Rayman Forever
The world of Rayman is one that has been plunged into chaos after a dastardly villian named Mr. Dark stole the "Great Protoon." With everything thrown out of balance all manner of baddies have appeared and even locked the electoons that used to gravitate around the protoon into cages. Only a hero can save the day and that here is the limbless wonder, Rayman.
Now I have to admit that I missed out on this whimsical game when it came out in the late nineties but thanks to retro games being big business I finally had a chance to check it out Rayman Forever is actually repackaged version of the original 2D platformer along with a level editor and some fan made levels. If like me you thought that this was a children's game due to the storyline and visuals then you are in for a rude awakening. While this isn't quite up there with some of the hardest games I've ever played the frustration factor is still pretty high. In classic 2D platforming tradition the goal of Rayman is to work your way through the levels, killing enemies and reaching the exit intact. Along the way cages containing electoons must be discovered and the buggers freed. This aspect of the game actually reminded me a lot of another 2d platform classic, Cool Spot. Small blue spheres called "tings" can be collected en route and works the same way as coins in a Mario Bors game. You get a extra life for every 100 tings collected but its usually not worth the effort. If Rayman dies he loses all previously collected tings and death comes swiftly in this game. While progressing through the levels Rayman acquires new skills like using his hair to hover, the ability to run and hanging from ledges. This means you'll have to attempt some levels multiple times as the first time round you might not have the necessary abilities to reach all the Electoons. This isn't optional either as you won't be able to reach the final area of the game without freeing all the Electoons. The game has quite large sprites which looks very nice but can making avoiding enemies extra tricky. Enemies are detailed, not to mention unusual bit disposing of them is a bit of a chore. Rayman has no limbs which is not only a interesting design choice but also allows him to fling his fists at enemies. The fists then boomerang back to him but the problem is most enemies take multiple hits or avoid his attacks. You can charge up the attack by holding down the attack button but this comes at the cost of moving. All this interrupts the flow of the game and give levels a very stop, start kind of feel. Checkpoints are sparse and there are pitfalls everywhere which combined with the limited amount of lives and continues means you won't want ot take any risks. Some people like this kind of gameplay but it will frustrate just as many others. For such an old game Rayman Forever still looks good and must have been very impressive for its time. It was a DOS only game so to get it working on a modern system you'll need to use DOSbox. I played the Good Old Games version where everything was set up already and had no issues. The resolution is fixed so if you play it in full screen mode things get very blocky but beyond that there's lots of color and detailed backgrounds. The keyboard controls are OK but things went considerably better after I managed to set up my Xbox 360 gamepad. The game apparently won some awards for its music back in the day and some of the tunes still sound good. There was nothing that really stuck in my head and the sound effects were underwhelming but overall its a good effort. Rayman Forever is great for players that enjoyed it back when it first came out and want to relive the experience but newcomers might be put off by the difficulty. The characters and settings didn't exactly set my world on fire but the gameplay is solid as long as you can overlook the occasionally difficulty spike. If you have a hankering for a nice platform game from yesteryear then Rayman Forever might just be the thing.
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System Requirements
TAGS: Rayman, Rayman Forever, Mr. Dark, Great Protoon,
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