Reviewed: December 5, 2002
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
Ubisoft
Developer
Ubisoft
Released: September 24, 2002
Genre: Racing/Fighting
Players: 4
ESRB: Everyone
4
7
4
4
4.1
Supported Features:
Rayman has gathered a cult following of gamers of all ages and from just about all gaming systems. I personally fell in love with the colorful little character many years ago when he appeared on the Dreamcast in Rayman 2.
Ubisoft’s booth at the 2002 E3 show had a large section dedicated to our hero, although much of the hoopla was targeted toward the new Hoodlum Havoc game scheduled for 2003. Meanwhile, Ubisoft tried to keep everyone’s interest in Rayman simmering on low heat with a multiplayer party game based on Rayman and his colorful cast of supporting characters.
Rayman Arena is Ubisoft’s latest installment using the Rayman franchise, and while I am sure the designers had some good ideas and intentions going into this project something went horribly wrong between the design pitch and the retail release of this game.
Here are Rayman Arena’s features:
- 2 Game Modes: Computer in an obstacle course footrace or battle in a gladiator style arena
- 9 playable characters from the cast of Rayman 2 and other new characters
- Compete with up to 4 players in split-screen racing or fighting acting
- Colorful and detailed levels, immense battle arenas, and devilishly clever obstacle courses
- Unlock bonus levels, new game modes, characters, and even some mini-games
Rayman Arena combines two types of game ideas, but fails to execute either one of them to any level of success. The first is a racing game, but instead of racing any of the vehicles from the earlier adventure games you compete in a footrace that takes place in a variety of obstacle course settings. If this sounds familiar you may have already played this game when it was called Mad Dash Racing, another foot racing title that released last year when the Xbox launched in November. Not only did the Eidos exploit this novel concept first, they did it much better.
The obstacle courses are quite creative and feature multiple paths. Depending on how skillful you can work the controller you can take the high path by swinging on those purple rings, or race along narrow ledges along the sides or along the ground. There are usually at least three or more possible paths through each course, each with their own challenges.
In an attempt to make things a bit more interactive you can shoot the other racers and freeze them for a short period of time. The only problem is that this never seems to last long enough and since everyone has unlimited zapping ammo the game can quickly turn into an annoying succession of players zapping each other essentially ruining the racing aspect of the game.
There are two types of racing; the straight up race for the finish that takes place over several laps, or a Time Attack mode that resembles the “Knockout” mode in the Need For Speed games. Everyone keeps racing around and around the tracks with the goal of either being the leader or at least sticking close to the leader. If you fail to cross a checkpoint within a few seconds of the leader you are knocked out of the race. The last racer left wins the game.
The second mode is a battle mode that is basically some kind of wacky fighting game where the various cast of characters from Rayman run around arena-style levels and whack each other with numerous crazy weapons that spawn at various locations. This mode is broken down into two sub-games as well.
Freeze Fight puts you in a large level with randomly spawning Lums. Your goal is to collect as many of these as you can within the specified time. You are armed with a freeze weapon that temporarily freezes the other players when they are shot giving you a head start on collecting those Lums. Total Fight is more of a battle royal with generators that spawn a variety of weapons you use to beat on your opponents and score points. If this is all sounding pretty simple and generic you are right.
The game is limited even further with the heavy emphasis on multiplayer that leaves the solo player with a shallow league mode that unlocks a few bonus goodies and additional game modes. The computer controlled racers and fighters in the single player game are not that challenging and gamers of moderate experience will walk all over this game in about a day if they don’t walk away from it sooner.
Even if you approach this title as a multiplayer party game, as the designers obviously intended, it doesn’t get any more fun. If anything, the game loses what little style it had when you compact the game into half or a quarter of your TV screen.
The graphics are quite good, as we would expect from a Rayman title, but not “Xbox good”. There are plenty of great high-res textures, vibrant colors, and real-time lighting effects, but this is the stuff we saw on the Dreamcast. Even after two years and a huge increase in computing power the game graphics haven’t changed or been improved in the slightest.
The Xbox does manage to crank out some impressive frame rates, so even with four players running around intense levels full of action, animation, and special effects, you never get a stutter in the presentation.
The camera does a good job of keeping your character and the course ahead in view giving you just enough time to plan your next move or pick your path provided you are a quick thinker. Even in the battle mode where things can get really crazy you can never blame the camera for any problems with the game.
The music in Rayman is simple and annoyingly cheerful. I’m all for happy fun lovin’ music but this stuff will send you straight to the options menu to turn it down or shut it off. If you do manage to tolerate the sickly tunes you will find they do serve a hidden purpose. Each character has their own theme song and whoever is in the lead determines whose music is played. Assuming you know who has what music, you could conceivably figure out who is in the lead, but a quick glance at the position indicator is quicker, requires less thought, and is less painful on the ears.
Sound effects are simple stuff ripped right from the adventure games. There are all sorts of bells, whistles, zaps, zings, and etc. during the races and some nifty sounds in the battle portion of the game. None of these break new ground in sound design and with no support for any type of surround sound you end up with a simple and flat 2D sound experience.
With 24 tracks and arenas to master you might think this game could keep you busy just learning the courses. Unfortunately, you can master each of these tracks and arenas usually with just a single multi-lap race. Unlike Mad Dash Racing where you had character-specific paths on each course, here any character can take any path provided you have the skill to find it and navigate it.
Even if you really need a party game for your Xbox I’d have a hard time recommending Rayman Arena. You might want to rent it for a weekend if you are really hard up or wait for this to hit a $19 bargain bin, but even then you are taking a risk. There simply isn’t enough gameplay contained on this disc to keep you interested or playing for more than an hour or two at the most.
I think Rayman and his crew need to stick to adventure/platform games and leave the party game genre to someone else. The game modes contained within Rayman Arena are valid concepts but relying solely on established franchise characters to sell them was a mistake. I doubt the series will be seriously tainted by this release, and from what I’ve seen of Rayman’s next big adventure our hero will be redeeming himself very soon with a more traditional platform title.