the funtastic modern king of platform games: Rayman Legends
Let me tell you a story of how I found my favorite platform game, when one enters this world of video games from very young is the platform genre that we tend to play in our first games, titles like Super Mario Bros are the first contacts with the controls of millions of players and plays an important role in defining our future tastes, I myself played the first Marios on a NES that my grandfather had from the golden days of Nintendo and I can say that my favorite platform game had to have similar characteristics to those of a Mario Bros, many games since the indie boom have hit the markets and just now there are a huge amount of new games with many new ideas (like The Messenger which I did an analysis in my blog) or new paths to explore inspired by the exploits of Mario, and maybe Rayman is not the best known of the characters in the huge world of video games but, just so you know, he has one of the best sagas in the world of video games, has one of the best sagas of platform games I've ever played, in a genre where it's so easy to fall into monotony and bad copies, both Rayman Origins and the protagonist of this post, its sequel Rayman Legends take all the palms for how well designed everything is, in a platformer that feels unique and goes at its own pace marking a path in the genre different from mainstream titles.
The premise of Legends is very simple, it works like any other platform game but integrates certain features and an exquisite level design that makes every time we play, precision is key in every jump and the feeling of the game besides being smooth in the controls is full of moments of great tension where if we miscalculate a jump we will have to return to the checkpoint. We have the typical commands like jump, crouch, and hit that we will have to use with each of the areas of the game, it must be said that each level in which we jump will function as a small world where the goal is not so much to complete it as fast as we can but we will also have to go rescuing the subjects of the kingdom to unlock other areas, the prisoners are usually found as we advance in the level although here the game picks up a certain essence to the Metroidvania putting different areas apart from the original path with puzzles, enemies and other problems that we will have to answer before releasing the prisoner and return to the original path, a feature that gives Legends a wide replayability of its levels because most likely you are busy in your first visit finishing with the enemies and passing the levels and you will not realize these objectives.
And if you are playing Legends I think you can notice that one of the most spectacular strengths of the game are its designs and animations, taking extreme care in its level design and always giving us a landscape to look at because each of its levels contains a different theme and the creators fill each pixel with personality and a unique style, once you enter their colorful worlds and you can not help but be surprised, The animations of both the main characters and the enemies are a fairly smooth transition to what represents the world, the movements of Rayman, Globox and Barbara stand out for being simple attacks but are executed with a solidity in their animations that make it much more friendly for the user to dominate them from start to finish, their characters inhabit these worlds and look comfortable and consistent with the style of this crazy world.
Not only this colorful world but also the music is an essential part of what is Rayman and his adventures, all levels have a huge soundtrack that accompanies throughout the level but there are certain areas where the formula changes a bit, the so-called musical levels are a success and come to challenge us to complete the areas to the rhythm of a selection of classics adapted to the game, the real challenge is not so much in completing it but, again, Each of the moments in these musical levels are of the highest quality and demonstrates a mastery of its developers in the design of the levels of the game, each one mixes the gameplay with the rhythm and leaves a very pleasant feeling when we go through them, although they are also the levels that we see less in the game mark the work in such a way that elevates it above other platform titles.
Completing with all these attributes is its duration, with a surprising amount of content and a wide replayability of its levels (besides having other game modes such as time trial and mini-games), Rayman Legends is positioned as a lighthearted and agile platform adventure that unites many of the points in favor of its predecessor and that although it has simple mechanics to understand is not at all an easy game, especially if we want to complete it in its entirety, although it is assured that you have hours and hours of guaranteed fun.