Slide to the side, Mario; Rayman just got a piece of your throne
The first thing players will notice about Rayman Origins is its immature nature, but that is by no means a negative statement. Rayman Origins is not immature like that young cousin of yours who cries whenever he loses a videogame match; it is immature like a Saturday morning cartoon from the 80s, it is silly and wacky without worrying about consequences or impressions. It will not hesitate in throwing a one-ton anvil on its dearest friend head, and after that it will proceed to put an arm around him, laugh it off into the sunset. The insanity is not restricted to its bright colorful vivid visuals, it is in how the characters move, how they act after clearing a stage, how music seems to pour into the stage design and how even the mightiest fire blowing monsters have a "let's go out there and have some fun while slaying a huge angry beast" vibe to them. Rayman Origins is one extravagant party wrapped into platforming goodness.
Like all good Saturday morning cartoons, our beloved heroes get in big trouble quickly and by accident. Rayman, Globox and two Teensies (the four playable characters in this adventure) are relaxing in the friendly glade of dreams when their symphony of breathing and snoring gets broadcasted through the inside of a hollow tree into the underground world where a bitter old lady – maddened by their constant loudness – unleashes an army of devilish underground beings into the once peaceful world, and Rayman has to go out there beat down some foes and release some friends from guarded cages hidden within the game's stages.
Rayman Origins is accessible and, at the same time, it achieves a great degree of challenge, all thanks to the alluring lums, which look pretty much like the fairies from the Zelda series, aside from the big clueless smile the former species carries. Each stage has about 400 of them to collect, and depending on the amount of lums Rayman has by the end of the stage, he will be awarded a certain quantity of pink smiley medals that unlock secret stages. Ignoring the lums means stages will be cleared fairly quickly, even if it is done with a certain degree of trouble due to enemies and obstacles, but attempting to collect as many lums as possible during your run through the stage will lead to a lot of deaths, since collecting all lums requires speed, ridiculously precise jumps and amazing skills, the intensity on which those qualities are needed gets more intense as worlds go by.
In spite of all that, Rayman Origins never really gets frustrating, because the stages are divided into small segments, which leads to a decent amount of save points. Therefore, significant progress is never loss when players try a radical maneuver to catch a trickily placed 25-lum coin. Even though catching lums is optional, the game warmly invites players into the challenge, and the invitation is hard to decline. The game challenge reaches its pinnacle on the ten secret stages, where players must chase a fearful treasure chest through obstacles, tumbling scenarios and jumps that demand fine accuracy. Everything is done with no checkpoints, without being able to acquire extra hearts, turning the whole stage into a one-hit KO machine, and having to go as fast as possible because of the collapsing stages. It is as tough as nails, and more rewarding than pretty much all gaming experiences out there.
All in all, there is a lot of variety to be found in Rayman, and it all starts with its unique worlds. Sure, you will find the traditional jungle, the dark underwater caves and the sunny shore, but due to the game's artistic personality, players will never feel like they are being dragged through more-of-the-same platforming scenarios; on the contrary, the colors, lights and lines of the background will more often than not wow even the most experienced gamers. However, it is not rare to see Rayman Origins step out of the ordinary and venture into new territory with a world centered around musical instruments in the sky, a fiery kitchen filled with pepper and fire-breathing chefs and a factory with delirious machines. There is not shortage of amusement.
On the gameplay side of things, Rayman Origins is constantly renewing itself. Rayman starts only with the ability to jump and hit his enemies, even his traditional helicopter move is initially absent, but as each world passes Rayman releases a fairy that teaches him a new ability such as running on walls and swimming, and so each world takes advantage of one of those abilities, meaning that as worlds progress the way on which the stages are designed changes radically. As a consequence, the game not only slaps players in the face with glorious scenarios as the story progresses, but it also throws new designs on the screen with amazing consistency. All moves, being critical to achieve success in collecting a good amount of lums, work wonderfully and are very responsive. The controls are as tight as the room for error found in the hardest parts of the game.
As the curtain closes, most players will come to very same conclusion: Rayman Origins is the best 2-D platformer of this generation, no doubt about it. It lands in Kirby's Epic Yarn territory with its stunning art, it pulls off old-school moments that had only been achieved by New Super Mario Bros Wii, it holds as many level design surprises as Donkey Kong Country Returns, it features puzzle-elements absent from those titles and it manages to be more challenging than all of those games. The fact that it features the option to play with another 3 friends in one frantic funny attempt to clear the game further indicates the current tendency that all sidescrolles must go cooperative. Rayman Origins is beautiful, its music ranges from moody to annoyingly catchy, has over fifteen hours of gameplay, tons of extras, ten worlds, many bosses, stages that play like space-shooting arcade games and much more, all packed into one hard-to-surpass package of platforming goodness. It is absolutely glorious.