In Rayman’s world, nature and people live together in peace. One day, the evil Mr. Dark defeats Betilla, the Fairy, and steals the Great Protoon, the provider of harmony and balance. The Electoons who used to gravitate towards it lose their natural stability and scatter all over the world. Strange p...
In Rayman’s world, nature and people live together in peace. One day, the evil Mr. Dark defeats Betilla, the Fairy, and steals the Great Protoon, the provider of harmony and balance. The Electoons who used to gravitate towards it lose their natural stability and scatter all over the world. Strange phenomena begin to occur: freaks and hostile characters appear, capturing every Electoon they can find! The disappearance of the Great Protoon also neutralized all of Betilla’s powers, and she needs time to regenerate before she can help in any way. They definitely need a hero to save them, and it looks like you’re it. It’s now up to Rayman and you to rescue the world.
The PC-version is missing a bunch of music tracks, as well as some FMV sequences and sound effects found in the Playstation version. However, there are some benefits to this release! There is an exclusive "Band Land" level not found in the PS version, and you'll get access to a bonus game (Ray Breakout) if you beat the game 100% and insert a code at the world map. The Electoon Cages are also placed differently than in the PS version, which gives players accustomed to the PS version an additional challenge. The graphics seems a bit less smooth and more pixelated too, but maybe that's just because of the screen resolution. The game is still a ton of fun and just as entertaining today as it was back in the day.
I have no idea why gog didn't release the superior later pc release instead of this dos port, but it is still an ok version even though it's missing the intro movie, most music tracks and sound effects. I'd say to pick up the saturn/playstaion versions of the game over this if you have the ability. Also, I noticed some people in the comments have mentioned that this game contains a virus, but I haven't come across it, so buyer beware if some peoples claims are true.
Unfortunately a large portion of the original soundtrack to this game is cut out, which is very disappointing to me.
Also, it's probably just my badly set up computer, but the game regularly crashes and the program was unable to install the "Rayman Designer" part of the download.
Other than these issues the game play itself is fantastic. Very nostalgic too.
I will preface this by saying the copy from GOG works almost flawlessly, download had an issue where I needed to download the offline installer for it to actually instal. On top of that, when you tab out and go back into the game, full screen no longer works. But I feel that is a DOSbox emulator issue.
To parrot some of the other reviews, yes, some of the soundtrack has been removed, but several songs have been moved about and no longer play in zones that you may expect if you are coming from the PS1 verson. This is after all the PC version of the game.
Now, on to the meat of this review and the point I actually wanted to make.
This game is bright, colourful with a stunning soundtrack and unique platforming enviroments to boot. Chances are most of you already knew that. The main problem for those with nostalgia glasses and newcomers to remember or learn is that this game is punishing. With most users averaging about two and a half hours of gameplay you can see why. The first zone hints at the kind of 'difficulties' you will face later, but the second zone onwards will punish every mistake you make. Most times you will be required to make leaps of faith, make snap descisions and have percise ability to platform.
This never lets up and becomes progressively more and more vicious to the point I firmly believe it stops being challenging and moves on to just unfair. To elaborate, I mean the game will often give you little to no warning on hazards ahead, enemies will sometimes spawn offscreen and get in range to attack before you even know they are there. (looking at you, fish from 'Eat at Joes')
On top of that, as if the difficulty wasn't enough, the game expects you to break all of the caged characters in the game in order to even access the final boss, all of this on a few lives and few continues with no way of obtaining more and obtaining more lives quite frankly is not worth the risk of some of the challenges. Even the bonus levels are extremely unforgiving.
