Rayman Legends (Wii U) Review

I love platformers. I love platformers a lot. Rayman Legends is a damn fine platformer. Set one-hundred years after the fantastic Rayman Origins, Legends finds Rayman and friends being rudely awakened from a century-long nap to see the Glade of Dreams once again overrun by nightmares, now stronger than ever, having created all new threats like armies of dragons and skydiving toads. Legends carries over the wonderful sense of humor and personality from Origins, while introducing a host of creative new levels and experiences. The game’s central hub is an art gallery of sorts that links to all of the game’s various worlds and modes from paintings. There’s a lot to see and do here: besides five core worlds and a sixth bonus world mostly comprised of remixed levels, there are also special daily and weekly challenge stages, a multiplayer football/soccer mini-game known as Kung Foot, a gallery of collectible creatures, and even forty unlockable remastered levels from Origins. I’m going to keep the focus on the core experience here, which is the new worlds the game offers, and it’s also important to note that, as it indicates in the title, I’m reviewing the Wii U version only and in addition to that, the single-player experience in particular (this will all be important later).

The first thing one likely notices about Rayman Legends is its enchanting art direction and visuals, which like Origins, are simply a treat to take in. Legends takes things a step even further than Origins though, incorporating more dynamic lighting and subtle 3D elements into the mix. The result is a beautiful technical achievement for video games. I’m amazed that video games have come so far technologically-speaking and can actually look like this and still move at a solid frame rate and function properly. I suppose it’s cliché to say, but it’s fitting that Legends’ many levels are accessed from easels in an art gallery, since each one can accurately be described as an animated painting. The game’s multi-layered world is rich with detail and texture, from strange tree people walking around in the far background to tiny dewdrops beading on a giant tree root that Rayman just slid down. Enchanting forests and creepy castles, beanstalks rising from palely-lit swamplands, and deep-sea caverns littered with metallic waste all come to life in this ocular banquet. Sometimes I wouldn’t move at a level’s start as I took a blissful moment to take in the game’s rich aesthetics.

Legends feels like a much more high energy, boisterous experience than its predecessor. It feels grand and epic and seems to be constantly moving at a frenetic pace, darting from one zany platforming challenge to the next in a more concise, more focused, and altogether briefer experience than Origins. Part of the game’s feeling of grandeur comes from its titular theme of “legends”, placing a focus on grand set-pieces and gigantic boss battles with massive dragons, toads, and luchadores. Rayman and friends control with a fluidity and motion that makes stringing runs and jumps together into a form of interactive poetry. More levels than ever before focus on an “endless runner” style of platforming, where one false jump or screw up means death (these levels are never frustrating though when one instantly respawns at a nearby checkpoint to try again; the real fun comes from trying to master them without failing though). It’s amazing that these kinds of levels work as well as they do, as one loose screw in the form of a misplaced platform or enemy could have turned them into an unwieldy mess; I can only imagine the amount of rigorous testing required to perfect the design of these challenges. What is amazing about the level design and control of Rayman Legends is how intuitive everything feels: somehow when running up a wall, hopping over pillars of fire backwards and upside down and leaping from bouncy drums to stacks of monsters, I always knew exactly what to do. Every precise jump I made felt exhilarating and sometimes it felt like a miracle that I had survived, but I know that in actuality it’s down to the game’s precisely crafted systems. I quite enjoyed perfecting the “Invasion” challenges, where monsters and gimmicks from another world take over sections of a level, which feel like an evolution of the speedrunning treasure chest chase levels from Origins, but unquestionably the standout running levels in the game are the musical levels. These sublime platforming masterpieces, where one’s every action is timed to the melody of wacky covers of famous songs like “Eye of the Tiger” and “Woo Hoo”, are a revelation, a highlight of the entire platforming genre, nevermind this game, and I’d love to see more stuff like them from this development team or others in the future. These levels are the showstopper, but one shouldn’t ignore a myriad of other fantastic levels as well. Generally, Legends has some of the tightest level design I’ve ever seen in any platformer.

Tying all of this experience’s grandness, energy, and beauty together is a wonderful musical score that is joyfully integrated into the experience in a way that only a video game can accomplish. The musical levels are the obvious example of how this game masterfully integrates music into every facet of the experience, but they are worth mentioning again, and again and again. But this display of musical creativity doesn’t stop with them: the score often changes multiple times in the same level, transitioning between each area to set the mood or situation. Nothing ever sits still In Rayman Legends; everything hinges on a playful interactivity that never lets up. The soundtrack here is grand and sweeping when flying through the air amidst the ruins of a sky castle and moody and mysterious when swimming further into the depths of a sunken industrial complex. It rises in tempo and pace as you land more perfect jumps and get further and further in one of the precise Invasion challenges. It sometimes brings to mind the whimsical animated films of Disney and at other times mimics something you might here in a James Bond film. This is a fun, moving, and brilliant soundtrack. The game’s main theme refused to leave my head every time I turned my Wii U off.

