We've waited entirely too long to see Rayman in a game again. |
Nice, I'm already 25% through! |
The three games I mentioned are the genesis of Rayman, his humble beginnings as a new platforming mascot from Ubisoft. His first outing in 2D, followed by two adventures in 3D. We know what happened next: Some spin-offs and secondary adventures (Hi, Hoodlum’s Revenge), a long series of mini-game titles (hi, Rabbids), and finally a few highly-stylized titles (hi, Origins and Legends; by the way, if the month is going well, I might tack Legends to the list as I have that one on Steam).
So, today’s game is the one that started it all. Rayman 1, also nicknamed Rayman Forever on Ubisoft’s platform, originally released on September 1st in North America for the PlayStation. The version I’m playing was released on UPlay in 2016, and includes Rayman Designer, a level maker, as well as Rayman by His Fans, a pack of 40 fan-made levels. But what is Rayman 1 like? Oh, you’ll see…
First steps
Alright, so upon starting the game, I get a DOS box screen. This game isn’t feeling old at all! I had to tweak the options for the best experience; I personally settled on using the arrows to move, Z to jump, X to attack and C to taunt. Oh, and the screen?
This small! This isn’t a goddamn GBA, this is a monitor! I feel like playing it in full screen wouldn’t be much better, though! And Rayman is kinda big on the screen, too; Look at the image right underneath, I feel like I don’t see enough of what’s coming up. Would it have hurt to size things so that we had a better view within a level? Is that too much to ask?
It does look pretty, though. |
Considering the difficulty, I could’ve used that bit of extra help! One of the first things I discovered while researching this game is that Rayman 1 allegedly wasn’t playtested, which means that it wasn’t played by someone outside of the development team in an attempt to be balanced or fairer. As a result, the platform game’s difficulty is through the roof, starting somewhat peaceful and easy in the first two or three levels, only to pick up the pace and become ridiculously hard for no good reason from the second world, Band Land, onwards. All of these go-to hard platformers that people talk about: Super Meat Boy, Kaizo Mario, I Wanna Be The Guy? Rayman may well be the father these games never knew they had. Dude’s gotten around.
Gonna charge this one punch just for the little crap on the mini-platform there. (Did I mention that water is instant death in this game?) |
This is an accurate example of a video game where, to progress, you must learn where the traps are (by falling into them), how to avoid them (by trying over and over, and losing all of your lives in the process), and what you need to do to get through (generally involving strategies that speedrunners would invoke later in the history of gaming). Sink over and over, until you swim!
Wait, where were the first steps in that?
First steps (for real this time)
This story, as I learned through the Rayman wiki (as the intro movie describing this is only available in the PS1 version), begins in the valley of the Glade of Dreams. The mystical Great Protoon, source of harmony in the world, is stolen by the unsubtly-named Mr Dark, who also defeats its guardian, Betilla the Fairy. Electoons, tiny creatures living around the Protoon, are captured and caged across the land. Thus the world asks Rayman for help.
When "punching", "running" and "grabbing to ledges" are considered powers... |
"Skill learned! 'Holding on for dear life'". |
In all levels, you can collect orbs known as Blue Tings, which are like coins in Mario; gather 100, and you get an extra life. However, here it’s poorly implemented: When you lose a life, your number of Tings resets to 0. Add to this the difficulty and the fact that Tings aren’t actually that common, and you’ll be lucky if you ever get an extra life that way outside of grinding for them in the early, easy levels. You also need to pay 10 Tings to another character, the Magician, in order to enter bonus stages.
Tings: There's not nearly enough of them. |
I dread what's awaiting past the checkpoint. |
Good thing we can crawl, too! |
There are power-ups in the game: The Speed Fist makes Rayman attack faster, while the Golden Fist makes him deal double damage to enemies. Additionally, he can find floating P circles of two types: One will heal his HP back to max, the other will boost his maximum HP to 5. All powerups last until Rayman loses a life.
You can almost feel the spike down Rayman's back. |
You create flowers like the one on the right in order to move up and avoid the current. |
Oh, and if you want to further torture yourself with an extra quest, you can go around and look for the caged Electoons; 6 cages are hidden in each level. The catch? Most cages will appear only if you fulfill their requirement, some of which are fairly obtuse or tricky to do. Oh, and breaking all 102 cages is mandatory to open the final level, Mr Dark’s Dare. But there’s only so much I am willing to tolerate in regards to difficulty, I’m struggling badly enough to just get to the end, no way I’m doing the 100% completion side-quest on top of that.
Will say this, though: Along with how pretty the whole game looks, enemies and bosses are very well-animated and cool to watch. |
Thank God for cheats.
Fuck this, I’m cheating
Yeah, once the game started getting unbearably tough for no good god damn reason, this became my mindset. As soon as I enter a level? I type “raypoint” to get the max number of HP from the get-go. About to get a Game Over and spend a Continue? Just a little “raylives” and I’m back to 99! I very quickly grew into “Fuck it” mode once I got fed up.
Rayman is having entirely too much fun being chased around by a goddamn golem. |
Spikes. Spikes absolutely everywhere. |
Keep in mind that I think of cheat codes as something that do give players a lot of help with a game, but not something that’s meant to be the “intended way” to play, so to speak, hence why I hate that it feels like the game would be nigh-impossible without them. In order to have even the slightest fighting chance, you need to learn expert gaming strategies like landing at the very edges of platforms, needing pixel-perfect precision for a lot of actions and movements)...
Yikes! Who knew art could be so dangerous! |
Rayman, you must have lost over 300 lives so far, how can you be laughing this much? |
Wait, that's right. To unlock the Candy Château, you have to break all of the Electoon cages in the prior levels, 6 per level for all 17 levels. Considering how grueling and ball-busting the prior levels were? Hell no. I neither have the time, patience, will nor desire to go through this again for 100% completion. Is there a code to unlock all the cages instantly?
Oh, there’s a code alright! …It’s only in the GBA version, and I’m playing the PC version, so there's no way to do that here.
I give up. This game has beaten me. Know when to fold ‘em.
And it’s sad because… (final thoughts)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (For the record, this happened solely because I couldn't catch one ring I had to grip in order to swing onto the platform.) |
Oh hey, I made a cage appear! Still need to find another 90 or so. |
The firely fist, at the beginning of Eat At Joe's, hands down the most infuriating level of all of them. Fuck that stage. |
Several levels also shake the formula, by including new, temporary skills; I already mentioned the magic seed and the firefly fist, but another temporary power-ups lets Rayman fly with his helicopter hair rather than just glide. Levels are designed with an event system; if Rayman passes at precise points, events will trigger, be it the appearance of platforms, enemies, a hidden Electoon cage, and so on. Part of the challenge when hunting the Electoon cages to unlock the Candy Château is to figure out how to trigger them into existence. The Magician’s bonus levels are safe but nonetheless tough platforming challenges in which you must collect all the Tings in a set amount of time.
So, good game? Yeah. But if you try it and rage quit from the sheer difficulty, you can’t say I haven’t warned you. But by all means, if what you’re seeking is a challenge – do try it out. Be prepared, though, as it will have your ass handed to you several hundred times. On the plus side, if that’s exactly what you want, the UPlay version includes the level designer and Rayman by his Fans.
Rayman 1 (AKA Forever) is available on UPlay for 13.49$ CAD, currently down to 3.37$.
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