Think of Rayman as Mario’s French exchange student. Rayman Legends is made in France, and it shows-it’s familiar but foreign, classy but vaguely vulgar, and very European. It’s an interactive cousin to Looney Tunes inspired less by vaudeville than European clowning, with Rayman (and thus the player) in the role of the irreverent Auguste clown, undermining the self-imposed rules of the designers as if they were the would-be sophisticates of the whiteface clown. It feels like a playable cartoon, with gorgeous environments that are warm and surreal, and a sly and kinetic sense of humor. Rayman Legends expands upon 2011’s excellent Rayman Origins, offering up the same charm and classic platforming challenge in a more elaborate package. The only sidescrolling platformers made today are fantastical, family-friendly romps or pedantic indie exercises, and among the former few games are more fantastical or playful than Rayman Legends. When gritty games about guns and the musclemen who tote them largely absconded to the third dimension, playfulness rose from the dominant tone of platformers to practically the only tone found in the genre. Think the psychedelic whimsy of a Mario game, or the exaggerated attitude of Sonic. Not the sense of actually playing the game, but the kind of light-hearted frivolity baked into the genre from its earliest days. One of the most common elements of a side-scrolling platformer is a sense of play. How many pixels can a character span in a single jump? How fast does a character move? How about the level architecture, and the placement and motion of enemies, and the number of hits needed to kill them? These are all crucial decisions that many players take for granted as they sprint through a game. There’s much to consider when designing a 2D platformer.
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