ZOMBI

For once, on Halloween, I wanted to be on topic! At the start of the year, I select which games I might like to play across the following 12 months, and back at the start of 2025, I had two horror picks in my list; today’s game, and Resident Evil 4 on the Wii. I will try to cover the latter in November – however, for now, I have Ubisoft’s zombie game to get through. I can’t chicken out of this!

Uh oh, here comes the horde.

Ubisoft has many famous series, but also quite a few standalone games. Today’s title was first released as a Wii U launch title, with the title ZombiU, in November 2012; but then it was given a second life as a port made by Straight Right, retitled ZOMBI, and released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on August 18th, 2015. Although… calling it a “second life” may be a little gauche; we are talking about survival in a zombie apocalypse here. This game is known for doing something never seen before – fresh, new ideas, those are rare nowadays, especially those that directly affect gameplay. Enough beating around the bush, let’s see what this is all about.

London has Fallen

Well, can't say it's a great living arrangement, but...
it's not like there are better options right now.

The zombie apocalypse is underway. Your survivor is surrounded by undead, but a voice from the metro PA tells them to run into the station. They race through and end up in a Safe House designed by their new friend, the Prepper, who will help them survive. Out of the goodness of his heart, sure, let’s go with that. Before the survivor can go on missions, they need to get a weapon – a cricket bat – and a Bug-Out Bag (BOB), with room for the survival tools they’ll gather. You also get a handgun, with limited ammunition (for survival horror, that’s par for the course). Finally, you get a Prepper Pad, which scans the area and detects anything of interest: Dead bodies, containers, doors, hidden items. Scanning doors with this can often allow the Prepper to hack them and open the way for your protagonist. Similarly, scanning security cameras can reveal the map in their areas.

Your first mission is to scan a grocery store’s CCTVs at Brick Lane Markets. After getting a key card, you gain access to London's sewer system, which serves as quick travel between areas. Be careful when you explore, though; your only save points are beds, and though you can find some aside from the one in the Safe House, those are few and far between.

Zombies, if you come back, you get the whack!

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game - Complete Edition

Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series is one most people know of, though not everyone may know about its finer details. It’s fair to call it a franchise, too; six graphic novels originally released from 2004 to 2010, an animated short, a movie (which I reviewed), and an anime series released on Netflix (which I haven’t seen). It’s got enough of a following to get revived every couple years in some way, shape or form. Every iteration tells the story in a slightly different manner.

Alongside the movie came an associated beat’em-up video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and released to the PlayStation Network on August 10th, 2010 in North America and the next day in PAL regions, then to Xbox Live Arcade two weeks later. While the game is well-known, its claim to fame – or, should I say, to infamy – was its delisting from both digital platforms on December 30th, 2014 due to the license expiring at Universal. Thus, despite its association to a popular franchise, the beat’em-up could not be played at all, and would remain in that state for several years.

…until time came to celebrate the movie’s tenth anniversary in 2020, and efforts were made from both O’Malley and the film’s director Edgar Wright to rescue the game from purgatory, while we’re at it. Talks with Ubisoft led to interest, and so in September that year Ubisoft announced a remaster for release to several more digital platforms (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox One and Stadia – lol, that last one is dead already). Even better, a deal was made with Limited Run Games, which specializes in creating and distributing physical formats of games, usually indie and/or only available digitally. The remaster, both on digital and physical formats, was released in January 2021.

I found the Nintendo Switch physical edition at a convention and practically threw my cash at the seller. I knew of this game’s tumultuous history, and I wanted to own a copy. Alongside the cartridge came a free shiny trading card, an alternate box art, an old-school SNES-style instruction booklet small enough to fit in the box, and a “concert ticket” for The Clash at Demonhead with opening act Sex Bob-Omb at Leo’s Place. Feelies, we have feelies, there’s something so nice about those.

Now that this is all out of the way, I can talk about the game!

Brawl Across Toronto

"Hey, are you a 1-Up? 'cause you give me a new life."
Note: Playthroughs I'using for screenshots can be seen
here, here and here.

