Rayman 3D

Genre: 3D Platformer

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: UbiSoft

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Review:

Rayman 3D, released alongside the Nintendo 3DS when it launched in 2011, is a port of the 3D Platformer Rayman 2: The Great Escape, originally released on multiple platforms in 1999. Rayman 2 has found its way to so many platforms, in fact, that it was already playable on the Nintendo 3DS prior to this game’s release, as the Nintendo 3DS is backwards-compatible with the Nintendo DS and its port of Rayman 2, Rayman DS. So for this game to get what amounts to the double-dip treatment, this version must be a major upgrade, right?

Well… not so much. The version of Rayman 2 in this game is largely the same game we saw on Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and PlayStation all the way back in 1999, and what upgrades it has are either a mixed blessing, or too little too late.

The core Platformer here is good. Rayman was never going to challenge Mario at his own game, and this game suffered a bit from the collect-a-thon elements that many games of the time used heavily. However, this aside, the core gameplay here was and still is quite good

Unfortunately, that core gameplay is covered with many layers of dust here, and probably the most prominent one is this game’s absolutely atrocious camera system. Players only have two options here to control the camera – they can press the R button to re-center it behind Rayman, or they can hold L to lock on to an enemy, the former sometimes refusing to work in areas where the camera is in a set position, and the latter sometimes not working properly. Given that players need to search the environments for collectables, this inability to control the camera really hurts the game and makes it difficult to play.

To make matters worse, the visuals in Rayman 3D don’t feel like they’ve progressed much from the 1999 original game, which looked good at the time but definitely seem long in the tooth by modern standards. In fact, things are made worse by a framerate that’s wildly inconsistent, going from smooth to choppy regularly throughout the game. How the Nintendo 3DS cannot manage to run a decade-old game at a decent framerate is frankly mystifying to me.

There is another issue affecting Rayman 3D that I haven’t seen mentioned much elsewhere – the stereoscopic 3D effect here seems broken. Occasionally I notice a “ghosting” problem on some Nintendo 3DS games when using stereoscopic 3D, but usually this is a minor annoyance. Rayman 3D makes this issue a constant eye-watering pain, making any bright-colored object (including Rayman himself) surrounded by ghost images on either side. Shutting one eye reveals that each image of Rayman includes its own ghostly echo of the character, causing this effect. Frankly, I wonder why I haven’t seen this complaint elsewhere.

Because of all of these issues, Rayman 3D is a port of a once-great game that is worn down both by time and by issues with the port itself. While the core here is still a great 3D Platformer, it’s hard to feel there’s anything great about this when contending with the camera issues, the framerate issues, the stereoscopic 3D issues, the collectathon issues, and the overall archaic look of the game. While fans of the game may still find this to be worthwhile, most will undoubtedly see it as a broken relic of the past.

tl;dr – Rayman 3D is a port of Rayman 2 that doesn’t do much to modernize the 3D Platformer, which had terrible camera controls, tired collect-a-thon elements, and dated visuals. What’s more, this port has its own problems, including some nasty framerate issues and problems with its stereoscopic 3D. The result is a game that may have once been great, but it’s hard to see that greatness here.

Grade: C-

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