I'm sure by now, we've all seen the stories about how this sequel to the awesome Rayman Origins started life out as a Wii U exclusive much to the pleasure of Wii U fans and owners. But then, quite close to the launch date, Ubisoft in their infinite wisdom decided that the Wii U had far too small of an install base to justify an exclusive and would never make their money back if they did so, so they decided to delay release for another 6 months and bring it to almost every other platform too.
While I'm sure this was an irritant to said Wii U fans and owners, I myself am quite glad they made that decision because I do not yet own a Wii U and may not get one for quite some time so I was happy it came to a platform that I could play it on. Namely, PC.
I'll get the bad things out of the way first and to start with, there is the problem that they did not take out the very Wii U centric features that were designed to make heavy use of the special touch pad Wii U controller like the character Muffy who can be controlled by a 2nd person using the touch pad to move platforms into place for player 1 and take out enemies. In non Wii U versions, this guy is simply controlled by pressing a button and he instantly does the action the other person would have done. While this is probably simpler and quicker, he still feels a bit redundant being there and the levels that featured him were quite annoying sometimes because you would often forget to use him. There are also a lot of scratchcard mini games that were clearly designed for touch pad left in there that you now just waggle a thumb over with the stick. Yeah okay, but seems a bit pointless. There are also annoying progress walls where you need to collect X number of arbitrary things before you can do Y level. Which I do not recall Origins having and you could progress freely without having to go back and re-do levels to collect more things. Speaking of re-doing levels, there is also a "Back to Origins" section in this game where you can unlock a number of levels from the predecessor game. And while this is a nice extra for those who did not play it, our playthrough of it found it necessary to play these levels also to get the required number of items to progress so this felt like more re-treading and padding. The game also felt considerably shorter that Origins though, despite this. It was also quite a lot easier and the final levels came about as a bit of an easy and sudden surprise after the face melting difficulty of Origin's final levels.
But those are all minor quibbles. I mean just look at the screenshots sliding past above here. The game is achingly gorgeous and joyous to play. Every level is filled with beautiful scenery, epic music that keeps pushing you on. It's just so happy and so much fun. Even when it's kicking your ass, you can't help but have a smile on your face. Yes, actual gameplay wise, it's pretty much just more of the same as Rayman Origins with a few new features, but it was amazing, so why would that be a problem? The plot of the game is....well, who are we kidding? There basically is no plot, just like Origins. You just run through levels kicking ass and collecting things.
The huge bosses are back again and this time will transition between multiple 3D planes mixing the battles up more. Each one is different and frantic and yet more ass kicking fun. And at the end of each world, there is a fantastic running level done to the theme and rhythm of awesome tunes. These are undoubtedly some of the best levels in the game. Fantastic game from start to end. If you liked the first one at all, play this immediately. If you didn't, play this immediately. Even if you didn't play Origins, play this immediately. The one caveat I would give is that if you are a Wii U owner, go with that original intended platform so all the features intended for Wii U will not look so out of place. Oh yeah, and those awesome music levels? Here's a taste:
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