With his various chain-slides, rope-swings and wall-hops deliberate and controllable whatever the pace, Raymans high-speed handling is friendly and nuanced enough to cope with anything. Rayman rewards skill and creativity where Sonic so often punishes daring. Rather than hindering, enemy placement is carefully designed to assist with showboating jump chains and hit combos. Obstacles are perfectly paced to provide exhilaration and ample reaction time. While Legends is packed with breakneck, do-or-die sprints, it only ever uses its speed to excite, not bewilder. For every cathartic burst-run after a tricky platforming section, there was a cheesy enemy or spike-wall placed precisely in Sonics path to create cheap difficulty. What you wont think of-because nostalgia dictates that no-one ever does-is how goddamn tacky the early Sonic games could be with their speed. If asked to come up with an iconic Sonic image, youll always think of him burning around the Green Hill Zone loop at 100 mph. Think of Sonic the Hedgehog and you think of speed. It's fast and demanding without being cheap In fact it only ever gets more rewarding. Things rapidly get tough in Rayman Legends, but because that toughness comes entirely as a result of the game getting more creative and in-depth with its ideas, it never feels unfair or punishing. That means challenging the designer and challenging the player. It knows that the best way to wring the most potential out of those ideas is by exploring them to the fullest.
Rayman knows that simply throwing in a boatload of ideas isnt enough. This is a game confident in its core gameplay, and confident in its designers ability to experiment, expand, and escalate. Sonic games used to work similarly, but since going 3D their challenge has come more from Simon Says reaction tests and level memorisation than genuine gameplay complexity. Where Mario games used to acclimatise the player during the first few levels and then steadily crank things up over the course of everything following, they now tend to save their hard stuff for their last sections, or an unlockable post-game area. But both have softened up over the years. Mario and Sonic never used to shy away from a challenge in the old days. It has a seriously confident difficulty curve To blend platforming, flying, shooting and swimming in one stage, Mario would require some fairly segmented level design and a host of tactically placed power-ups and costumes, each of which would come with usage stipulations and restrictive requirements that Rayman just doesnt have. You wont know what youre going to get from level to level, but you also wont know what youre going to get from second to second within a level. Not only is that a Hell of an economical design feat, but it allows some really organic mix-and-match level design. The rest of the above is created using nothing but the games standard gameplay mechanics and some really creative level structure. And there's only one additional power-up in the whole game. Rayman throws out all of these as part of a continually evolving, constantly shuffling playlist of 2D gameplay greatness. Mario and Sonic both provide deeper levels of control to the dedicated player, but not on this level. Some of the Invaded time-trial levels will seem physically impossible at first, but by seeing through the Matrix of level design and control hacks youll eventually smash them with seconds to spare.
RAYMAN LEGENDS TV TROPES HOW TO
Wall-jumps are fairly straight-forward, but when you work out how to scamper up sheer surfaces, your traversal will get just that bit sharper. Though sometimes an improvised air-brake is exactly what you need. Combining the precision after-touch of Mario, the bendable momentum physics of Sonic, and the subtle tweakability of Ryu or Chun-Li, theres a wealth of context-sensitive control mastery to be found underneath Raymans seemingly simple gameplay.Ī jumping attack can lead to triumphant, foe-demolishing rampage of glory in Raymans sprinting levels, but if you mess up your timing and momentum it can stall you (literally) dead. They seem like a stock platformer set-up on intial touch (walk, run, jump, float), but some practiced play reveals something more akin to the set-up of a good fighting game, with almost every action capable of adapting, cancelling or transforming the properties of Raymans movement in some way. The reason Rayman is so versatile? Brilliantly nuanced controls.