I hope it’s clear at this point that I feel that Legends is a platforming joy, but this otherwise fantastic experience is tragically marred by one very irritating flaw: the Murfy levels. Murfy is a fairy-like character that shows up in a handful of specific levels and that the player controls with the GamePad’s touch screen and uses to manipulate certain elements in the environment, such as cutting ropes or moving platforms. If one is playing cooperative multiplayer (which supports up to five players), one player would control Murfy with the GamePad while the other(s) would platform through a level (players can also control Murfy even in regular stages in multiplayer), but in single-player, an AI-controlled character automatically does the platforming in these levels while the player solely controls Murfy. I do not like the Murfy levels. I found these levels to be boring at best and teeth-gratingly frustrating at worst. It’s hard for me to put my finger on what exactly makes these levels not work. Maybe it’s my extreme disdain for when shoehorned gimmicks bring down a great game that would be so much better without them, maybe it’s the fact that what is clearly something designed around multiplayer has been forced into the single-player experience at its detriment. But I think what it really comes down to is that these levels make me feel like I’m watching someone else play the game while I tinker with some puzzle-game off in the corner on my low-res GamePad screen. It’s about expectations: I expect to be playing a fun platforming game, and when I go from a great platforming stage to a level where I do none of the platforming, and have to try to get a decent, but certainly not great AI that sometimes doesn’t behave like a rational human player do what I want it to do by manipulating elements in the level around it, it becomes very frustrating, and has no place in a platformer as fluid and fun and beautiful as Legends…at least in single-player. I can imagine the Murfy levels being quite fun with a group of friends, on both sides of the equation, and I think they’re a neat use of the GamePad in that regard. It’s just a shame that they were shoehorned into the single-player, and that they’re frequent enough (though thankfully still in the minority) to seriously intrude on my enjoyment of this game. Legends already feels a bit light on the number of new core levels, and the Murfy levels’ inclusion certainly compounds this issue.

I’m aware that the single-player Murfy levels play out differently in the versions of Legends that don’t have access to a touchscreen, such as the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. In these versions, the player apparently actually does the platforming themselves and Murfy is controlled by a few button prompts. I chose to purchase and play the Wii U version because that was the original version of the game before Ubisoft delayed it and ported it to other systems, and therefore the Wii U version is the developers’ original vision for the game, which is what I wanted to experience. That said, there’s a decent chance I’d enjoy the Murfy levels more if I was the one actually doing the platforming, so I would have at least appreciated having the option to play them this alternate way in the Wii U version. Perhaps the ideal situation, however, might have been having these levels off to the side in a separate co-op specific section of the game with more traditional levels in their place for single-player.

The Murfy levels are my main gripe with Legends, but there are a few other points that I want to address that keep Legends from being truly all that it could be to me, and that ultimately make Origins hold perhaps a slightly higher place in my heart, although I’m still debating that (also Legends cheats by including levels from Origins). Let me try to explain. There are fewer main worlds in Legends than in Origins, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but even with so few worlds, some of them felt a bit underwhelming to me, or at least didn’t live up to a lot of their potential. I love the idea of the worlds themed around the Day of the Dead and Greek mythology, but the former largely felt like a retread of the food-themed world from Origins and the latter, which had so much potential in a game supposedly themed around legendary monsters, is largely set in featureless catacombs and lava-filled caverns that are fairly boring aesthetically, at least compared to the feast of riches the rest of the game (and Origins) provides. Where were the full levels set on a Mount Olympus-like environment, or the battles against Rayman-styled Greek gods and monsters? We only get a glimpse at this potential in the world’s boss fight stage and in its opening stage, which is *sigh* a Murfy level. Maybe I sound petty, and ironically the Greek-themed world has some of the funnest levels from a pure level-design standpoint, but this is simply how I felt playing the game; perhaps Legends was too hyped up for me, or perhaps the inspired worlds in Origins simply set the bar too high. The very big exception to my disappointment in the game’s world line-up is “20,000 Lums Under the Sea”, which is a bizarre and wonderful mixture of deep-sea industrial environments and stealth elements all wrapped up in a presentation inspired by secret agent clichés. It’s a bunch of my favorite video game tropes all wrapped up into one atmospheric package and is not only my favorite world in Legends but one of the coolest worlds in any platformer I’ve ever played. As a side note, I also love the underwater world from Origins; these games do underwater platforming damn well not only in terms of control and mechanics but also in regards to level design and aesthetics.

Speaking of Origins and the reasons why I might prefer it to Legends: besides not having any Murfy levels to suffer, I loved just about every world in Origins and although they may have generally relied more on familiar platformer tropes than Legends, they used these themes in captivating ways and I found most if not all of these lands to be creative and really fleshed-out. Origins’ own food-themed world in particular combines several different themes and tells a sort of story through its levels. I love that kind of stuff in platformers. Origins also simply feels like more of an adventure. There was a world map. There was progression. It felt like a journey through the Glade of Dreams that covered a wide range of territory. Legends is neat and focused; its levels are all neatly lined up in a row in the art gallery, and players can tackle them in a somewhat nonlinear fashion. Therefore, Legends feels more like a collection of awesome levels that Rayman and friends are just having fun with than an actual adventure to save the world like in Origins. Honestly, I can appreciate both approaches and I can see some preferring one or the other, but I think ultimately Origins’ approach just leaves more of an impact on me personally. Origins also has this unique atmosphere to it that I love, but then again I also love the grand and energetic atmosphere that Legends has. I guess I could compare the merits of both games here all day, but when it comes down to it, I feel Origins has stronger worlds and feels more like a story, and that combined with no Murfy levels makes me currently lean a little more in its direction.

Despite those dang Murfy levels and my other nitpicks about unfulfilled expectations from the game’s worlds, I still love Rayman Legends. Even though a Murfy level might make me rage during one moment due to some utterly stupid move on the part of the AI, the next expertly-constructed platforming level would make me grin from ear to ear and forget all about it. Despite the stuff that dragged the experience down in places for me, Legends’ best moments filled me with visceral joy like few other games can do. The fact that I find Origins to be the overall more complete and fulfilling experience in many ways and yet I still basically like both games equally is a testament to just how strong the strong parts of Legends are. This element of so much of the game being so good makes the stupid Murfy bits all the more frustrating to me, but oh well, I’ll shut up about that now. The bottom line is that Rayman Legends is a zany, superbly fun bundle of imagination and joy in these dark and depraved times of ours and you should play it. When one considers the inclusion of the forty levels from Rayman Origins in addition to the core Legends levels, plus Kung Foot and the daily and weekly challenge stages, the amount of imagination and wondrous fun to be found in this experience is, indeed, nothing short of legendary.

