The most generous platformer
Rayman Legends, generosity as a method
- Critic score
- 89
- Player rating
- 4.5/5
- Main story
- 10 h
- Genre
- Platformer
A two-dimensional platformer that never stops adding: levels, ideas, worlds, and musical stages that are on their own a reason to play it.
Rayman Legends is the fifth main entry in the series and the direct sequel to Rayman Origins. A century after the previous game, the Bubble Dreamers' nightmares have spread; Rayman and his friends set out to deal with them. The narrative pretext is thin, and nobody pretends otherwise.
What matters is the craft. The animation is hand-drawn, frame by frame, and remains among the most beautiful in the medium — the characters have weight, momentum and micro-expressions that 3D rarely reproduces. The studio's in-house engine was built for exactly this.
Generosity is the guiding principle. The game holds dozens of levels across worlds with strongly marked identities — a forest, an underwater world, a medieval kitchen universe — to which are added almost all of Rayman Origins' levels, unlockable. You never hit the bottom.
And then there are the musical levels, placed at the end of each world. The stage synchronises to a track: every jump, every strike, every falling platform lands on the beat. They are eight minutes of play that on their own explain why this title is cited whenever the best modern 2D platformer comes up.
About ten hours for the main path, considerably more to unlock everything. It plays locally with several people, and that is where it becomes frankly chaotic.