12 MORE Worst Video Game Marketing Campaigns (Part 2)

Read Part 1 if you haven't seen #12 to #7! Ready for more?

6. Your mom hates Dead Space 2

Scaring women in the name of advertising! Yeah, that's
one Hell of a low-hanging fruit.

Studios are likely to cater directly to the target audience of the game they’re about to release. It only makes sense to do so. And since a lot of video games are horror or shooter types, who is the audience? Teenagers! And what is the stereotype of teenagers? That they hate their parents, or that they think their folks aren’t cool! Therefore, if their parents – or someone similar – object to their product, that product will instantly look cool to these teens! Sound logic there!

In 2011, Visceral Games and Electronic Arts made big plans for their latest survival horror shooter, Dead Space 2. Heavy stuff, hunting down monstrous aliens on a space station and dealing with mental illness. My brain who has never played this franchise immediately went, “that sounds like Aliens meets Resident Evil”. Anyone versed in the franchise can correct me. This combo says exactly what you can expect: Blood and guts galore.

That rating at the bottom couldn't be clearer!

The ad helpfully informs us that the women presented in its 32 seconds were part of an “actual focus group”, not actresses. So, we can assume their reactions are genuine. Grandmothers, moms, older women, you know, exactly the kind of person unlikely to enjoy what is being shown. Beyond the ad, the official Dead Space channel included full versions of some of the interviews. Hammering in these women’s outrage and anger at what they’re shown.

There’s just one problem: The game isn’t directed at younger teens. The ESRB rated it M for Mature. AKA, for older teens bordering on adults. I'm not saying they must have outgrown "your parents suck" at 17, but at that age, there's no need to involve the parents into the advertising. So, this campaign, on top of traumatizing multiple women, also completely missed the mark as to who it was speaking to. The whole thing was considered in very poor taste. The use of an age-old (pun intended) stereotype also turned away many people outside of the ad’s target demographic. To say nothing of the ESRB, who got a strong talking-to for allowing the ad to be broadcast.

Splinter Cell

Tell me what you know, then I'll knock you out.
Or if you know nothing, instant knock-out.

Back to the well of older games I got for free on Ubisoft Connect. That won’t replace The Crew, but it’s just as fine. We’re back to stealth games, and discussing a franchise I never talked about before. Well... Splinter Cell is a franchise, but it’s also known as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and Tom Clancy is a brand name all its own, with the French game studio having made several games inspired by the author’s works. Spy thrillers, international intrigues, stories of counterterrorism cells and whatnot.

Don’t go in there expecting suave James Bond, your missions will be “go in, kill no one, get the info, GTFO”. Later entries in the series became more shooter than stealth, but the early games are far more stealth-based. It’s a running thread in Ubisoft’s catalog, with Beyond Good and Evil featuring stealth sections, and then there’s this series as well; add Prince of Persia’s penchant for parkour, and it feels like their past output long foreshadowed Assassin’s Creed, now one of their flagships.

The first Splinter Cell game was released on damn near every platform existing in late 2002/early 2003: Xbox, PS2, GameCube, GBA, mobile, friggin’ N-Gage... and of course a PC port, on February 18th, 2003. This game has been sitting unplayed in my backlog for something like seven years. I don’t know if that franchise will click with me, there’s only one way to find out...

Third Echelon

Classic army training course.

We play as Sam Fisher, former Navy SEAL and CIA operative, who has been selected to join Third Echelon, a new initiative from the NSA. The idea is to send a solitary operative in high-conflict areas where they can find intel and deal with threats, all in secret. Briefed by his friend, Colonel Irving Lambert, Fisher is first put through a standard soldier obstacle course so his physical aptitude can be tested. This first tutorial isn’t too difficult.

The second is a lot trickier, as this is where you’re taught various stealth and mission-critical elements. You’re shown how to sneak around, grab people from behind and interrogate them for information or carry them around, and other tricks (shooting lights and cameras, or changing your movement speed to reduce sound). If you even do one thing wrong, you’ll start over from the latest checkpoint, of which there’s a lot since you’re learning the ropes. It’s very, VERY easy to do things wrong in this game. 

