If you know anything about me, it’s that I push shopping carts as a ‘parking lot attendent,’ my best friend is a cat named Tardy and that I love platformers. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Rayman Origins was one of my favorite games of 2011, quite possibly only behind Portal 2, but video games are subjective and all so ranking them is quite silly. I can’t explain what it is about platformers — it’s run and jump, it could not be simpler — in an age where games are moving into hyper realism with hundreds of moving objects on the screen at once, but just give me a game where I run and jump and I’m grinning from ear to ear.
Rayman Legends is an absolutely gorgeous game, it’s not gorgeous in the sense that Metal Gear Solid V and its Fox Engine is gorgeous, but it’s gorgeous in the sense that it feels like it’s a hand drawn cartoon. It is the kind of game that brings you back to watching cartoons on Saturday morning with a can of Coke and french toast. I have just been informed that many kids didn’t drink Coke Saturday morning while watching cartoons, but nonetheless that doesn’t change the fact the game is gorgeous. The challenges that the previous game presented to you were so irritating, yet beyond rewarding when you conquered a level. The level of precision needed to beat some of the later levels in the game was unreal, yet because of the perfect controls, when you died it was your fault. You never felt as if the game cheated you, because you died you knew that you needed to get better. This game isn’t next gen, it isn’t a new IP and it has been announced for over a year, but I couldn’t care less. Ubisoft, as long as you keep making these, I’m going to keep giving you my cart pushing money.
