Rayman Origins (Wii)

With a name like Rayman Origins, you’d expect this video game to be a prequel exploring how Rayman became the hero you see in his other games. Surprisingly though, not only does the game make no effort to do so, it almost has no story to speak of, but that wasn’t always the case. Originally intended to provide a proper origin story for the hero with the floating hands, Rayman Origins was retooled to strip that element away. You might still say the game’s name works though, because while you’re not getting any deeper insight into the character’s history, he is returning to his side-scrolling platformer origins after years of dabbling in other play styles.

 

What little story there is kicks off with Rayman, his large froggy friend Globox, and two blue people known as Teensies relaxing in a tree with the Bubble Dreamer. This life of loafing around is interrupted when their snoring manages to reach the Land of the Livid Dead, the irritated inhabitants sending out monstrous creatures called Darktoons to silence the noisy land above. With the Bubble Dreamer’s head scrambled by the attack, Rayman and his three allies set out to take down the Darktoons and make things peaceful once more, but beyond freeing some nymphs that have been trapped, it does seem like a bit of a directionless quest until you’re eventually told about four kings who have been corrupted. Even still, the game’s finale isn’t even about the Darktoon threat anymore, but that likely does tie back to the deemphasized plot. Rayman Origins just needed a reason to get the player running through its world, after which it seems far more interested in just having fun within its strange locations.

Rayman Origins has a delightfully exaggerated art style that mixes surprisingly well with its lush backgrounds. While the forest behind you may be gorgeously detailed, Rayman, his pals, and his enemies are frequently distorted in interesting and absurd ways. If a character is going to scream, it’s likely their mouth is going to get larger then their body when they do so. When you pull back for a punch, your hand will sometimes be larger than the enemy you end up hitting with it. There is a good degree of manic energy in the design of enemies you encounter, a lot of spiky creatures that feel like they have a lot of tiny details but an overall simple look dominated by huge features that barely hang together on their form. Large features not only give them a unique look that matches the game’s high energy, but it often makes it easy to recognize them at a glance, something important with the game’s large focus on sprinting through stages as fast as you can manage. Despite the chaotic mix of characters some do look oddly out of place, a fork with lemon wedge on it colored in a flat way that makes it seem a little incongruous, but generally it is fun to encounter a new area’s strangely designed adversaries, especially since they will behave in new ways that require learning but ultimately won’t interrupt the flow once you come to know them.

 

When in a level in Rayman Origins, you’ll find the level design is heavily catered towards the player running through it as fast as they can. There isn’t always necessarily a pressure to do so, you can more leisurely tackle some stages, but generally things are laid out so that, if you know the level well enough, you could start sprinting at the start and never need to let up. This does lead to some pretty satisfying moments during those moments you can string things together well, and many levels make no secret in their geography on how you’re meant to approach them. Doing so isn’t always easy though, and what’s more, getting to the level’s end isn’t your only goal. Collecting Electoons is vital to unlocking new stages, and there are three main ways to earn them. Most levels have two secret bonus rooms to find where you’ll free an Electoon if you clear its small challenge and after finishing a level you can try a time trial version of the stage that really tests your ability to charge through it unhindered. However, the other means of earning Electoons heavily colors how you approach a stage during your first playthrough, since if you can collect enough of the floating yellow creatures called Lums, you’ll be able to earn two more Electoons on top of one simply for beating the stage.

 

The Lums are just as important to influencing how you move through a level as the ground that’s available to you. Not only do the Lums often hint at the right way to charge forward, they also necessitate more advanced and speedy movement in areas it might otherwise not technically be required. Grab a Lum King and all Lums are worth more for a short period, meaning many levels require using the king well or else you won’t hit your Lum targets for those extra Electoons. Enemies can provide Lums, so rather than rushing by them, it can be wise to take out everything in your path despite the fact you die in one hit unless you’ve found a one use heart to survive an extra attack. Luckily, death isn’t punished too strongly in a stage, the game popping you back to the last area transition so you can try again, which also means you’re given some room to figure out the right path to run to get as many Lums as possible and avoid the dangers in your path. On the other hand, this can lead to a game that has a rather nice flow to it repeatedly getting interrupted, especially since the player has no reason not to get hurt intentionally for a second chance if they missed out on some big Lum payout. The game can be played in multiplayer though, and that not only makes it more likely you can grab all the Lums quickly, but it also gives you a quicker means of revival in the level. When killed you will turn into a bubble version of your character the others can smack to get you back into the action.

