Rayman Origins

[Kolzig]

Looking preeeeeeeeetty goooood.

UOHwacaZilA

[syntheticgerbil]

Holy shit, there is a ton of stuff going on in just one level. I've seen some other videos as well the last few days and these environments are all beautiful.

[Kolzig]

I'm in love with the engine and tools that Michel Ancel and his team has created for Ubisoft and I'm super happy that a proper game for Rayman's return as the main character is the first game to demonstrate all this.

[Kolzig]

So this week this game comes out and in totally wrong release window which makes me really pissed. Reviews have been good, but when there's so many big hype games released around now in November, it's going to be tough for Michel Ancel.

Here's an interview with him that seems recent:

http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/games/882465-michel-ancel-interview-rayman-origins-and-beyond-good-evil-2

[Sno]

The demo on Live is amazing and i want to play this game very much, but i just can't afford it right now. There is so much amazing stuff coming out right now, Ubisoft has just buried this thing by having it be released at this time.

[Kolzig]

I always get the feeling that they don't want Ancel to have success with his own games.

Might be just my paranoia.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I feel like this is something I totally missed out on. The video reminds me of Aladdin on the Megadrive/Genesis. Is this series of games worth looking into? If so, where should I start?

PS - This thread should be titled "Everyone Loves Rayman".

[Kolzig]

Rayman is pretty much old school sidescroller. Available for PC, PS1 and Sega Saturn at least. It's quite good basic platformer. This is where you should start. Rayman was France's 32-bit European answer to Sonic and Mario.

Then Rayman 2 is the great achievement, it's a really great 3d platformer. Dreamcast version is the one which I'm most familiar with, but it is available for various other platforms as well.

Rayman 3 is quite mediocre and worst of the series in my opinion. I'm not really sure if Ancel had a lot to do with this one, even though he is listed as one of the designers in the project.

Then all the Rabbids games are mini game spinoffs that actually dropped Rayman out after the two first games, but this Origins is a return to the true form and a real sequel/prequel to Rayman.

All first three games are available in GoG for example if you are in for some PC gaming.

Edited November 23, 2011 by Kolzig

[syntheticgerbil]

I recommend Rayman 3 for Gameboy Advance however if you want more goodness of the first game but with a much smoother control scheme. The graphics and animation are very well done and the level design is impeccable.

I think the portable is levels above the actual Rayman 3 and should not be missed if going through a series playthrough.

I really need to do this Origins though!

[Ben X]

I'm not seeing this 'tweeny' problem. Can someone explain/illustrate with the use of links and images please?

[syntheticgerbil]

Obvious tweens were deployed in some parts, most notably in one part with Rayman's hair, but it doesn't really seem to dominate from every video I've seen since the beginning of this thread.

But I don't want to do the links! So much work! I think the animation looks great!

[Ben X]

Heh, I meant more along the lines of explaining what tweening is...

[syntheticgerbil]

I feel like I'll probably go on for a few paragraphs about this, but I'm really tired and I have to drive to another city tomorrow morning. So here is the most idiotic tweening video I can find.

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VROOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

[Lu]

Sooo, basically Flash lingo for frame interpolation then?

[toblix]

More like animation lingo.

[ThunderPeel2001]

There was animation before Flash?

[Ben X]

There was animation before Flash?

Of course there was. Toy Story happened two years earlier.

[Thrik]

I was pretty amused by this earlier:

Observe as I totally don't buy that.

[Jake]

I don't get it, Thrik...

[Thrik]

£48 is an obscene amount, it's £40 boxed in shops and the highest RRP you encounter on like any game ever is £45. It's like PSN try to make their offerings the least attractive possible, at least in the UK.

[Lu]

That converts to 55 Euro's and 75 USD, so yes, that is absolutely absurd. I also wasn't aware that this was a full priced title? Sooo that price is not a mistake?

[Thrik]

It has become a full-price retail title, yes.

[Roderick]

55 Euros is pretty much the norm for games in the Netherlands nowadays, so I'm not shocked, you guys.

[Thrik]

It's not so much that the price is outrageous in and of itself, it's more the fact that it's on PSN for £48 when the maximum price you ever see any game for in the UK at launch is £45, and even that's only the really big hitters — everything else like Uncharted 3 comes out at £40, and this is all with a box.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I like to see digital distribution games release at a lower price than their retail counterparts to compensate for the fact if these twats retire their service it causes me inconvenience and that I've got to use my bandwidth (increasingly capped by ISPs) to download the fuckers. I can just about accept them matching their brick-and-mortar counterparts' prices, but not exceeding them.

Basically Sony are just doing a really bad job of enticing people into actually buying retail games through PSN, and I don't really know many people who do as a result. There's absolutely no incentive to when all it does is cost you more and give you no hard copy. Hell, I could go to the shop and back to get the game by the time PSN's servers serve me the game.

[Roderick]

You are absolutely right that it is bullshit that prices for digital games are (often deliberately, artificially) kept the same as (or in this weird case, exceed) the price for the boxed copy. That's insane, since about half of a game's price goes to manufacturing (the littlest part), shipping and the store's take.

I will grant developers and publishers to earn a little more themselves with digital sales, but it's still ludicrous that games aren't at least 10-20 Euros cheaper if purchased digitally.