Plus I will never not smile when listening to this song.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game (PS3) Review

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game is a celebration of retro gaming. I know similar statements has been thrown around a lot given the recent surge of retro revival games, but Scott Pilgrim, with its old school beat em’ up game design, gorgeous pixel art, rockin’ chiptune soundtrack, and countless references and in-jokes, is so comprehensive in its execution that I feel it deserves special mention. All of this is very fitting given the source material, and Pilgrim is indeed a wonderful realization of the world from Bryan Lee O’Malley’s excellent series of graphic novels (they’re one of my favorite things ever, so you should seriously check them out). The game manages to capture the spirit and style of the graphic novels and successfully translates a story based on the plot of a retro video game into an actual retro video game (or at least a retro-style one).

Scott Pilgrim: The Game is a classic beat em’ up a la River City Ransom, Final Fight, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, and Streets of Rage where you move from left to right, beating up hordes of “bad guys” on your way to a showdown with a fearsome boss at the end of each stage. Like River City Ransom (which is one the clearest inspirations for the Scott Pilgrim story as well as for this game’s design), Pilgrim is also part RPG, where building stats such as “strength” and “defense” by buying food, drinks, and other items is crucial to a player’s survival. As they fight the many hipsters, brawlers, bouncers, ninjas, and robots, players gradually level up, gaining a new skill with each level, such as a neat diving kick and a dodge roll. Because leveling up and acquiring money are both tied to mowing down mooks, expect to do a lot of grinding here, especially early in the game. This is one of Scott Pilgrim’s biggest flaws: it’s not an easy game to just jump into and immediately start enjoying like many of the classics that it calls back to (at least if one is playing single player, like I did; having three other friends to join you makes the adventure easier, I’m sure). This isn’t because the game is all that particularly difficult, only because your character (choose from Scott, Kim, Stephen Stills, and Ramona, in addition to one unlockable character and two DLC characters) is so overwhelmingly underpowered at the start of the game. I struggled to get through the first stage on the normal “Rough & Tough” difficulty and it was only with a lot of patience and after leveling up sufficiently and getting enough money to build my stats that I was finally able to move on. I did try switching to the easiest difficulty setting to initially get through the first level (and switched back to normal for the rest of the game after that), but I’m not sure if it really was all that easier, or if it was just simpler because I’d already built up my stats quite a bit on normal. I think it was mainly the latter, because I replayed the first level on normal afterwards and was able to get through it without much trouble. Things only get tougher as the game goes on and I had to fiddle around in the first few levels for a bit until I had good enough stats to not continuously get pummeled in the later levels. Once I was leveled and powered up though, the game became a breeze until the final level and even then, with just a little more stat boosting, it wasn’t too bad. All this grinding didn’t take too long but I’d rather just take a more straightforward path through a beat em’ up like Scott Pilgrim, not meander about the first few levels and waste time grinding.

                But let’s talk about the good stuff now. Right away Scott Pilgrim brought me back to the countless times I played the Sega Genesis Streets of Rage titles (especially Streets 2, one of my favorite games of all time) and other beat em’ ups like the 2003 retro-inspired Viewtiful Joe on the GameCube. Appeals to nostalgia are surely overused in video games today, but Pilgrim does nostalgia well, constantly injecting me with a warm dose of the essence of simpler times. The moment that the music of the first level kicks in, I felt at home. Scott Pilgrim features a fantastic soundtrack by electronic and chiptune artist Anamanaguchi. While some songs definitely stand out more than others for me, there is no denying the retro quality on display here. Just listen to some of these. The sound here is retro but also incorporates elements that couldn’t be done on an 8 or 16-bit console; it feels familiar but also original.

One of the aspects of Scott Pilgrim that struck me right away, besides the music, is the beautiful, detailed artwork. The environments in the game are lovingly painted with copious detail and are populated by brilliantly animated sprites. Familiar faces from the Scott Pilgrim books can be seen on the sidelines of each stage and seeing the likes of Stacey Pilgrim and Wallace Wells and even less central characters such as Joseph hanging out in the various locales of Toronto is not only really cool for a fan of the novels such as myself, but also lends a cohesion and a lot of personality to the world in the game. All the sprites are full of energy, and in classic video game fashion can be seen swaying and bopping in place, as if everyone is dancing to the killer soundtrack. Player character and enemy sprites are equally vibrant (I especially love Scott’s overly-enthusiastic idle animation and his end of stage celebration). This attention to detail carries over into every facet of the game, from humorous descriptions of the items Scott can purchase to graffiti and posters decorating the borders of a stage. As I mentioned, the game is also full of references to the retro gaming golden age of the late 80s and early 90s: there’s nods to Mario, Zelda, Mega Man, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, all of the aforementioned beat em’ ups, and much more. All of it is here and often in some unexpected and hilarious places that made me chuckle to myself more than a few times. If you’re a retro nerd like me, you simply must play this game.

