Rayman legends switch review
The sprint button (operated with either ZL or ZR) is also great fun to hold down: the momentum as your character builds up their pace is subtle but makes hitting top speed feel cool as hell. Jumping has a satisfying weight to it, and while attacks feel a little on the light side there’s still great joy to be had in thwacking your way through a bunch of baddies before punching open a Teensy’s cage and freeing them. The real challenge comes in completely rinsing every level of its Lums and Teensies, and thankfully the game’s feel and platform mechanics are satisfying enough to make this feel like a privilege, not a chore.Ĭontrolling Rayman and his chums is a treat. With only six worlds on offer, a standard playthrough isn’t exactly likely to keep you busy for hundreds of hours. This helps extend the length of what’s initially a fairly short game. It’s this feature that provides the game’s replay value: you get a bronze, silver or gold trophy for each stage depending on how many Lums you collected, and you can’t really mark the level off as 100% complete until you’ve also found and rescued every Teensy. While the general aim is just to reach the end of each stage, you’re also expected to collect Lums (the game’s currency) and rescue the captive Teensies who can be found throughout.
Each can be entered, Super Mario 64 style, to reveal a number of platforming stages.
The game’s main hub is an art gallery where each painting represents one of six worlds. There are even some levels in there that are played to the rhythm of the music these are among the most difficult stages but also the most satisfying and inventive because of the ways they flow along with the beat. It sounds as good as it looks too, with a fantastic orchestral soundtrack accompanying your adventure. The character animations, the beautifully detailed backgrounds, the subtle lighting it all comes together to make for a visually impressive adventure. Every part of Legends looks magnificent: it’s easily the closest the games industry has come to date in making a game that looks like a playable cartoon. There’s no denying this is definitely the case here. The sequel to 2011’s Rayman Origins, Legends is a 2D platformer that uses Ubisoft’s much-praised UbiArt game engine to allow for a stunning hand-drawn look. It’s just that the extra stuff added to this port is so meagre that anyone assuming this is some sort of goodie-laden ‘Game Of The Year’ edition is in for a short, sharp shock.įirst, let’s look at the game as a whole, for the benefit of those who may have missed out on it in its various other incarnations. To be clear, Rayman Legends on Switch does very much justify its ‘definitive’ tag, because nobody can argue that – by definition – no other version offers as much as the Switch version. Still, time heals all wounds and with Ubi and Nintendo very much best pals again – the recent Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle being the perfect example of this – there’s no better way to draw a line under the Rayman Legends saga than with this final ‘Definitive Edition’ on the Switch. Naturally, Nintendo fans weren’t too chuffed that what was supposed to be a launch day exclusive ended up being a multi-format game that was released nearly a year into the system’s life, so for a while Ubisoft wasn’t really in our good books. Any Wii U owners who were eagerly awaiting Legends will recall the frustrating events that took place over the year that followed: originally planned as a Wii U launch game, it was delayed three months, then delayed another six months so it could become a multi-format release (even though the Wii U version was already finished). It may be hard to remember now, but way back at E3 2012 when Rayman Legends was first revealed, it was declared a Wii U exclusive.