Because this is training, I was looking for some way to let
go of the guy without knocking him out. Not possible!
Sorry buddy, I'm just training but you'll be K.O.ed for real.
Since I failed before that for knocking him out before
getting the code to the door, I thought K.O.ing him again
would as well.

Imagine accidentally killing a colleague who was there to remind you how to get intel from someone. No, not speaking from experience... Also not speaking from experience, I basically had to remap the entire controls to get something remotely functional.

Sorry for the French text, my games on UbiConnect default
to French. Anyway, this is Lambert yelling at me for falling
in the street. Christ, I just fell when I tried jumping
between two patios!

Also, you know when I said that it’s easy to do things wrong in this game? You find out very quickly in the first mission. Weapons-wise, every enemy is as equipped as you are, putting you on equal footing, and bullets are rare. That’s why knocking opponents from behind is so important; if you go in guns blazing, you’re gonna die fast. A mission can end when you die, but sometimes Lambert will terminate it because you didn't follow his orders. Maybe you walked in the street while Lambert forbade it. Maybe you knocked out/killed someone you needed to get intel from or to open a retinal scan door. Maybe you were spotted enough times for three alarms to be heard. Maybe you just looked some guy wrong. Sometimes I wasn't even sure what caused the mission to fail!

The Crew (non-review)

I’ll be going back to Ubisoft Connect for tomorrow's review, to cover another game that’s been waiting in the backlog for a long time. But, to not clutter that review with a long aside, here’s an announcement about that backlog. And Ubisoft.

My system involves keeping track of my significant backlog of games through websites such as HowLongToBeat and, more recently, Backloggd. With the sheer number of titles waiting to be played, it’s inevitable that I would miss out on the perfect time window to try some of them. Over the past few years, some of my reviews felt more like eulogies for games left for dead when their servers were taken down (Streamline, Offensive Combat, etc.), that I’ve picked up too late. It’s jarring whenever it happens, but I might have escaped it often due to focusing on single-player experiences.

This backlog issue of mine is especially prevalent with Ubisoft, whose games I would forget about were it not for a conscious effort to remember that I have them. Not a dig at the company; but since most of my collection is physical or on Steam, I almost forget about the dozen games I’ve gotten for free over the years through the company’s events. (The only money I ever paid on Ubisoft games on Connect’s store was for the first three Rayman platformers, covered in 2022.)

One of those free games obtained in... 2016, I believe?, I did actually test for a few minutes: The then-19Gb racing/open world title The Crew (1), which did not leave a lasting impression. Again, not a dig, I booted it up out of curiosity and merely felt like seeing what it was like. It seemed to have a decent single-player campaign and an impressive map to visit. Could have been interesting to cover, but I didn’t play it long enough to form an opinion.

On December 31st, 2023, Ubisoft released a statement that they were delisting the game, and shutting down the servers three months later. This gave its players until March 31st to enjoy their open world racer as they saw fit, as it would no longer be possible afterwards. (Yeah, I’m making this announcement four months late. I’m late to a lot of things.) I do understand Ubisoft’s decision, as the multiplayer aspect of the game meant keeping the servers active, and nearly 10 years after release, it was likely wiser to turn off the machine than to keep it going only for a handful, especially after the release of The Crew 2 in 2018 and another sequel, Motorfest, in 2023.

But since this thing’s been waiting to be tested for the blog for over seven years (I’d check, but Connect doesn’t keep track of when games are added to your collection!), I felt I could at least acknowledge its existence, and now its absence. Good night street racer, and the whirring of modified cars sing thee to thy rest.

Literally only tried the first mission and saw the map, so I
knew the game world was big, but I didn't actually get to
see much of it.

And hey, at least we’ve been told about this in advance. When it comes to Ubisoft, that’s a lot better than some of their more recent statements, like gamers having to accept a future where they don’t own the games they buy... Anyway, The Crew is now out of my backlog entirely. That’s 18 less hours of gaming for me to worry about. Stay tuned tomorrow for a review of a different Ubisoft game, and that one better still work.

