after completing each there’s little incentive to go back, since you never feel like you’re really playing a game during these levels. Yes, I’m in direct control of my character, but if I make any slight deviation from the timing and execution of each move I’m dead and have to restart from a checkpoint, so why not just watch them on YouTube and save myself the bother of having to retry multiple times? As novel as it is to run and jump to the beats of a mariachi cover of Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger’, the linearity and lack of meaningful player control speaks to the game’s biggest issue: in the bulk of the levels, you’re not really exploring like you did in [i]Origins[/i]. There are some highlights where little treasures are hidden off the beaten path, but for the most part I found myself getting 100% of levels’ collectibles on my first run through, and had no trouble acquiring everything in the game within the 20-odd hours I played. [i]Legends[/i] comes up short as far as additional content go, too - once you’ve finished every level with every collectible you’re offered an additional rhythm level plus ‘8-bit’ versions of the others seemingly designed by a person who doesn’t really know what 8-bit means and instead elected to slash the resolution and add a variety of exciting video editing filters to make it difficult to see. My sanity almost broke on the remix of the ‘Eye of the Tiger’ level I mentioned earlier because there’s a section where the player is shrunk down to jump across flying snakes - a totally normal segment in the original made excruciating by the fact that the player character is reduced to a scant couple of pixels in this version. This is what passes for endgame content in [i]Rayman Legends[/i]. Lazily hacked-together remixes of the least interesting parts of the game, coupled with an assortment of highlights from [i]Rayman Origins[/i] ported over to the newer, softer graphical style and locked behind a loot box system. It’s a problem not because games have an obligation to hold our attention for hundreds of hours on end, but because what’s here is so good that I desperately wanted more, so much so that I even gave the daily challenges a go; challenges that rotate between being fun little marathons through altered sections of other levels to weird high-speed collectathons where you race directly against other players’ ghosts. These were fun, and I checked in for about seven days in a row before they started to repeat themselves. The takeaway is simply that once you’re finished with [i]Rayman Legends[/i], you’re finished. Much of what’s written here might seem like an irredeemable condemnation of this game, but what I’m loathe to repeat is that at its core, Legends is good in all the same way [i]Origins[/i] was spectacular. Tight, smoothly realised controls, mind-bogglingly unique level design and some of the best visuals and audio to come out of a 2D platformer. What I’m saying is, if you’re just buying one [i]Rayman[/i] title, make it [i]Origins[/i], then buy [i]Legends[/i] once you’ve finished [i]Origins[/i] and come to the conclusion that more [i]Origins[/i] is far more important to you than the food for your young children that you may have otherwise spent the money on.