Rayman's excruciating difficulty level and cheap design decisions overshadow the brilliant platformer lying beneath.
You are Rayman, a laid back, easy going type of guy. You're more interested in laying in your hammock than going out and doing anything. Unfortunately, that's about to change. You see, everybody and everything gets along in Rayman's peaceful world. There is something called the Great Protoon that keeps the peace which is guarded by Betilla the Fairy. Well, the evil Mr. Dark fancies himself a piece of it and steals it after defeating Betilla. This scatters all of the electoons that evolved around it all over the world. Mr. Dark's minions capture the electoons and put them in cages. Rayman must find all of the electoons, free them, defeat Mr. Dark, and get the Great Protoon back to instill tranquility once more in his land.
To do this, Rayman will have a few moves at his disposal. When you start, you'll have no powers. Throughout the game, you will find Betilla who will give you special moves to help you progress. First, you just get the standard punching move. Later, you will get the ability to run, float by using your ears as helicopter blades, grab rings and items, and hang on platforms. Every now and then you'll run across a friend who will help you out and give you temporary abilities. In one level, somebody gives you seeds that will instantly sprout plants. The water rises from the bottom and you must quickly maneuver your way up on these plants and other obstacles without falling. In another level, you will get infinite energy to fly while dodging spikes and flying enemies.
All of these moves are great and work fairly well. Unfortunately, that doesn't help the game become any easier. If you are a purist and like to finish your games without using any kind of codes or cheats, skip this game. You will be pulling your hair out from frustration. It's pretty standard for a platformer to have a set number of lives and continues and Rayman is no different -- he has 5 continues and starts with 3 lives for each continue. However, in this game that just isn't enough. There are 17 levels in this game with each level consisting of mini levels inside of them. The problem with this is that some of these levels run very long -- up to 6 or 7 areas -- and you can't save in between. You can only save once you've actually finished the whole level.
If you only want to run through the levels, that shouldn't be a problem. But you won't be able to play the last level and get the ending unless you've freed every electoon from their cages. This is why it's so hard. The majority of these cages are very troublesome to get to and others can't even be seen until you trigger them to appear. But it's not that simple. To trigger them, you usually have to do menial things like jump in the air at a certain point in the level. How in the world is any player supposed to know, for example, that they're supposed to hug the right wall and jump in the air to trigger a cage? Even if you do find these areas that trigger something, you still sometimes won't know where it is actually located. It doesn't just pop up next to you. You usually have to backtrack or climb somewhere and find it. Making things just a bit easier, there is a signature sound that plays every time you trigger something, but it's certainly not enough to justify this poorly conceived gameplay mechanic. If you can find all of these cages yourself without using a walkthrough, you deserve some kind of award.
Adding insult to injury, besides the hidden cages and stupid triggering of objects, some enemies and areas are completely unforgiving. There is one type of enemy, which is the most abundant by the way, that you cannot punch head on. They're much shorter than you and your fist won't reach them since you can't aim down. So to get past a large number of them, you'll have to find a lower platform and punch them from there or, one way I found particularly useful, punch past them, duck, and it will hit them on the way back. When it comes to cheap level design, one area asks you to run down a slippery slope, bounce off of something, and fly perfectly down the middle of a row of sharp objects, one below and one above. But even if you do get through the first set of sharp objects, there are 3 more consecutively after it so you're not guaranteed to get through them all. You have to do it absolutely perfect or you're going to take on damage and probably die. There are many more examples of enemies and levels like these, but I'd be typing here all night if I explained them all. This is why the continues and lives aren't sufficient enough.
However, even with these painfully frustrating areas, there are some shining moments. Some of the levels in Rayman are geniusly designed based on how they look and what type of feel it emits. Also, the platforming is thoroughly engaging and fun (excluding the frustration element). There are also numerous bosses that you'll fight along the way, most of which are impressive. Most of them have some sort of strategy to defeat them and they're hard to pull off. Although I hated how hard the game was during the actual levels, I loved how the bosses were difficult. Too many platformers have way too easy bosses which make what should be a colossal achievement a walk through the park. Rayman breaks that platforming stereotype with some great bosses.
The graphics are superb. The levels look exactly how they should by showing everything colorful and bright, but still showing the evil that has spawned in Rayman's world. To put it simply, I was pleasantly surprised at how beautiful this game was. It's been quite a long time since I played a Playstation 1 game and even with the system being pretty much ancient by now, it still looked terrific.
The sound is pretty mediocre all across the board. The sound effects do their job and nothing more. The voice acting, which is only present in the prologue and very briefly in the conclusion, is bearable at best if not downright annoying. The best part of the sound is the music. The music suited this game perfectly no matter what you were doing.
All in all, Rayman is one of those games that die hard platforming fans will enjoy the most while others will likely brush it off and never play or quit out of frustration. I was really enjoying myself for the first half of the game despite some very hard parts, but once I got to the second half, most of my fun with the game had worn out and I wanted to finish it as soon as possible. I try to beat my games without using cheats, so that meant when I died and went to the continue screen (which I did countless times), I took the game over and replayed through very long sections of the game again just so I could salvage my continues. Eventually, the game just frustrated me beyond the point of repair and I wanted to quit. This is the only game that I can remember that I've ever used a code on to finish. I had to use the 10 continues cheat once or twice just so I wouldn't have to play through a huge chunk of what I had previously completed but couldn't save due to a lack of a good save system. I love a challenge in my games, but this game was too unbalanced, unfair, and cheap to be any more than a mediocre game. I also love platformers and if it weren't for the unforgiving level design and excruciating difficulty, this would easily be one of my favorites. However, Rayman has some great moments that make it well worth playing, but they're overshadowed by cheap deaths and a difficulty level that could pop a blood vein out of frustration.