One legend features the Mexican Day of the Dead, where Rayman has to fight skeletons and travel through giant pieces of party food. Ancel said the team treated each world like its own game complete with specific enemies and art styles. HOW LEGENDS MIXES IT UP: Part of the game’s strength lies in the decision to focus on legends, which offers diversity in the design. Rayman Legends supports up to four-player multiplayer. But game’s core is focused on surreal and unbridled creativity and Rayman Legends oozes this. It introduces a new character named Murfy that players can control via the touchscreen of the Wii U Gamepad. Like its predecessor, the game runs off the UbiArt Framework engine, but the team adds lighting effects to the sprites, giving characters a more dynamic look. I had a chance to play Rayman Legends this month and was even more impressed with the old-school side-scrolling platformer. In the long run, the move will ultimately help the game in more ways than one. But according to VentureBeat, the company postponed the game and shifted it to a multiplatform release because of fears over stagnant Wii U sales. The project was originally going to be a Wii U exclusive released after its launch. The follow-up, Rayman Legends, has had a more tumultuous road leading up to its Sept. The only problem with it is the unforgiving difficulty and the floaty jump mechanics could turn off players who weren’t used to that style. Rayman Originswas a beautiful revelation, merging old-school platforming with rich visuals that look hand-drawn. But that’s starting to change with the past two titles by Ubisoft Montpellier. Despite some critically acclaimed games, the character created by Michel Ancel just doesn’t resonate the way Shigeru Miyamoto’s plumber does. Maybe it’s the fact that the character doesn’t have arms or perhaps it’s that big circle on his belly. There’s something about Rayman that makes it hard for me to like him.

Rayman legends sprites