For Honor

Ubisoft is no stranger to games dabbling in Alternate History, though they’re most famous for their use of it in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Other franchises of theirs that utilize the concept, like Anno, go a little looser with it. No matter how much they play with historical events and time periods, there is an attempt at depicting details with as much accuracy as the setting and gameplay can allow. Today’s game is, as a result, a very bizarre beast because it’s going for insane historical accuracy while, at the exact same time, depicting something completely fantastical.

If knights and samurai fought at some point in our long
History, I'm sure it's never to the extent that they do here.

Developed by Ubisoft Montreal and released on February 14, 2017, For Honor’s genre is hard to pin down. At its core, it’s a third-person melee fighter, which sees you mowing down weak enemies and using strategy to take down stronger ones. Like a 3D beat’em-up with swords. While the game includes a single-player campaign, it puts a lot more focus on its multiplayer options. There, you can take part in fights as a member of one of the available factions, earn points for your group, and help conquer territories in this endless war.

For, yes, this game is about war. War never changes... Wait, wrong studio. But the spirit is the same. I’m not huge on multiplayer, but I’ll do my due diligence and discuss that part before focusing on the single-player campaign. I’d usually do this in the opposite order, but I’ll probably spend a lot more time on the campaign, so multiplayer first. Or, wait, no. First, I guess I’d better explain the setting.

Fighting Spirits

The base concept of this endless war is that multiple warrior races live next door to each other at the same time and, since that’s all they really know, try taking over each other’s territories. At launch, only three “clans” existed: The Legion (medieval knights), the Warborn (Vikings), and the Chosen (Samurai). Later updates add two new clans: The Wu Lin (based on Ancient Chinese warriors) first, then the Outlanders, travelers from other cultures, who don’t fit the other four and chose to team up against them.

There's probably an entire thesis to be written about every
bit of equipment worn by every member of every
character class. I shall not be the one who writes it.

An interesting aspect of these clans is that they all span several centuries of our world’s History, and it’s reflected in their various classes. And yet, at the same time, classes are about all as time-displaced as can get; an example would be the knights, who feature Centurions and Gladiators based off Ancient Rome fighting on the same side as multiple types of knights who existed anywhere from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. The same goes for armors and weapons, as most if not all of them are inspired by very real equipment worn by each class, to say nothing of techniques and strategies co-existing despite having been invented several centuries apart. Anachronisms is the name of the game, not just within clans, but sometimes within a single character class. I’d probably need a few years of historical studies to understand everything that’s featured here and all the ways in which they shouldn’t make sense when put together.

These anachronisms fly by so easily because the setting is blatantly fantastic. Either way, you’ve at least got to hand that to Ubisoft Montreal, they put in the work.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Wii)

Dude never catches a break. (Note: My screenshots in this
article come from LongplayArchive's video of the
game. Go check it out!)

Jumping from a Prince of Persia game to the next, and in fact, jumping into the... uh... This is weird. The Sands of Time trilogy continues in two entries, Warrior Within released in 2004 and The Two Thrones released in 2005. However, things got meddled in this continuity with the addition of two interquels taking place between Sands of Time and Warrior Within: The first is a DS game titled Battles of Prince of Persia, while the other is today’s game, released for the Wii and other platforms on May 18th, 2010 in North America.

We know how messy Ubisoft gets with its multi-platform releases... well, The Forgotten Sands is an even stranger beast as, though it was released on many consoles and for PC, most versions follow a different story. The Wii version is no exception – so it’s possible you might have played another version and never heard this tale. Let's dig in right away and see which adventures the Prince got into before the actual sequel to his story.

A Kingdom to Call My Own

We open in the heat of action as the Prince is parkour-ing his way out of another crumbling castle. Though this time he is followed by a speaking light revealed to be a djann (a female djinn) named Zahra. Fleeing as the place falls apart, our hero must use his physical skills to make it out alive. Now that’s a great feel for a tutorial!

