Rayman

The Good
On the graphics area, this game does a very good job. Everything is colorful and alive. There's a lot of attention to details. For example, there are butterflies flying around and big dancing flowers on the ground. Everything is animated beautiful and the backgrounds are simply excellent to look at. The gameplay is good too. Rayman moves smooth and as he gets further into the game, he gains more and more powers. The difficulty steadily grows and it will take a while before you get the hang of a certain level. The story is good enough too. The Evil Mr. Dark has stolen the Great Protoon, which provides and maintains harmony and balance in Rayman's world. He defeats Betilla the fairy, who is the Protoon's guardian, and flees too his hideout. Evil guys start capturing the friendly electoons. Rayman now must travel through the six worlds. Along the way you'll find cages with electoons. After you break all of the cages in th first five worlds you can go to the last world where Mr. Dark resides. The six worlds are: Dream Forest, Band Land, Blue Mountains, Caves of Skops, Picture City, and Candy Chateau. They are varied and have excellent level design. There are many fun twists such as flying on a bug, floating on a plum and sliding down cake cream. Rayman has weird and fun powers such as a power fist and helicopter hair, which he gains by reaching Betilla. Enemies are smart and not always so easily defeated. Finally, this game has amazing sound for it's time that really is atmospheric and you will soon find yourself humming along with the beautiful tunes.

The Bad
This game is far too hard, even just halfway the game, the levels are very challenging, making you feel you,ll never complete this game since the later worlds are even harder. This feeling becomes even stronger when you read the manual which says you need to break each cage in the first five worlds to reach Mr. Dark. I also found that the levels, although varied and well designed, didn't have very original themes. Themes like forests, caves, candy and music have been used in many games such as Zool, Jazz Jackrabbit, and off course Mario.

The Bottom Line
Although it looks and plays well, the levels are too hard and not very original. However Rayman's powers and characters and absolutely worth a look. If you are a platform gaming expert, and looking for a real challenge in this genre, you'll like this. If you are looking for a less big challenge but still a good challenge you'll be better off with one of it's sequels.

The Good
It was graphically stunning! Animations were the best you could get for that time
The various worlds in which you evolved, while classic, were used very good. In the musical world, for example, some platform were made of percussions and jumping on them would produce a percussion sound. And there are plenty of similar pleasant details
The controls were more than decent
It's long, with plenty of levels


The Bad
The worlds were maybe a little bit too classic
There is no real innovative concepts
The game was way too hard, especially for its most probable audience : kids ! Reaching the middle of the game is already a kind of miracle, and after that, the game will probably kill you in frustration


The Bottom Line
Rayman would have been one of the best platform games for the PC if it wasn't so frustrating. I doubt many people will ever make it to the last level.
Do not (I repeat : do not!) give this game to a violent kid or he'll probably destroy your computer, yelling nasty words you didn't know he was aware of and leaving him in a nasty mood for months because he'll be dead frustrated.