The Super Mario World-inspired world map

Scott Pilgrim is a very solid game, but it could be more enjoyable to play. Character movement, especially at the start of the game, feels stiff and slow. I played the game on PlayStation 3 with a standard DualShock 3 controller and there’s an option to use either the D-pad or the left analog stick for movement. Personally, I always find the D-pad to feel more natural for 2D games like this, but unfortunately only the analog stick has an option to make running the default movement option, whereas running with the D-pad requires a clunky-feeling double tap. Movement becomes more fluid with new skills and an increase in the speed statistic, but never as much as I would have liked it to be. I often found myself struggling just to get away from attacks and position myself where I wanted to be in the game. There were also several times where I thought I was exactly lined up with an enemy correctly, but wasn’t and would fail to attack them. This perspective problem has always been inherent to 2D beat em’ ups like Scott Pilgrim, but this issue in conjunction with other issues can be very frustrating. For example, Scott has two different attacks in the game that require the same button inputs, but one attack is triggered if Scott is close to a downed enemy while the other occurs at any time besides this situation. I would frequently find myself wanting to pummel a downed enemy, but not be lined up with them correctly because of the wonky perspective and instead perform the other attack (which happens to be a charging attack that sometimes landed me in a bottomless pit during these instances). This problem could have been addressed by simply having different button inputs for these two attacks. It also doesn’t help that the AI in the game likes to gang up on the player, sometimes pitting them in inescapable hell cycles. One particularly annoying moment was in the second level, where I found myself pinned between two duos of enemies on either side of me, all four of them constantly spamming projectile attacks that kept constantly knocking me down as soon as I got up. It’s safe to say that Scott Pilgrim made me rage more than once thanks to what felt to me like cheap design.

Despite some drawbacks, Scott Pilgrim can still be a blast to play. It’s an experience that gets funner the more you play it and build your character’s stats and experience. At its core, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game does the graphic novels as well as retro gaming justice with both an experience that is a loving homage and something special on its own. While watching the credits roll and listening to a medley of the game’s fantastic musical tracks, I felt a great sense of satisfaction, even if Scott’s ending was a little lame (apparently, playing as Ramona gets the player the “true ending”, or at least the one that is parallel with the endings of the graphic novel and film; why not give Scott this ending as well?). In some alternate universe where the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series never existed and instead Scott Pilgrim was a video game that came out in the early 90s, I’m sure that game would greatly resemble Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game. In other words, I’m pretty sure Scott Pilgrim himself would love this game.

Rayman Origins (PS3) Review

Rayman Origins is an insane game. A delightful, charming, funny, quirky, unique, bizarre, brilliant, crazy, insane game.

Origins is a celebration of the absurd: a wild and crazy mixture of the funkiest corners of human imagination. I’d never played a Rayman game before this one and have never had much interest in the series. After playing Origins, I kind of regret that. The back-story of Rayman’s world is actually quite interesting to me. A god-like being known as the “Bubble Dreamer” dreams Rayman’s world and all of its inhabitants into existence, and this creature also lives with his creations, who spend their days lounging on top of a giant tree. One day, their loud snoring attracts the ire of their underworld neighbors, the Livid Dead, a group of crotchety zombie grannies. When Rayman, his best friend Globox, and the rest of the gang refuse to quiet down, the Livid Dead unleash war upon the Glade of Dreams and send an army of the Bubble Dreamer’s nightmares to attack.

After freeing himself from a cage, Rayman and his friends set out to free the Electoons, which are the “stuff of dreams” that hold the Glade together, and the Nymphs, guardian fairies who protect each land, from the nightmares. The story serves as a back-drop for a beautiful and imaginative landscape. I was a bit disappointed that most of the game’s worlds fit the incredibly worn-out themes of “forest”, “desert”, “ice”, and “water” (and follow Nintendo's Rule of Mario 3 by having the second world be the desert world), but the level designs themselves, both visual and gameplay-wise, more than make up for this. Also, in addition to the numerous individual levels in the game being expertly-designed, many worlds combine different themes to produce something truly special. The desert world, for example, is both desert and music-themed, and everything Rayman hops and bops on emits some kind of tune or note. Enemies sing and flute snakes fly through the air. The player makes their own music that combines with the background music for a richly sensory experience. The ice world, meanwhile, combines a frozen surface paradise that acts as a refrigerator full of canned goods, frozen fruit, and ice-skating dragon waiters, with a fiery, oven-like underworld that’s home to dragon chefs and fire-breathing sausage creatures.
 

Rayman and friends lounging on the Snoring Tree


The Glade of Dreams is brought to life by incredible art direction and animation. Rayman Origins is honestly one of the prettiest games I’ve ever played, both in terms of the magnificent painted environments, full of numerous details in both the foreground and background, and the cartoonish, animated characters that live in this world. The cartoony inhabitants of the Glade of Dreams combined with the beautifully rendered naturalistic environments create a vibrant and eye-catching universe. At any point in time, the game is honestly akin to viewing a painting in a museum. Technically-speaking, even after leaning as close as I could to the TV screen, I couldn’t find a single jagged edge or flaw with the visuals. They’re technically perfect.

The music and sound design is also wondrous. Between the varied and unique tracks that accompany the game’s world to the hilarious sound effects and auditory touches in the game, such as platforms releasing drum beats when Rayman lands on them to the Lums, the collectible critters of the game, waking up and singing at certain points, the Glade of Dreams is truly alive. The music is at times beautifully environmental and natural-sounding, at others gleefully silly and downright hilarious, at still others potently atmospheric, oftentimes appropriately upbeat, and finally just plain epic.



Origins is a visual marvel

As a platformer, Rayman trims a lot of the unnecessary, outdated components of the genre. Gone are frivolous “lives” and in their place are unlimited tries and frequent checkpoints. This allows the designers to create zany and immensely challenging scenarios where it doesn’t matter if the player fails a million times. The treasure chest chase levels in particular and the game’s final secret level (which is one of my favorite levels in platformer history) require precise, pitch-perfect timing and platforming to be overcome, and are incredibly satisfying to finally conquer after many, many attempts.

