Ferocious flora and fauna grasp and dive-bomb at you through mysterious swamps.

Toad Story has you flying high amid mystical ruins, trading blows with orc-like toads as you glide on powerful air currents. From this point on, Rayman Legends throws you into one wildly offbeat journey to the next. This is a game where defeating a dragon is just your warm-up boss fight. Teensies in Trouble introduces the basic formula of each world: a set of distinct missions, broken up by two princesses to save in extra-challenging mini-levels, a boss fight, and a music video level to cap things off. Reflex reigns supreme, with each world testing you in different ways. environments and use power-ups to spice things up, but in Legends, besides an extra hitpoint and a ranged attack, your skill set never alters. Most games would rely on simple forest, desert, tundra, etc. Rather than feeling like one game, Rayman Legends is effectively five at once - six, if you count the remastered and rebalanced Rayman Origins levels you can unlock. As its name suggests, you’ll explore several legendary settings, from an Olympus overrun with mythical monsters to a fantastical James Bond adventure Legends’ sheer variety transforms an elegant rule set into a fresh experience at every turn. It’s not just Rayman Legends’ simplicity that makes it great, but how it harnesses its core fundamentals to craft a platforming experience like no other. Though each version has featured its own unique quirks, like touchpad elements for Vita and Wii U, Legends is a game that works everywhere. It’s been effortlessly translated to PC, two generations of PlayStation and Xbox home consoles, PS Vita, and Nintendo Switch. It’s simple enough that it can be played on a Wiimote and nunchuck if experienced in its original form. Any additional gameplay, like the shoot ’em up sections, blue boxing gloves, and floating sections, all use the same inputs. You run, jump, punch, duck, slide, and move back and forth across a 2D plane. Rayman Legends isn’t an overly complex game. This is what you get when you apply the design philosophy of the likes of Doom (2016) to an all-ages franchise like Rayman, and goodness me is it a sight to behold - literally, at times. More than a 2D platformer or the first ex-pat of the Wii U’s library, Rayman Legends embodies the very best of a gameplay-first experience.

Few games can fill a player with delight like Rayman Legends.

Rayman the amazing maze