Rayman - from GameLoft
Review by Dazler

Prologue:

Rayman, the game everybody is screaming about lately, and guess what... they're damn right!
Finally a real hero type platform game on the communicator!
Gameloft succesfully ported Rayman from Ubisoft to our beloved communicator.
So now let's see if they really ported the pleasure of the original game in to this one.

The story:

Simple you Rayman run trough levels collecting some balls and other stuff that's laying arround :) Actually some evil dude has captured all the inhabitants of Rayman's world and now it's up to Rayman to save his world.

Official story (source Gameloft):
Chaos has fallen upon Rayman�s world. Mister Dark wants to become its ruler, and to meet his goal, he has kidnapped and imprisoned all the Toons, these tiny elements essential to the light and life of the universe. Rayman is the last hope; he�s the only one that can go and free the Toons, and get to Mister Dark�s lair to wipe him out. The time for action has come !

Installation:

No problems here, the Rayman game is about 4 MB big so you most certainly have to install it to D. Of course installing a big game like this takes some time, fearing to get a out of memory problem I was so glad to see the status bar reach completion.

Startscreen.

First impression:

So far so good. I went to extra's to happily find the Rayman icon, one enter later I embarked on a epic mission to boldly go were no man has gone before and to review the game ;) I was verry impressed by the speed of the game, when comparing with other big games like Doom and Skyflying this game launched like a rocket. After a few seconds of loading the beautiful Rayman background music starts to play, announcing the end of the loading. I'm welcomed by a nice selection screen, like a real gamer I went right away to the controls section of the options. The controls have been really kept simple but are very well chosen, they've binded the following keys:

• movement:arrowpad,q=left,z=up,s=right,x=down
• jump:a,enter
• boxing/action:tab,p

Being a modern pc gamer I use the arrowpad, a and tab. When moving to the sound control in options I learned 1 big shortcoming of the game, you can either turn sound off, or let it blast away on the highest level. Since I loved the sounds I went for the second option, what actually was rather cool because the heavy beats caused a feedback sensation ;)

Me Jane, you Tarzan.

Autosaving:

By now my curiosity reached its peak, no more delays... give me game! Hitting the start you'll come in a menu with empty slots, you'll have to choose one and enter your name, from now on after completing a mission it wil be auto saved. So if you quit the game, you will always start at the level you left of. When you return to that menu later you'll also notice a percentage next to the name of th save, this percentage tells you where you are in the mission to save Rayman's world.

Now where did I leave my parachute? *sigh*

The first time:

After selecting a free save location and a name the fun begins.
When you first enter the game the normal level chooser is skipped and you are thrown into the first level. A few screens po pup explaining the controls quickly.
So here we are in this strange new world, a common first impression is "damn, that thing is small", I feared for the worst. First screen that appears is a hard to see little man in a real strange environment.
Let me assure you right away that this is really a first impression, after some minuts gently exploring the enviroment the game starts to grow on you. After you've figured out what things you can touch and what things you'll better run from you're ready for the real action. That's of course the real purpose of the first levels.

Who's the thoughest cliffhanger now Stallone?

The media:

The graphics are amazing, always striving to get the most out of my communicator I was thrilled to see such beautiful grahics accompanied by good music. Rayman himself is a cool little dude who can be really funny, if you stop moving for a few seconds he'll start to make all kind of strange faces. All the characters and objects are very nice and noticeable.

Want a swim? I'm shure that little cute fishy ain't gonna bite (that hard ;p )

Gameplay:

Rayman is one heavy dude, he can fly (pressing jump repeatedly), slam someone silly by throwing his fist (how longer you wait before releasing the action button, the further he throws).
If that ain't enough to help you trough the levels then don't worry, there are many objects that wil help you travel over water, air etc ...
All these objects can be moved or triggerd by just standing on them or boxing them, in certain cases you can even control objects, like platforms, by jumping to get it to move up and boxing left or right to make it go the desired direction. Concentrating all the action on these 2 buttons contributes in a very nice game experience.

Now who left the water running?

The goal:
The most important thing in the game is of course the goal or the finish. As I said before Rayman has to save his captured friends by making his way through the levels and destroying all cages. There are also other power ups for you to grab, to restore your health or give you bonus points.

*blub* *blub* - Damn why can't I swim ...

Demo versus total game:

In the demo version you can only play 4 levels designed to give you a good taste of the real game, but the real action begins just after the demo ends. Sliding under dangerous sharp obstacles and then immediately jumping to avoid running into some even sharper ones ;)

This is the end of the demo, but not the end of the game!

First level in the purchased game is built out of slides, aah those childhood memories :)

Trying to get some grip, this is just a second before Rayman goes in a surflike state down the slide

Help! HEEELPP! help? anybody? ow f**K

Technical:

• When Rayman is running it uses 2120K memory
• To start Rayman I would recommed about 3000k memory free
• The sis file is about: 2.21MB big and requires about 4.5MB on d and 356k on c.
• Completion time : 10 hours
• cost:�24.95

• Based on the successful gameplay of Rayman : 9 millions copies sold, all formats !
• Richness of the game: 8 worlds, 30 levels and 20 different characters offering several hours of entertainment.
• Original gameplay: use Rayman�s body and its magical abilities to defend himself against enemies !
• Fun control & feeling, quick and intuitive actions.
• Beautiful cartoon-like universe, relying on the graphics aesthetics and on the characters� humour.
• Rayman can be played by everyone, anytime, anywhere

Judgement:

This game rocks!
The graphics and sounds are really good, the game is fun to play and one thing that I like very much is the super fast starting of the game.
I must say that the price is really worth it.

Negative:

There is no volume control :s
And the game doesn't seem to pause when you get a call, so you'll be hearing background music when you're talking :)

�

Rating Type Rating Installation: Graphics: Playability: Addictability: Total: 20/20 (no problems) 19/20 18/20 (easy game controls) 18/20 (is there doubt?) 93.75%

Rayman for communicator can be bought from the Handango website.

Thanks to Dazler for the great review.