I swear this guy is so good at crawling up walls he
puts the Spider-Men to shame.

This is where we learn our new moves. The Prince has gotten better since his last adventure! For starters, he can climb walls from a horizontal crack (not just ledges) to another and can even climb up and down vertical cracks without any issue. Whereas back in Sand of Time when he ran up a wall he had to jump off backwards, this time he slides down the wall, preventing him jumping to his death. Not a lot of differences overall, but the additions make him even more versatile platforming-wise than he was before – no small feat. Extra abilities gained later down the line will add even more.

Flash back to the actual beginning of this story. Our protagonist has found Zahra at a mysterious market. His wish? A kingdom all to himself, to come back to his father with something to show for his efforts. It’s a commendable goal for certain. (Shouldn't he be running from time-paradox monsters according to Warrior Within, though?)

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

I once again realized I haven’t reviewed enough non-Steam games this year – or, more specifically, I covered only one Wii game and only one Ubisoft game. Here’s my chance to remedy to that.

King and prince, ready for attack.
Things are about to go horribly wrong.

Prince of Persia has been on my radar perhaps since before I began writing this blog. There’s the movie, of course, and I’ve covered it. However, I remember trying the very first game in the series, or rather a port of it for the Super Nintendo, long ago... and failing quickly because I couldn’t figure out the combat mechanics and fend off the enemy swordsmen. Which takes us to a more recent time. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which the movie is based on, was one of the first games I obtained for free on Ubisoft Connect, formerly UPlay, through special events on the platform. Some time later, I found another game in the series, a port for the Nintendo Wii.

Why not cover both? They’ve been waiting long enough. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a Ubisoft game whose ports were released mainly in November 2003, with the Windows version out in December. I wasn’t planning on reviewing this game almost exactly 20 years after its release. Fun coincidence there. So, how's it like?

The Dagger of Time

This story begins as the army of Persia, King Sharaman and his son the Prince at the head, invades an Indian kingdom belonging to the Maharajah. They got word from that kingdom’s Vizier, betraying his leader, of a treasure held at the Palace, with the King intent on taking it. The Prince (no name given) is prepared for such a quest, having been trained his whole life. This is where we discover the controls to this game.

No wonder this guy made a plaything out of
time itself, he already mocks the very concept
of gravity. (Apologies for French text, I never
figured out how to change the game to English.)

One of the most praised aspects of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is the parkour-based platform gameplay. The Prince has a wide array of skills: Running upwards and sideways on walls, wall-jumping, moving up and down ledges, climbing and jumping betwen pillars, swinging from horizontal bars... The list goes on. You can tell that every area of the game was designed with all those skills in mind. It’s not rare to find rooms with nary a solid floor, forcing you to figure out an alternate path. The Prince regains health by drinking water. However, he can get hurt or die instantly if he falls from too high. You’ll only really figure out the right height to fall from through trial and error, of which there is a lot in this game. Controlling this hero is a little tricky at first, but very rewarding once you’ve got all the mechanics down.

Beyond Good and Evil (Part 2)

Resuming from Part 1, which you can read here.

Slaughterhouse

Today, 2 people protesting with signs. Tomorrow, 4.
The next day, 8? Give it two weeks, and the Alphas are toast!

Good thing we even have that hovercraft, since Hillys
is mostly water all over the place.

Jade’s photojournalism is working. People are rising up. It’s getting clearer that the Alpha Sections are in cahoots with the DomZ. But it’s not enough. The IRIS Network gives Jade her next mission: The victims taken to the Nutripils Factory get shipped into the abandoned slaughterhouse. Once more, she’ll have to sneak in there and take pictures proving the “guards” claiming to fight the aliens are actually working for them. The place is closed off, but there’s a secret hatch the hovercraft can sneak into from within the third circuit of the underground racing league.

