Previews// Rayman Legends

“Do you want to look at Rayman Legends?”
“Er...”
“Really. Have you got time to preview it?”
“Well...”

I looked around my desk. Checked no Steam codes had hit my inbox in the last 30 seconds.

“Have you or haven't you?” It's July. Pikmin 3 was already with Dave. It seemed unlikely that New Super Luigi was going to come my way. What can you do?

“Er... Yeah, OK. I guess.”

Rayman Legends wasn't sending back loud pings on my radar. If you're a sidescrolling platformer and you want to get my attention you'd better either have 'Mario' in the title or be proper art-house and poncey. But, actually, shame on me and my indifference. Rayman Legends is a great platformer with some wonderful level design.

Rayman, Globox, and the teensies have been wandering through the forest when blah-blah blah-blah-blah... It doesn't matter. What you need to know is: you have to save the teensies by crusading through various levels roughly themed around fairytales/folklore. Not that it's staggeringly clear what's going on – at least in the preview code I played.

If I have a gripe about the game itself, it's that. You navigate the different worlds/levels by wandering along galleries and hopping into paintings. It's easy to get a bit confused as to where you're supposed to be (or whether you're actually supposed to be anywhere). But, really, it's a minor niggle. If you wander about the level navigation for a moment you're bound to find something to do, and linearity is hardly important here.

What is important is the fact that it plays and flows beautifully, with some really imaginative level design. There's nothing remarkable in the bare mechanics of how the game plays. It does everything you expect from a sidescrolling platformer: you run, you jump, you glide, you punch. Providing a little variation is your sometime partner, Murfy the fairy from Rayman 3 (we'll get back to him soon). But it does all of the above very, very well.

Legends sits somewhere between (marvel as I show my age) 2D Mario and old school Sonic in terms of the feel of the thing, leaning more toward the latter. It's not as quick as Sonic, but if you're good enough it has something of that smooth flow.

That's not to say accuracy isn't required, though. Legends isn't overly gruelling as respawns don't usually kick you too far back along the level (and there's no limit to your number of lives) but it does require some precision, particularly if you want to collect everything there is to collect.

But while 'gruelling' isn't the default setting of Legends, there's an 'Invasion' level-type that is particularly punishing. Once certain levels are completed, a secondary level re-using some of its features (you might call it a 'remix' at a push) opens up. These are speed runs, but accuracy is critical if you even want to make it through, let alone do so in reasonable time. Unless you're a far better gamer than I am (and you may well be – that's a reasonably attainable standard) repetition will be the name of the game. It feels very old-school, with certain bits demanding rehearsal before you'll be able to nail them. And, despite not being a gamer who responds particularly well to being bludgeoned with failure, I found them tremendously satisfying.

This is helped, in large part, by the excellent level design. I'm not going to pretend it's quite up there with Nintendo's finest, but its constantly fresh, fun and inventive. No sooner are you becoming attuned to a level mechanic than something else comes along, constantly providing those 'oh cool!' moments that are difficult to explain or articulate.

One example is one of the 'invasion' levels I mentioned above. It's in a beanstalk-themed world in which there's a constant updraft that you can ride around on with your gliding ability. Much of the level, however, is constituted of a vertical descent with fireballs and flaming spears being hurled at you. It's basically a controlled fall that doesn't play anything like the rest of the game.

Another nice feature is the inclusion of rhythm-ish levels. I say 'rhythm-ish' because it's difficult to tell to what degree your play is actually affecting the music, but the gist is that something is chasing you across a level against a musical backdrop. You're sort of interacting with the music by jumping to drum beats and sliding down zip wires through guitar sustains. It's only a slight tweak to the usual sidescrolling formula, but there's something very cool about cruising through a washed-out level with Eye of the Tiger being played on Spanish guitar in the background.

Using Murfy adds some fun moments, too. Players can get him to perform certain actions like tickling large enemies or eating out sections of cake-based levels, adding a rewarding extra dimension to certain levels.

We're going to have to wait for launch to see whether a full-price boxed release is really warranted for an old-school sidescroller like this. It certainly looks great for a platformer, but there doesn't seem to be much in here that couldn't have been fitted into a download or lower-priced box release. If the price is justified, it will be thanks to the volume of content. Based on the preview build I've seen there certainly does look to be a lot in there, but we won't really know until the end of August rolls around.

Still, Rayman Legends is, all in all, a really fun little game with some great design behind it. It's certainly worth keeping an eye out for.

Previewed on Xbox 360.