The Final Word game review

Rayman 2: The Great Escape -- UbiSoft

R.I.P.
What a game to showcase the improvements offered from the memory expansion pack. The game let's you play with or without it, but it looks so much better with it enabled, that I can't imagine playing it otherwise.

If you thought the original Rayman had beautiful artwork in it's levels, then you're in for a treat because this sequel looks even better. Everything about the game is colorful and the levels are huge and numerous. This is not a game that you're going to just sit down and play in a weekend to be sure.

Soundwise the music was good, the sound effects were great and I just loved the character voices. Everyone in the game speaks a scat like language that is translated in text dialogs along the bottom of the screen. This really added a ton of personality and character to the game, making the world you play in that much more believable as a fantasy land.

Play control was a bit demanding at times, making some of the more intense levels more demanding than I felt the needed to be. But given the fact that you had unlimited retries, it wasn't to bad. In fact, I am so glad that someone at UbiSoft learned their lesson from the original release of Rayman and removed the limited credits restriction which pretty much killed the playability of the game. Replay value was pretty high in that you could solve the game without getting 100% on all of the stages... of course, after beating the game, I went back and found the last few Lums that I was missing, including the hard to find, bonus 101% Lum. Yeah, it was good fun... Mind you though, once I managed to get my 101% rating, I put the game down and haven't played it since. But, I definitely felt like I got my full value out of the game.

If you're into platform games at all, I really must recommend this as one of the top titles for the N64, and if nothing else the game is a showcase for just how much horsepower the N64 can pack... and it's a wallop. I rate this... classification - must have!

(10/2002)