Call me crazy, but I had assumed that a sequel was to improve upon and beat out the original game. Not be a carbon copy.

Rayman Origins was a such a bad ass platformer that I couldn’t resist a sequel. One of the reasons I got a PS3 was to get a hold of it. And…well…. just like Soul Calibur 4, it’s a little dissappointing.

It goes without saying that it is still a good game and it is fun in many of it’s aspects, even the scripted nonsense is good what with syncing everything up to music, but overall, it’s over before you can really get to the meat of the game.

Aesthetically, it is more pleasing to the eyes than was the first game, but there is very little details in what you’re doing in these worlds beyond running through them. You’re given an intro about nightmares destroying the world and Rayman and the gang wakes up to fight them all. That’s even more bare bones than the first game. At least you have an idea of needing to save sexy ass fairies. Here, you’re just sending several magician Teensies to the moon to get poked in the ass by little devil imps…. or something. I suppose Barbara and her sisters are supposed to replace the fairies, but the only real effect is giving you extra skins (hehe) of the same bitch to play. It has no effect on your progress beyond rescuing some teensies to unlock more worlds.

Though, one of them reminds me of Marina Lightyears from Mischief Makers, so I’ll let them off the hook for now. Plus, she’s giving someone a free peep show behind her as of this moment.

One of the more obnoxious “features” implemented in this game is fucking Murfy.

Yeah… the fly no one likes.

He basically plays the role of the forced “puzzle platformer helping buddy” in that you need to manually activate his abilities in order to progress through levels. He can bring you platforms, obscure spotlights…. pretty much what Tails is doing for the coop levels of Sonic’s Lost Mind, or NSMBU’s touch screen “helper” bullshit, especially as I’ve heard the Wii U version has this guy tailored made for that shit.

Yeah, that’s all he does in this game is become a Neo-Nintendo gimmick.

That said, why do PS360 owners have to put up with these levels? It’s not bad for the first 3 worlds, but I’ve been spoiled by the puzzle-free nature of the first game. Then they go the LittleBIGPlanet route and assume “gameplay is intricate bullshit!” Nothing the Murfy levels do are even clever or fun, especially since the last 2 worlds are scripted nonsense in that you have to make a mad dash through the level. It’s FRUSTRATING AS FUCK that while you’re doing your scripted obstacle course, you also have to activate Murfy to open paths for you. You’re literally using 4 buttons here. It’s not intuitive or even partial to one’s enjoyment. It’s just… fucking…awful. Praise Amma for unlimited lives because these Murfy levels were designed to just keep killing me. And they’re fucking everywhere in this game. Learn to hate that green bastard’s smile. You will never escape it.

Levels like this where you’re being chased are made worse by Murfy’s necessitous addition.

Other than that, it’s pretty much the same exact game as the last one. Even the worlds themselves are carbon copies. You get a desert, you get a water world, you get a “heaven and hell” stage, you get a food land where you can shrink down and traverse apples…. and shit (this time, you can enter the foods themselves), it’s literally a game that could’ve been DLC. It’s not as bad as the NSMB games where the content is purposefully stagnated by Nintendo themselves, but you can smell how lazy this game came off in the aesthetics content. Infact, content period is nonsensical. You’re just going through worlds doing the usual ass kicking. If this was supposed to be some “throwback” to previous games pre-SNES, it’s ruined by the fact that there’s an intro with settings and “princesses” to rescue without any clarification of what and why. If Barbara and her…semi-sexy sisters are important to save, why are they treated more like secret levels and the bitches I end up saving from the Magician directly are just female teensies? What is the importance of these teensies, btw? And why are they treated like monkeys from Time Splitters (Obsessively, that is).

Kill em. I don’t care about these smurf lookin fuckers anyway, I got so many of them unlocked, I can’t pull myself to care.

Saving teensies is there as part of the arbitrary fetch quests to unlock costumes and remixed levels from the first game (yeah, you can literally tell how un-different the sequel is just by playing the scratch offs). The extra hidden content is not worth it. Most of them are gained by going into the hardcore “challenge stages” where obnoxious requisites are placed for you to show how hardcore you really are by tackling these challenges for the petty achievement of saying you can complete these levels in the fastest times. And unfortunately, because PS3’s are more fragile than Wii’s, hacking is too risky to say “fuck this shit, I want my content now”. And they want 700 of these blue bastards to get the final hidden character which is probably another stupid Teensie anyway.

And yet, it’s still good.

Despite it’s glaring flaws, it’s still the best damn game I’ve played on this console with coop. It’s nice to find a multiplayer game that treats Player 2 like a human being and not an after thought. There’s so many PS3 games that are only tailored made for Player 1 because of the assumption that gamers are lonely freaks who play online all day. Rayman Legends has no online and focuses on “normal people” with actual friends. Good. Ubisoft has a brain or 2.

All that said, I would probably just find a used copy or trade in shitty games like Soul Calibur 5/TTT2/NG3RE to bring the price down as much as possible. It’s a good…35-40 dollar game at best. It’s too short, and the replay value is steeped in those fucking fetch quests that developers somehow equate to fun factor. That shit is simply not fun! Especially given that the unlockables are costumes like it really fucking matters and harder levels. That’s not replay value to me, mother fuckers! That’s you trying to appease the hardcore crowd. A platformer, by nature, is not a hardcore game. It should not try to be one.

Rayman Legends is more spectacle than it is everything else. And while that’s not entirely a bad thing, unlike Sonic, this game feels empty and short. I’d say get it anyway because it’s at least fun, but expect frustration from the Murfy levels.