Jonas Ward
“Rayman Origins” is the fourth installment in the series published by Ubisoft for the Playstation 3. It is a fantastic sidescroller game with amazing graphics, story and gameplay. Not only is the game action-packed, it is also challenging for players and extremely rewarding. “Rayman Origins” is a modern classic that received massive critical acclaim upon its release in 2011.
The plot the game introduces is incredibly engaging. Rayman is the main protagonist in this video game and Globox, a frog that loves plum juice, is Rayman’s best friend. Their reality is called the “Glade of Dreams” and is mixed in between several realms with fairies, whisps and nymphs. Rayman has special abilities that allow him to blast through the story as the main hero with his friends. He was created by fairies, which protect him and his reality. The villians in this game are called Darktoons and are Rayman’s mortal enemies. The fairies keep their reality stitched together and the Darktoons want to take over their reality. To accomplish this, the Darktoons kidnap the fairies, forcing Rayman to save them during the story. Playing as Rayman and his friends, players will fight many enemies, meet many characters and explore vast realms. This all combined creates a super fun and magical experience.
The graphics for this game are absolutely stellar. Since it is a side-scrolling platform, the producers have used the backdrop to their advantage. Some of the most beautiful scenery are hand drawn backgrounds. The developers use their surroundings remarkably, which makes the playing experience beautiful to watch. Sand, water, roots, trees, fire and wind are all vastly used in this game creating different challenging environments that look amazing. The colors of the graphics are super bright, warm and colorful making this game truly look like a dream world.
The gameplay of “Rayman Origins” is what makes it fantastic. Jumping, flying and fighting are all super easy and fun to do while playing this game. The controls are easy to understand if players have experience with other side scrolling video games. Learning new abilities is quick and easy during the story. Encountering new enemies becomes more challenging keeping the game fresh.
One great thing about the controls for this game is that the character does not move too fast. An issue with some side scrolling games is that whoever you’re playing as seems to increase their speed way too quickly for the controller input. Luckily “Rayman Origins” does not have this issue.
“Rayman Origins” is easily one of the best and underrated side-scrolling games ever developed. The Rayman series of games have been produced ever since the Playstation 1 was released. Due to bigger titles, like Mario and other side-scrolling games, “Rayman Origins” did receive great ratings, but it never sold quite as well as Nintendo’s Mario counterparts. This doesn’t change the fact that it’s an absolutely amazing game and is easily a fan favorite in the series. “Rayman Origins” will always be a mystical game, and it should be on every gamers must play list.
