4/5 ★ – fez219's review of Rayman Origins.

Rayman Origins is a soulful and risky game by Ubisoft (how often do you hear that) with tons of cool ideas that are executed mostly well. The best things about Origins are the wonderful hand-drawn aesthetic and Rayman’s moveset/controls. The presentation is especially amazing; every level feels built from the ground up with awesome background art that tells a story, and characters/enemies are beautifully drawn and animated. The soundtrack is also excellent. This was very refreshing, as it blew out the presentation of the parallel-running New Super Mario Bros series by Nintendo, which had been underwhelming on all of these fronts. Rayman is super quick and has all sorts of powers you unlock as you play, from swimming and floating to wall-running and shrinking. All of these are very fluid and responsive — even swimming! There’s also some really wild bullet hell levels where you ride a giant mosquito. Origins also makes the smart choice (perhaps inspired by Super Meat Boy?) to ditch lives and instead use a checkpoint system. Origins is quite difficult, but the mostly fair checkpoints allow you to focus on the nearly perfect execution the game sometimes demands without getting too frustrated. Most levels are solid, but a few of the more difficult ones can be frustrating. Some levels demand precision and moves without offering enough in the way of context clues of what to do (like coins telling you to float, or enemies telling you to punch to boost momentum). This means that some levels feel like they have too much trial and error. Some hitboxes can also be a bit wonky. Still, the difficulty curve is mostly fair. Most of the levels are a joy to explore, especially the momentum based chases and challenges. And luckily, the infinite checkpoint system makes even the more frustrating sections of the game bearable. The weakest points of the game are probably the bosses. They’re entirely trial-and-error based, and I just didn’t have a lot of fun with them. They’re never too hard at least. There’s a good amount of collectibles and secrets in every level, but I found that there wasn’t a huge incentive to get everything. You can grab most of what’s in a stage and still have enough orbs (or whatever the currency is) to unlock the chase levels, which then unlock the extra Land of the Livid Dead level. There wasn’t really a point to collecting everything else or going for 100%. There’s also a story but it’s nonsense lol. It’s a silly platformer and that’s not really the point. Of the Rayman games I’ve played, Legends is far superior to this (and happens to have most of the Origins levels anyway) but Origins is still a really solid game. I’d love to see another Rayman game like this and Legends, but Ubisoft is all over the place.