Rayman also blends its collecting, another staple of the platformer genre, very intelligently with its game design. Instead of collecting a bunch of coins that only increase a needless life count, Rayman tasks the player with collecting the golden Lums and much of the challenge in the game comes from finding these creatures and trying to maximize their numbers at every turn. The game does a nice job of incentivizing the player to collect these critters as at the end of each level, their Lum totals are tallied up and traded for Electoons which can then be used to unlock new character skins and secret levels. The player has to pay close attention to every detail in a level to collect every last Lum and meet each stage's strict goals for gaining Electoons. Also, hidden in each stage are cages full of trapped Electoons. Time trials also add extra challenge and where I usually don’t bother with them in most games, I found that it was fun to replay the levels in Origins in two different ways: either taking it slow and trying to find every hidden collectible or breezing through them to optimize my time. These time trials also reward the player with Electoons. Each level is well-designed both as a traditional platforming challenge and in regards to hiding its collectibles.


Wonderfully absurd in the best way possible

Rayman doesn’t control quite as tightly as I’d like, but the game still plays very well. I found Rayman’s hovering move, where he can float in the air for a short time by spinning his hair, to be a bit finicky and unreliable at times, as I’d swear I’d press the correct button, but would go falling to my doom. Also, on some of the harder levels (like the aforementioned endless runner-style treasure chest chases), sometimes it can be a bit frustrating if the game requires pin-point precision platforming, but it’s not clear right away what needs to be done or how much pressure needs to be applied to that jump button. This is definitely a trial and error game in many situations.

I’m also not a big fan of the levels where Rayman boards a gigantic mosquito to do battle with waves of enemies in a “shoot em' up”-style side-scrolling shooter. These levels were a nice way to add variety to the gameplay at first, and can be fun at times, but as the game went on, I found them to be a bit too prevalent and I found myself becoming tired of them very quickly. These levels just aren’t as engaging to me as the traditional platforming stages and I usually just tried to “get through them” so I could move on to the next regular level. If I wanted to play a shmup, I’d play one, but Rayman is a platformer and having this different genre forced on me is annoying. In some platformers, these different kinds of levels work, such as the mine-cart levels in Donkey Kong Country and even the swimming levels in Rayman Origins, which actually control well and are beautifully atmospheric, but the shooter levels are just a bit dull and repetitive. Of course, traditional platforming is still far and away the most prevalent kind of gameplay in Origins, so these stages are only a minor annoyance.

The shooter levels aren't my favorite, despite having gigantic chicken bosses

Origins has plenty of levels to enjoy but does suffer from some odd pacing. After completing the first five worlds, four more worlds simultaneously unlock and can be done in any order, but these four worlds are really just expansions of the game’s four main territories that have already been visited. It feels a bit redundant going back to these familiar world themes again and as a result the game has a bit of a “dragged-out” feeling. These “new worlds” contain completely new level designs, but the theming is familiar. Due to this, even though the game technically contains ten full worlds of levels, it still feels like there aren’t enough unique world themes, especially because what’s here is such high quality and I would have liked to see how creative the team could have gotten with even more unique worlds. I guess that’s what Rayman Legends is for though.

Rayman Origins is both delightfully absurd and wonderfully creative in its story, art direction, music, and level designs and it’s an all-around raucously fun platformer. It’s also one of the funniest games I’ve experienced, not because it’s full of overt jokes and dialogue, but due to the game’s oddball characters, lively animations, strange and magnificent music and sound effects, and the charming way in which the inhabitants of the Glade of the Dreams all speak in a gibberish, Pig Latin-like language. The hilarious way all of the characters, friends and enemies alike, carry themselves and just the whole way the game presents itself and how it never takes anything seriously leads to a refreshing and unique sense of humor prevalent throughout the whole experience. Origins’ gameplay isn’t quite as perfect as that of some of the other platformers I’ve played, but it is still very responsive and near-enough perfection that it's not a damning issue in the slightest. Besides, the game highly succeeds in its genre thanks to its creative and funky levels and aesthetics. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the bosses in this game are massive, beastly, and beautifully revolting creations. Origins is a product of pure human imagination and a powerful demonstration of the kind of visual, musical, and interactive euphoric mixture that video games can bring to a player. It’s a celebration of nonsense of the best kind, and an experience that will stay in my heart for a while to come.
 

E3 2013 Wrap-up

 

E3 2013 has come and gone and I’m experiencing that post-E3 blues, which is kind of like the day after Christmas, except instead of having all your new toys to play with, you need to wait several months or years to play all those sweet new video games. Overall, I was impressed this year, certainly much more than last year. In addition to the exciting battle royale between Microsoft and Sony’s next gen machines, I just saw a lot of great-looking games this year that I genuinely want to play.

Between Sony’s ultra knock-out Monday night, to the unveiling of the new Super Smash Bros., to exciting next gen games like Metal Gear Solid V, Watch Dogs, The Division, and The Witcher 3, this was an E3 to remember. This post is basically my “best in show” awards. There were several games that stood out to me, and my wishlist is now bursting at the seam with shiny upcoming titles, so I’d like to honor some of these and talk about what excited me, disappointed me, and overall impressed me the most.

Best Press Conference: Sony

This is the easiest pick on this list. Microsoft set Sony’s victory up with its poorly received initial Xbox One unveiling, mixed messaging about the console’s restrictions after the unveiling, and its failure to address these concerns at its E3 press conference as well as finally unveiling the price of the console to be $499. Sony absorbed all this information and went straight for Microsoft’s throat. It’s a little strange when the most exciting part of Sony’s press conference is when Jack Tretton took the stage to basically tell us that the PS4 was going to do everything the PS3 did, and not have any additional hang-ups or restrictions. But it was the precedent that Microsoft set and the controversy that they sparked that made these assurances necessary. I respect Sony because they addressed the concerns on everyone's minds directly and up-front on-stage, instead of sending out mixed messages before finally sending out a press release. Sony revealing that its new machine would cost $100 less than Microsoft’s was just the final twist of the knife in their competitor’s side.