The leniency is nice for people trying to collect the Electoons and hard to fault for the most part, and Rayman Origins still has levels with longer stretches where being set back will sting because of the difficulty. There is a nice range of level ideas featured, the different worlds you explore containing not just standard ideas like romps through a forest or swimming through dark waters but also cooking up stranger twists to familiar archetypes. The desert levels are part of an area called the Desert of Dijiridoos and large musical instruments make up a good deal of what you’re traversing while the fiery stages are actually so hot because they’re filled with cooking pots. There are even a few stages you climb aboard a large mosquito and use it to shoot down enemies in flying sections, and initially these segments are where you’ll encounter the game’s first boss battles. Eventually though, some boss fights done on foot are added to the equation, and these start to more heavily embrace the game’s emphasis on perfection.

 

Early on you won’t need to worry too much about doing everything properly. There are levels where you chase down a running treasure chest where you have to get your jumps timed just right to avoid instant failures, but that feels like the level concept and it’s pretty easy to accept these will be the difficult trials that pay off your growing skill. However, regular levels and boss fights soon start asking you to also do things exactly as the game intends and there are moments where the game doesn’t really give you enough time to figure it out. You might be running forward, find a split path, and have already committed to a jump before you see the Lums that indicate the proper way you’re meant to go. During a boss fight, you’ll be crammed into the arena with a monster that is deadly to the touch but once you see them starting to move, you would have already needed to be moving in the right direction to be able to avoid it. For all the speed Rayman and his friends have, there are times where if you’re standing in the wrong spot as a hazard appears, there’s no hope to avoid it, and the game starts getting worse at indicating these positions as you get deeper into the adventure.

 

You essentially need to train yourself to do the right actions in the right order for some fights and stages since the indicators on how to act aren’t there, but the death system does mean you can pop right back in and try again fairly quickly. Most later bosses are made repetitive because of this though, and generally levels can feel a bit similar in terms of what you’re meant to do since the speedy play tries to avoid being complicated. Your characters don’t have a huge range of abilities, gradually unlocking things like a glide that slip into level exploration snugly to the point it feels weird they’re not default actions. The fair treasure chest sprints feel like they have the right design to be so demanding, but thankfully the weaker moments that require perfection or foreknowledge don’t completely taint the later stages of this adventure. It does feel like it is a rough approach to make things harder.

THE VERDICT: Vivid backgrounds with amusing cartoony chaos makes the game worlds of Rayman Origins exciting to run through, especially with the game being so accommodating to trying to sprint through stages and find the perfect path. The Lum collection adds much needed depth to the process, and while the late game starts slipping a bit in properly signalling where you need to be to survive its harsher trials, Rayman Origins still puts together satisfying challenges and levels like the treasure chest chases feel like a proper test of your ability to keep up with this game’s manic energy.

 

And so, I give Rayman Origins for Nintendo Wii…

A GOOD rating. It is exciting to get into the zone in Rayman Origins and bounce around a level exactly as the game wants you to, that satisfaction in knowing you’re hitting all your marks supported by the rewards laid out for keeping on the right path perfectly. That’s why the treasure chest levels work despite their difficulty, but when it starts to become more about being in the right spot without the right indicators to show it, those sudden deaths you could have only prevented through luck can start to grate. Boss battles in general end up annoying when they’re not pushovers because of this approach to design, although surprisingly the final secret boss comes out a bit better since it’s more of a puzzle boss where you’re experimenting with approaches rather than it just being a sequence of precise actions you need to figure out. Rayman Origins is mostly good at not outright requiring perfection though, and while the levels don’t innovate too much in terms of the obstacles in your path, they are still visually varied and still tap into the enjoyable challenge of needing to mix your speed and jumping precision right to continue forward. Rayman Origins almost understands that it’s bosses don’t work well thanks to its death system, giving you hearts between battle phases, but they also have instant kill attacks or you’ll be trapped if hit anyway. A little more leniency so you can actually learn their patterns would help to make them less bothersome, and for the levels where things go awry they just need to lean back on things like Lum placement better to avoid the poor signposting on where you need to be to avoid an instant sudden death. Rayman Origins can still be a difficult but enjoyable platformer where learning the level layout pays off with the extra Electoons, it just pushed a bit far in a few moments that are outside of its usually effective design approach.

 

Despite going back to 2D platforming for this adventure, Rayman Origins actually carved out a new path for Rayman game design with its emphasis on speed and level design that can accommodate one perfect sprint through without the need to slow down. The game’s personality gives it a nice extra spark backed up by music that often is just as kooky, and when you can nail something like a treasure chest sprint it definitely feels like proper payoff to the work you put in. A few moments where the balance is off isn’t a reason to avoid playing this energetic action game, Rayman Origins still an exciting romp that also has its deeper depths thanks to the Lum collecting challenge. It can seem like it sometimes focuses too much on grabbing Lums so the level isn’t too tough if you choose to ignore them, but the Electoon system still makes you engage enough with their design that Rayman Origins’s stages still ask for more than just rushing through to the end.