The hovercraft will need the ability to jump in order to enter the hatch, so it’s off to Mammago’s again for a jump kit. 15 pearls, pay up. Of the 88 Pearls in the game, you spend 71 at the Garage, all mandatory upgrades for plot progression. As a result, you’re better off not leaving any Pearls behind, just in case you need them later.

Racing to save the world - why not?

Then, Jade and Double H join the race and find the secret passage. Props to this game, it tries to feature all of its major gameplay elements somewhat evenly; be it combat, the occasional puzzle or piloting the hovercraft, though stealth takes over at some point. Really, if it weren’t that the camera often goes haywire when you turn around too roughly with the hovercraft, it would be great. (The camera is a regular issue in the game, because you don't have control; it automatically positions itself where it deems necessary, and it often clashes with what you’re trying to do. Not a great system, but it was a frequent issue in games at the time.)

Beyond Good and Evil (Part 1)

I’m reaching a point in the year where I realize that many games in my to-do list for 2023 are well-regarded, with some of those having reached some degree of fame from both how long they’ve been around and long-lasting positive opinion of them. I’m kind of scared of hype aversion. Today’s game is one of the most beloved from Ubisoft; not one from their infancy, but assuredly one that helped make them into the big studio they are. (Or were? Between controversies, layoffs and mass cancellations, it’s become hard to tell.) It’s also considered by quite a few publications as one of the best games ever made, so… yeah. The hype is real.

Directed by Michel Ancel of Rayman fame, the game we have today was first released for the PlayStation 2 in North America on November 11th, 2003. It was further ported for Microsoft Windows on the 19th, for the original Xbox on December 2nd, for GameCube on December 11th, and had extra HD rereleases for Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2011. Blending genres, this science-fiction tale is an adventure, but several other gaming genres tack themselves onto it: Dungeon exploration, stealth, puzzle, a fair bit of freedom (the game’s progression is linear but some elements can be discovered by just driving around), and… photography? Oh yeah! There’s not enough photography games out there! Alright, I think we can jump in.

The scoop

She'll even rescue kids if she has to. She's already heroic!

Meet Jade, a young woman living in a lighthouse on mining planet Hillys, circa 25th century. The planet, like many others, has been under attack by the DomZ, an alien species, and they’re constantly being pushed away, but barely, by a special task team called the Alpha Section. The planets under attack have adapted in a variety of ways, notably by creating anti-DomZ force fields; however, the repeated attacks always result in casualties. Jade lives with her adoptive uncle Pey’j, who is a literal pig man (perhaps he would prefer the scientific term “sus sapien”; he does look kinda sus sometimes) and several human children rescued and kept safe as their families were taken by the menace. She also has a helping AI buddy who goes by Secundo and whose speech is a mishmash of languages.

Speaking of the kids at the lighthouse, you better not
touch them or you're getting destroyed.

She works as a photojournalist, but doesn’t see much success and money is rare. Her funds are insufficient to maintain the force field measure around the lighthouse, which is a problem when the DomZ attack again. She barely repeals them with Pey’j’s help, even having to defeat a stronger DomZ creature. Damn, she's an expert in fighting with that laser staff. They defend the lighthouse just fine, getting a pearl by killing the large DomZ. It’s after their victory that the Alpha Section arrives, late, to help. As usual.

From this fight, I feared Pey'j (bottom left) would end up
being not too good in battle, as frequently happens of allies
in video games, but he proves his worth later on.

Just Dance 2 & 4

(Today, on "pictures you can hear"... ^ )

I haven’t done one of those in a while. Three times in the past, I wrote reviews in December for Just Dance titles. I nurture a special attachment to the famous mimic-the-movements-on-screen franchise from Ubisoft (yes, them again). What convinced me to buy a Nintendo Wii, in 2012, was playing Just Dance 3 at my cousins’ place. As a result, that was one of the first games I ever purchased for the console… as well as one of the first games I reviewed on this blog, way back in 2013.

…Fuck me, I’ve been writing this blog for almost ten years. July 19th, 2023, will be the tenth anniversary.

I just love how colorful that franchise is.