I wouldn’t have been so impressed with Sony if they’d just addressed these concerns and had great messaging, but they also just showed a constant stream of great games and even had some exciting surprises. Sony’s ardent support of indie developers is something I’ve always admired about them, and they passionately pushed this support by having a parade of indie developers take to the stage and demonstrate unique game after game, many of which looked like something I’d want to play. Sony also didn’t ignore its current hardware and made a point to push PS3’s great lineup this year. They showed interesting new IPs like Rain and The Order: 1886. They surpruised us all by rebranding the long-lost Final Fantasy Versus XIII as Final Fantasy XV, immediately followed by the long-awaited announcement of Kingdom Hearts III. They demonstrated the PS4’s processing power with Quantic Dream’s Dark Sorcerer tech demo. They showed fantastic-looking (if a little buggy) gameplay of popular upcoming titles like Assassin’s Creed IV and Watch Dogs, as well as finally unveiling gameplay of Bungie’s new, greatly-anticipated title, Destiny. It was just a great show and got me excited about the PS4, which is something that Microsoft has failed to do with Xbox One and even Nintendo has partly failed to do with their incredibly safe-looking line-up of games for the Wii U. This was Sony’s show and they nailed it. I still don't feel the need to pre-order a PS4 and get it day one; at this point Sony is simply selling the better story. I think in the long run, Xbox One isn’t going to be as evil as everyone thinks and everything might even out. For now though, Sony is the leading brand with great messaging and a solid, varied line-up.

Best Trailer: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

I already wrote a lot about it in my E3 Day 2 Impressions post, so I’m not going to dwell on it much here, but the extended trailer for MGSV is beautiful-looking, disturbing, thrilling, and most of all gets me interested and excited about the game. It’s just a very-well put together window into the game and makes me want to go back and play MGS3 and Peace Walker to prepare for the new release.

Runners-up: Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, X

Biggest Surprise: Mega Man in Super Smash Bros.

I was hoping for a big surprise during the Nintendo Direct Tuesday morning (HD Metroid please?) and while Nintendo’s announcements did surprise me in some not-entirely positive ways, their biggest surprise came from Super Smash Bros. We knew Super Smash Bros. was going to make an appearance, but not only was I pleasantly surpised by how far along the game looks and how much information and footage of it we got, the biggest surprise came when Mega Man joined the battle at the tail-end of the game’s trailer. Nintendo often forgets that it has in the past mastered the art of delivering a “megaton” Christmas-morning surprise at E3 with moments like the Twilight Princess reveal and the Super Smash Bros. Brawl reveal so it was exciting to see the company once again catch me off-guard and get my heart pumping in a mostly-otherwise tame E3 presence.

Runners-up: Microsoft opening its press conference with Metal Gear Solid V, Kingdom Hearts III announcement

Biggest Disappointment: Retro Studios’ Mystery Project is Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Many people are saying how great the new Donkey Kong Country game looks and don’t understand the disappoint many fans are feeling around it. Yes, I’m sure Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze will be another great platformer, but what these people must understand is the hype that was surrounding Retro Studios’ next project. For over two years now, the developer of the Metroid Prime series and Donkey Kong Country Returns has had a supposedly ambitious, mysterious Wii U project in the works. They hired talent from Naughty Dog, id Software, and Vigil games. I had also heard that Retro said that it was “a project everyone wants us to do”, as well as received an assurance from Reggie Fils-Aime that Retro was working on a "fantastic project". Speculation ran wild. Rumors flew around about Retro working on Zelda, about a new Star Fox, about a return to Metroid, and even about a crossover of those two. Or would it be a new IP from the studio? The fact that Nintendo kept this project so mysterious and hidden only built the excitement.

To find out that this project is just a sequel to Donkey Kong Country Returns (and make no mistake, this is the only game Retro is currently working on) is incredibly underwhelming. Far from the ambitious, exciting game that the Wii U sorely needs right now, this new game is just another playing-it-safe platformer under Nintendo’s belt. I’m glad Retro is doing what they want, I just wish this project wasn't hyped up so much. Does that make it the current internet culture's and my own fault for being disappointed? I suppose, but the damage is done and knowing that doesn't make this news any less of a let-down.

Runners-up: Nintendo replacing its press conference with a laggy, terrible-quality Nintendo Direct stream, still no The Last Guardian

Best-Looking Game (Graphically): Tom Clancy’s The Division

I wasn’t really convinced that the games I was seeing were truly “next gen” until I saw Ubisoft’s ambitious new title The Division. Set in a dying, sprawling modern day city, The Division’s gritty environment truly comes to life in a detailed, life-like ecosystem built with the newest technology developers have at their disposal. Seeing the game is action is really something else and taking into account the fact that the game is boasting a massive, seamless online RPG environment hits the message that this game can only be done on next gen hardware home.

Runners-up: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Most Ambitious Game: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

In addition to being a gorgeous-looking game, The Witcher 3 sounds like the most ambitious next gen offering out there. Featuring a multi-region open world that is supposed to be 35 times the size of The Witcher 2’s world (I've never played The Witcher 2, but that's gotta be pretty big) and that features living, breathing communities with NPCs going about their daily lives, a dynamic night/day and weather system where the player can die if they take a boat out onto stormy seas, and vibrant, beautiful visuals, The Witcher 3 truly feels like a project that is the poster boy the next generation of interactive worlds. The game will also have a morality system that isn’t completely black and white and one where actions can have consequences that aren’t felt unil much later in the game. I can’t wait to see what can be accomplished in the video game medium in the coming years and The Witcher 3 sounds like an exciting step in the furthering of interactive narratives and universes.

