Rayman 2: The Great Escape (PS1, 1999)
When I finished this last night I searched on here to see if I'd posted about it the last time I beat it, which must have been three years ago now. That time, much like this one, I beat the whole game and collected all the lums in about six hours. I still have my original physical copy of this. The instruction book has long fallen apart because of me nervously chewing it as me and my friend would take turns trying to beat it. I still remember how long and arduous certain sections of it felt. The Cave of Bad Dreams, for instance, a platforming section I still have trouble with playing now. There are later levels which are even harder, in part because of technical limitations I'll come to later. The underlying sense I have of this game, even after beating it completely in six hours, is still one of scale. Of it being a large, varied unique world centred around a hero's noble and successful quest. I like that it persists as such.
You are Rayman, the pictured hero who has hands and feet and a head and no neck, arms or legs. While the original Rayman was a 2D sidescroller with an incomparable colour palette and the most drug-addled soundtrack imaginable, its sequel takes a cue from Mario 64 and opens up levels with collectables and enemies, but still with a focus on the platforming of the original. An army of mechanical pirates have destroyed the heart of the world and started taking prisoners, and it's up to you to save everyone. Again, all very nice, and you can see why to a ten year old it feels like such an undertaking.
The gameplay is much more immersive than the original Rayman, and not just because you can move in more directions than left and right. Right away you can use Rayman's hair to hover in mid-air and shoot at enemies and relevant environmental objects. The controls still feel sharp even though I'm playing this on the PS1 version downloaded from the PS Store. The age of the game does show at times however. You use L1/R1 to rotate the camera. Moving the right stick fires shots from Rayman's fist. Since it's a short game, by the time you get to the end you'll still be trying to move the camera (which it should be said barely ever moves at all - more often than not you'll get a thing in the top left corner saying you can't rotate it) and being mildly annoyed by this inconvenience while you're trying to kill an enemy. I'm sure I can't fault a game for existing at a certain point in the history of games and having resultant quirks which are strange to me 18 years after release, but it's not something that goes away. It also can't be overstated how bad the actual camera control is. There are frequent sections where you'll be climbing along walls, jumping from section to section and being unable to see properly where you should be going. It all feels so... unnatural. There's a few sections too where you have to carry an object from one place to another, throwing it on to ledges along the way. You can imagine what trying to see where to go with them is like.
As far as combat and enemies go there's not really much to say. You get an assortment of robot enemies which are all pretty much the same. You shoot them, you wait for their invulnerability to go away while dodging any of their attacks, you shoot again. Repeat. Some of them move around in different ways but aside from the Ninja robot who teleports right next to you who you have to jump away from there's very little variety in the combat. Even the, uh, organic enemies amount to much of the same. You can press R2 to target an enemy and make dodging attacks easier, but when you're up against more than one it's a disaster. In fact scratch that, it's a disaster normally. There seems to be a real lag in the controls at times for enemies that move around. When you're targeting you never quite manage to aim at them properly or shoot when you want to.
The bulk of the gameplay, which I'm happy to say is realised much more fully and much more competently, is in the platforming. Whether it's your standard jumping from platform to platform, climbing sections, taming explosive shells on legs to ride them through obstacle courses or flying through tunnels of lava, it's pretty much all the right balance between challenging and satisfying. I'm a large fan of gameplay which can best be described as satisfying, the sort of thing where you can get into a rhythm when moving around or doing what you're doing, even when the difficulty ramps up. There are times when the camera can be an issue and there's one section in particular towards the end when you're flying on a shell and the controls/camera combine to make the blind path you're supposed to take an act of sheer luck and nothing else, but given the time it was released it's still a good game, which brings me on to my next point which I said I'd touch on earlier.
With Rayman 3 after this and certainly in the Origins/Legends from last gen, and the original, Rayman is known for having a game world which is extremely vivid and stylised. Lots of colours, lots of elements, lots of distinctive different areas. If I ever manage to finish everything in Rayman 3 HD I'm sure I'll mention it. In 2 though, it's very dull. There's a lot of green. There's a lot of basic areas with very little in them - the first boss fight is effectively a big blue slide which may as well be in space, because it's just black along the sides, making it feel like you're completely disconnected from the rest of the world (and certainly from the level which preceded it, which is underwater and very distinctive in itself). Being released in 1999, and coming after the original sequel which was a 2D game like the first game was scrapped, you get the distinct sense that this is a game constantly at the limits of what was technologically capable at the time. I think it's why I'm able to write off its faults so easily, at least the ones which can be attributed to the time it was made. The reason I bought this from the PS Store (P.S. it's a crime the PS1 and PS2 classics are no longer a thing) was actually because of a problem with my disc version. The sound was screwed up and hey, here's something that's legitimately one of the best games ever for 3.99. Bargain. But besides that, in terms of the levels and just the way some of the elements in them are made and put together and the graphical flaws you see in them, I don't feel as if it's because the game is badly made because the gameplay confirms it isn't. For that reason, as I still play old games on occasion, I like seeing the flaws. I like the cutscenes where there's voices without any character moving or giving the impression that the voice is coming from them. It gives me a sense that gaming develops because games like this exist to push the medium. At least it got polished up for the PS2 when it was re-released.
So, everything about it is good and everything that's bad about it is good because it's bad. I'm sad games from history like this are pushed out and go unplayed because of the nature of video games and the focus on money and progress. The gameplay holds up, the characters are developed and interesting, even though the game is short and feels oddly constricted (certainly as far as levels go the end seems to come a lot quicker than you think) there's still a tremendous sense of scale.
I'm especially glad Rayman 2 is like this, because when you beat the final boss you get to play some of the originally planned sequel, and it's even more ******** than the original. Maybe one day I'll beat that.
I actually managed to use the "break weapon" skill successfully on him and then kill the mind controlling alien.
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