Anyhow, following that original review of Just Dance 3 in 2013, I would go back to this franchise a few more times. In 2015, I covered both the 2014 and 2015 editions, and in 2017, I looked at the 2016 edition as well. And although my sessions have been sparse as of late, I try to play a bit of these games from time to time. I got today’s two games (yes, two in one article) because I have an aunt who had rediscovered the joys of the motion control-based Nintendo console, and wanted to play something else than just Wii Fit. My response, naturally, was this franchise. I bought these two games, and so did she.

There was something interesting to purchasing older editions of Just Dance, if only because I’ve become so accustomed to newer ones in comparison. Franchises always have to begin somewhere. They can end up looking very different as they evolve, but there’s a starting point. Hell, today’s two titles were separated by only two years and, yet, the changes were massive. Will this feel like a beloved trip down memory lane, or a look back we could have done without? Let’s see.

Rayman Legends

After going through the three games that were the genesis of Rayman, it’s almost weird to skip forward to what is, so far, his last game. Ubisoft’s higher-ups have stated that their interest now lied in their copy-paste open-world franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry… y’know, the adult stuff. I sincerely hope that Rayman’s appearance in next year’s DLCs for Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle sparks new interest in the character. In the meantime, we have this title, which I really hope wasn’t the swan song.

A Wii U and a PC are very different beasts when it
comes to controls. There's one less screen, for one.

Rayman Legends was released on August 30th, 2013 in Europe and September 3rd in the United States for most versions (Windows, PS3, Wii U, Xbox 360, Vita), with later releases for PS4 and Xbox One in 2014, and Nintendo Switch in 2017. Notably, the game was originally thought as a Wii U exclusive, but a fear following low sales of other recent titles by the studio made Ubisoft yet again overdose with ports for every console available, forcing some Wii U-based gameplay mechanics to be adapted for other consoles. Thus, one critique of Rayman Legends when compared to its predecessor Origins is that gameplay has barely changed, with only the Wii U-based mechanics being proper new stuff. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, shall we?

Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc

The first game was colorful but hard, with a fairly basic story. The second had solid 3D gameplay with sections reminding of mini-games; the story, while darker, still lent itself to plenty of comedic moments, with Rayman as an all-loving hero. That said, two games aren’t enough to establish a pattern, and the franchise was still looking for its tone.

Also a recurring theme from now on: Globox and Rayman
being lazy butts who spend all their off-time sleeping or
relaxing. What? Heroing takes a lot outta ya.

However, it seems to be in Rayman 3 that the franchise finally settled on what it wanted to be, and that’s summed up in one word: Wacky. It’s more notable in Origins, where Rayman, Globox and the Teensies become a bunch of psychos, more than happy to attack and kill each other while saving the day. The visual signature of both that and Rayman Legends further emphasizes the silliness that’s now part and parcel with the name. But the first shades of that tone can be traced back to Rayman 3.

Today’s game was released to multiple platforms in March of 2003, with different release dates for GameCube, PS2, XBox, PC and N-Gage ports, with a rerelease in March 2012 for PS3 and XBox 360. It's also Rayman’s last mainline game before the Rabbid takeover. And though other games would exist between this and Origins (such as the rather mediocre “Hoodlum Revenge” GBA title that I covered in 2014), I feel it’s interesting to see what, again, changed in this new installment.

Full Wacky

That time a Lum dreamt big. "Take over the world" big.

The game begins on a bizarre revelation: The healing Red Lums, when scared, can turn into Black Lums, fuzzy chaotic beings. More precisely, one of them has become so dangerous it grew arms, and has sworn revenge upon the inhabitants of the Glade of Dreams. The Black Lum, named André (that’s not a scary name! Call yourself, I don’t know, Keith or something! “Oh, André, I’m so scared!” …Said no one, ever!), is quick to plot world domination. He and the Black Lums shear a woolly creature and create disguises. The animal was part of a caravan led by Murphy (voiced by Billy West), who flies off to warn Globox (voiced by John Leguizamo) and Rayman (voiced by David Gasman) of the incoming danger-

...Wait. Voiced by???