Runners-up: Tom Clancy’s The Division, Watch Dogs

Most Unique Game: Octodad: Dadliest Catch

Ok, so I recently found out that Octodad: Dadliest Catch is actually a sequel, but whatever, the concept of this game is so ridiculous and original, I can’t not pick it. You play as an octopus who is pretending to be a human and your goal is to keep your family from finding out what you really are. Gameplay involves controlling Octodad like a marionette as he fumbles around and struggles to use his tentacles to carry about normal, everyday human tasks. The more awkward and clumsy Octodad becomes, the more suspicious the humans become of what he really is. Quirky and funny, Octodad is a game I’d just really like to try for myself.

Runners-up: Rain, Murdered: Soul Suspect

Game That I’m Most Excited About: Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS

Much of Nintendo’s line-up, while full of fun-looking and solid games, is very safe. Smash Bros. isn’t particularly an exception since its gameplay looks very similar to past games, but Super Smash Bros. games are always a massive event and garner lots of hype surrounding them. Super Smash Bros. Brawl was one of the hypiest games of all time thanks to the Super Smash Bros. Dojo website that revealed a new feature from the game every single day leading up to the game’s release. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS is looking to continue this trend of hype and I’m already much more excited for the game than I thought I’d be. The inclusion of Mega Man, the upgraded, beautiful HD graphics, and the promise of another feature-rich, expansive game have me full of anticipation and I just can’t wait to see how the game will turn out and what the team behind it is planning on adding to the Smash Bros. universe.

Runners-up: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Game of the Show: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Even though only select journalists got to see the game running behind closed doors at E3, from the way they describe the game, The Witcher 3 has my imagination on fire more than any other game I’ve seen at E3 this year. Described as having a beautiful, massive open world to explore, both horseback and boat exploration, lively NPCs with their own routines, a story with deep moral consequences, dynamic weather and day/night cycles, and engaging combat, The Witcher 3 sounds like the Zelda game I might never get. I’ve never played a Witcher game before, so I can only hope I won’t be lost if I try to play this one. In any case, the game sounds ambitious and engaging and if it can live up to half its promises, it still seems like it’s going to be something really special.

It’s clear which games stood out to me the most this year, but there are also many more that I’m looking forward to. The more I see of and think about Nintendo’s line-up, the more excited I become about their games even though it still seems like an incredibly safe roster of popular franchise iterations with a couple of new gimmicks added in and not the ambitious reinventions I expect from Nintendo. I will say that HD graphics had given Nintendo’s old games new life in a sense, and the brand’s colorful worlds really pop in games like Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, Pikmin 3, and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. These games almost can compete with the other developers’ hyper-realisitc next-gen offerings because Nintendo’s virbrant, whimsical aesthetics don’t need to have photo-realism to look pretty (and we’ve also never seen Mario and Link in HD before now). There are also other games like Beyond: Two Souls and The Witness that I’m keeping my eye on.

All in all, this year was a great show. It wasn’t the best E3 I’ve ever seen, but it had far more memorable moments than last year, and its line-up of games also offered more variety than just a slew of shooters and bloody neck-stabbers (although those games were still present). I’m excited to see what the next generation will bring and how video games will continue to evolve on their road to unlocking their true potential. There are tons of brilliant games coming this year and into next year, and I for one am excited and optimistic for the gaming future.

The long wait for next year’s E3 begins and the dates are already set. See you Tuesday June 10 through Thursday June 12, 2014, my favorite, hypest week of the year.

E3 2013 Day 3 Impressions (Is it Over Already?)

It’s the final day of E3 and there are still plenty of games out there that I want to talk about. Once again I’m going to spotlight a bunch of games that stood out to me or that I’m really excited to learn more about and/or play.

First up, it’s Octodad: Dadliest Catch! I thought LocoCycle might be the most ridiculous thing at this year’s E3, but that award actually has to go to a game that had me cracking up laughing at Sony’s press conference Monday night. In the midst of all these grand current and next generation games like The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls, Killzone: Shadow Fall, The Order: 1886 and interesting, emotional indie games like Rain, there comes this bizarre footage of an octopus in a suit fumbling around and knocking stuff over.

Yes, this is a thing

Apparently, the game is about an octopus who has infiltrated human life and is pretending to be a human father with a human family. Of course, it’s your job to make sure no one finds out your big secret: that you’re actually an octopus! This is the most ridiculous concept for a video game I’ve ever heard and once again I just have to admire the versatility of this medium. First there’s Shadow of the Colossus and now there’s Octodad! The way that Octodad moves around and slinks and stumbles through obstacles is simply hilarious.

Next I want to say a word on the DuckTales remake supposedly coming this summer. I had the pleasure of finally playing the original NES DuckTales just recently and I enjoyed it very much. It’s the kind of old-school adventure platformer that draws you in for a night of secret-finding, great gameplay, and terrific old-school 8-bit tunes. One of the reasons I finally decided that I should play this old-school gem was hearing about the upcoming DuckTales: Remastered. Based on the remake’s trailer, it looks fantastic, with brilliant animations that bring a cartoon world to life and exciting recreations of the game’s classic environments and obstacles.

Scrooge McDuck is back!

However, I’m not entirely digging what I’m seeing in this gameplay footage. While I think it’s cool that they brought back the old voice actors from the cartoon and have added in a little more story to the game, making it feel like an episode of the cartoon, I’m not a fan of how often the game seems to pause for lines of dialogue from the characters. It seems quite annoying for the action to pause so often in a simple game like this every time you pick up one of those coins. Speaking of which, did they have to add in an asinine coin-collecting fetch quest just to pad out the Amazon level more? Is there going to be something like this added to every level? What’s the purpose? One of the sections of the Amazon level shown in that footage above was an optional secret in the original game, but in the remake it’s mandatory and also seems much easier to find because of this. DuckTales is great for all its little secret areas and well-built stages that encourage the player to explore and discover every treasure. This remake seems to placing less of an emphasis on those simple joys and more on building a story surrounding the levels that unfortunately, from what I’ve seen, seems to hurt the flow and simple fun of play. I’m sure the final game will turn out to be an interesting, beautiful-looking remake, I’m just not so sure it was be as fun to play as the original. Hopefully the dialogue is at least skippable.

