A genre so entrenched in console gaming’s history should have, must have seen it all, but Rayman Legends’ resolution to generate (and then almost immediately jettison) new ideas demands to be entertained. With Legends closely following 2011’s Rayman Origins, it’s not unlike the relationship between Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2, where the latter embraced rules established by the former but also introduced a staggering number of diverse concepts all its own. Rayman Legends may even do it better.
Rayman Legends is organized a bit differently than its predecessor. Teensies, those blue banana-nosed darlings, have been kidnapped en masse and demand rescue. Most levels contain ten Teensies tucked inside, though some levels are structured a bit differently and only offer three. Each of Rayman Legends’ five distinct worlds is gated by a certain number of Teensies while admission to each level in a corresponding world requires you to make it to the end of the previous level. With over 700 Teensies to gather in the entirety of Rayman Legends, it’s nice that getting through the core game doesn’t require much of an investment in Teensy collection – but shaking out the odds and ends for completion sake can be, to put it lightly, hard as hell.
The core of Rayman Legends remains the same; jump over stuff, punch things, swim around obstacles, and seek out as many hidden goodies as possible along the way. You’ll also try not to die at the literal hands of malicious sentient clouds or through claustrophobic containment via an inexhaustible supply of chocolate cake. If Rayman’s brand of ludicrous context isn’t a known quantity in your neck of the woods, its penchant for the weird and the hilarious circumstance is in abundant supply. Ubisoft Montpelier’s designers understand humor in the way that Disney recognized most of Donald Duck’s appeal was in masking apparent profanity with hilarious quacking. Whether it’s toad monsters belting silly grog noises or googley eyes on otherwise threatening beasts, a goofy aesthetic is liberally applied to every feature of Rayman Legends’ artifice.
Ideas exhibited through Rayman Legends’ litany of levels are also in no short supply. One smaller level mirrored WarioWare in giving me 120 seconds to complete an entire series of single screen challenges. Later, I was trying to outrun a giant, screaming luchador while avoiding lava and the previously mentioned lethal chocolate cake. Rayman Legends is packed with impeccably crafted and masterfully executed levels, although simply making it to the end is almost secondary to exploring every facet of a level. Looking for obscured areas or dangerous circumstances typically results in another rescued Teensy, and thus motivation to look around every corner.
Remember how almost a quarter of Rayman Origins’ levels were horizontal scrolling shooters? Rayman Legends’ signature gimmick is a more clever idea; using the Wii U touchpad to manipulate objects in levels to allow safe passage for your AI or human buddy. Through the touchpad you’ll cut ropes to drop platforms, erase layers of cake for precise tunneling, move platforms up and down ping pong your buddy, block out troublesome spotlights, and use the gamepad’s gyroscope to twist and turn an on-screen maze. There’s a ton of different challenges inside these levels, and it’s kind of mind-blowing how few of them have been used in iOS platformers or other games attached to a touchscreen. As with the rest of Rayman Legends, these segments aren’t content to rest on their laurels. Just as soon as you’re used to tunneling through cake our guiding around a flying saucer you’ll never see it again; Rayman Legends has too much on its mind to stop and smell the roses.
Touchpad levels can be interpreted quite differently depending on your playing circumstance. If you’re playing Rayman Legends solo then Murfy is your default AI companion. This leaves you to focus on the touchscreen objectives while AI-controlled Murfy tries to make it through the levels. 90% of the time Murfy acted as I would have, but the remaining 10% was kind of infuriating. If there’s an out of the way area or obscured Teensy, trying to manipulate the environment in a way for Murfy to see it can be incredibly difficult. Furthermore, when an impatient Murfy would constantly jump in fire for no reason and completely ignore the path I made I wound up rage-quitting the game for a while. In the end it’s a bit like Lemmings in that you’re manipulating the environment for a person rather than with a person, and the sentiment isn’t too different from that Roger Rabbit cartoon. Playing these levels cooperatively with my wife provided an entirely different experience, one that required more communication and trial and error than either of us expected. In the end I didn’t mind either approach, both had their positives and negatives, which ensures any approach as a valid way to enjoy Rayman Legends.
And there’s so much of Rayman Legends to enjoy. Collecting 400 Teensies to open up the final collection of bonus levels took about eight hours, and I have no idea how many more will be required to get all 700. For starters there are two different types of “Invaded” levels; the first remixes an existing level and transitions it into a time attack challenge. The second type does the exact same thing but creates a Dark Rayman that follows your path to further complicate your life. Rayman Legends also includes forty unlockable levels straight from Rayman Origins, each adjusted to include a requisite number of hidden Teensies to discover and rescue. There’s also a separate challenge mode containing one-off levels to rank your skill, a ton of Heroes (different characters) to unlock, and even a bizarre room to house all of the creatures you’ll collect.
The dichotomy between Rayman Legends’ level of difficulty is also interesting. When playing with friends (it was only the two of us, but up to five are supported on Wii U), Rayman Legends seemed like a pure party game. We missed a bunch of Lums, didn’t take time to explore the nooks and crannies, and generally screwed up every thirty seconds. Thanks to the ability to almost instantly revive your pals, there’s virtually no penalty to a poor performance. It’s a great party game. Applied as a single player adventure, Rayman Legends seamlessly transitions into a furiously serious experience. I looked everywhere and got everything and restarted a sequence immediately if I saw that I missed something. It’s not uncommon for a game to play to both solo and cooperative crowds, but it’s really something for a game to do both with the same basic content.
Rayman Origins looked amazing. Rayman Legends looks better. 1080p and sixty frames-per-second are easily achieved, and beautiful artwork detailing everything from ancient Greece to an insanely constructed kitchen adds to its cartoon flavor. A careful use of 3D to bring enemies and objects in and out of the background is also nice, as is the careful yet goofy menace applied to enemies. Subtle percussive effects to demonstrate hilarious peril or surprise enemy placement are also in fully supply, as is Rayman’s now classic and infections music that runs the gamut from triumphantly uplifting to completely goofy. It’s also worth noting how damn happy the game seems to be, from the celebration music at the end of every level to the excited purple Lums to the silly smile on your extra-health heart, Rayman Legends feels like a joyous occasion.
The star of the show, some of the best moments not only in Rayman Legends but also the genre as a whole, is the game’s handful of music-based levels. These levels position Rayman to be running away from something 100% of the time, but sync his jumps and extraneous points of impact to the beat of whatever song happens to be playing. The “Castle Rock” level that’s been out in the wild does this with Ledbetter’s “Black Betty,” and there are a half dozen more levels with clever takes on classic songs. The precision and dedication required to pull this off on the programming end must have been colossal, but it’s resulted in some of the most memorable moments in years. When you try and convince someone to play Rayman Legends, this is all you need to show them.