One triple AAA title that I forgot to mention in my last post is Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. I’ve always been interested in the Assassin’s Creed titles but have never gotten around to fully playing one. Now there are so many games in the series and it would be hard to know where to begin. When I first heard about the announcement of Black Flag, I simply groaned and thought: “Another one? So soon after the last?”

After seeing the gameplay in motion though, I gotta say, I actually want to play this game. I’m a huge fan of stealth and watching the main character trail somebody into the jungle and stealthily crouching through vegetation as a secret meeting unfolds looks like a lot of fun to me. But most importantly of all, the game is about pirates! I love pirates. I took a class in college solely dedicated to pirates and it was a lot of fun. The atmosphere and historical period going on in the gameplay demo speaks to me and this might just be an Assassin’s Creed game that I really want to play.

Blackbeard is your bro in this game, apparently

While we’re on the topic of big AAA demos, I want to quickly highlight Ubisoft’s big new reveal, Tom Clancy’s The Division. The game is described as an “online open world RPG”, but the game is unique to the online, big open world RPG genre in its setting. Instead of taking place is a Middle Earth-esque fantasy landscape, the game is taking place in a modern day, disease-infested, crumbling cityscape. I’m not big on multiplayer experiences, but what really impressed me about this game is the environment.

This is next gen

The attention to detail and beautifully gritty landscape really look like a “next gen” game, and the way the developer describes the game as having all sorts of events that the player can ignore or take part in with other players, all in one giant, seamless, dynamic world is really impressive. I don’t know if I’ll ever play the game, as like I said I’m not big on multiplayer things, but the game is worth paying attention to for its technical excellence and original position among big, open world RPGs.

Speaking of next gen-defining games, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt looks and sounds incredible. I’ve never played a Witcher game before, but I’ve always heard good things. This next installment, containing a multi-region, vast, living, breathing open world seems like an amazing RPG and Keza MacDonald from IGN.com makes it sound like a dream game for me. It’s now moved to the top of my list and is just more of a reason to buy a next gen console for me. In fact, The Witcher 3 actually won IGN’s People’s Choice Award this year.

I want to play this

Project Spark is an interesting game that was shown off at Microsoft’s press conference this year. The game is described by its developer as an “open world digital canvas.” Perhaps the game can be compared to something like Minecraft where the player is given creative freedom to mold the world around them, but the game also adds the ability (it seems) to set up narratives that exist within their world and continue to morph their world in real time as these stories unfold around them. I’m still confused on what exactly the game is and how it all plays, but it certainly looks intriguing.

What exactly is this game?

Murdered: Soul Suspect is a detective game in which the player plays as a ghost who has to solve his own murder. I love this concept and I also love a good mystery. The game certainly has my interest, enough to watch that nearly half-hour-long gameplay demo I just linked without getting bored, and I’ll certainly be keeping my eye on it. From the way the developer talks, it seems like the team behind the game is putting a lot of effort into building an original afterlife realm called the Dusk with its own rules and boundaries while also placing the game in the very real-world location of Salem, Massachusetts (a fictional version of it at least). My only worry is that the game sounds very guided because the developers are placing so much importance on telling a linear story, so I’m curious how much player agency will actually matter in the grand scheme of things. 

The scene of your own death

I also love the concept of the enemies in the game and how the ghostly realm that the main character finds himself in is not as safe as it appears. The tortured wraith enemy that appeared and began to stalk Ronan in the demo and the very idea of being trapped in this limbo with things like that successfully creeped me out. Unfortunately, these enemies were almost immediately then disarmed of their terrifying presence when the player simply snuck up behind one, jumped inside it, and tore it open from the inside. The game’s designer promised that these demons would show up in many different forms throughout the game so I hope they all aren’t as pathetic as the ones shown because this kind of enemy has the potential to be a very frightening threat. Maybe these creatures might have been more effective if they were invincible. But that’s just my first impression from a short gameplay demo.

Next up, virtual reality! Sort of. I really don’t how to feel about the Oculus Rift. I think it’s a really neat idea; I’m just not sure how necessary it is to be that close to a game, or how it would affect immersion. Also, I feel like it might give me a headache or something, not really sure why, like I’d get nauseous playing a video game in this way (maybe because I feel like it would be like being too close to the TV). Really, I would just have to try it. In any case, with interactive worlds becoming more and more immersive and authentic, it’s fascinating to think about this kind of technology and where it could lead. Would I actually want to put myself in a video game or I am just fine experiencing them the way I do now? I don’t know, but it’s something to think about.

How close are we...

...to this?

The Witness has my attention, although I still don’t quite understand it. Jonathan Blow’s last game Braid isn’t the best indie title I’ve ever played and has some pretentious, text-heavy, garbled storytelling, but one thing about Braid is that it is a great puzzle game with some real challenge to it. I do admire Blow’s philosophy about respecting the player’s intelligence and not stuffing a game with padding or excessive hand-holding.

It may look like Minecraft from a distance...but it's not

So many games, so little time to talk about them all. There are many, many games that I want to play from this year’s show, some I probably forgot to mention and many I probably entirely missed.

I’m going to be busy the next couple of days, so I won’t be able to post my final word on this year’s show, including what the games that I’m most excited about are and my concluding thoughts on E3 2013, until a couple of days from now. Overall, I’m much, much more impressed with this year’s show than last year’s and it mostly lived up to my expectations of what the big next gen battle royale between Microsoft and Sony would conjure up, with some Nintendo magic thrown in to complete the shiny, ribboned summer Christmas gift of hype that is E3.