Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMix (PS3)

The first Kingdom Hearts was a game that I don't think anyone could have seen coming and even once it was announced, few probably thought it would become one of the biggest JRPG series in the world. But exist it does and successful it did become, so here we are over ten years with the first game and the two interquels between Kingdom Hearts & Kingdom Hearts II compiled into a single package in preparation for Kingdom Hearts III.This is the review of KH 1.5 HD ReMix, with the review of the second HD Remaster collection to follow.

The beginning
The epic saga starts with three friends Sora, Riku & Kairi building a raft that they want to use to travel off their small group of islands to see what's beyond the horizon. Before they can do that, darkness starts to engulf their world. Kairi seems to disappear and Riku is swallowed by darkness, which leaves Sora alone to fight off dark creatures called the Heartless. Luckily he has just gained the skill to summon & use a weapon called Keyblade to ward off the shadowy beings attacking the islands. While he succeeds in fighting off a big Heartless monster, Sora can't escape the darkness completely and as the Destiny Islands disapper into the darkness, Sora gets thrown into a world called Traverse Town where lost souls gather when their worlds are overrun by the darkness. Here Sora begins to learn about the nature of the Keyblade and sets on a journey to find his friends with help from Donald Duck & Goofy. They travel through a dozen or so worlds looking for Kairi, Riku and King Mickey, all the while sinister forces have their own plans behind the scenes.

The first thing you'll notice when starting to play Kingdom Hearts is how well it has aged from a visual point of view. Even though it doesn't sport the latest graphical techniques, with just a bump in resolution it's still quite the pretty game to look at. The colourful cartoony style is probably to be thanked for that, but the original development team's mastery of the PS2 hardware should not be forgotten either. What these people got out of PS2 is nothing short of amazing.

Kingdom Hearts is a long-running series and while the franchise mostly appearing on handhelds in recent years has meant there have been no advances in the visuals (and the DS games naturally looking much worse), the games have taken great steps forward in certain aspects of gameplay. Kingdom Hearts 1 is a bit clunky by today's standards, but the fast-paced combat, decently challenging battles and worlds packed with secrets to find & stuff to do still make it entertaining to play. Still, there's no denying that the first game is a bit dated on the gameplay front. While it's one of the better games in the franchise when it comes to offering interesting locales and rewarding exploration in imaginative environments, a lot of fun optional things to do and a straightforward story, the basic gameplay could be tighter. Precision jumping, which is needed at certain parts of the game, is particularly annoying and the camera isn't the best of 3d action games. It's nothing you can't get used to if you enjoy the experience otherwise, but that doesn't mean the problem isn't present and it can annoy some more than others. Personally I've played the game so many times that the camera isn't much of an issue anymore, but I understand if it frustrates some.

All in all there are a lot of games that have aged far worse than Kingdom Hearts 1 from the PS2 era. It's still the heartfull, fun, exciting action RPG that made millions of fans in 2001 and can still enthrall people today. The biggest fault I can muster about the collection, as far as its nature as an HD remaster goes, are the trophies, which applies to both the first game & Chain of Memories. Both KH1 & Re:CoM have the worst designed difficulty trophies around. You have to play KH1 through at least 3 times on each different difficulty level and Re:CoM is even crazier because you have to play the game through on all difficulty levels with both Sora and Riku. This makes the platinum trophies extremely time-consuming & tedious to get. So these aren't the ideal games for trophy perfectionists. But that's about as bad as these HD remasters get.

A memory of cards
Sora's journey to find Riku & Mickey takes a slight detour in Re:Chain of Memories. This PS2 3d remake of the original GBA game takes Sora and his friends into Castle Oblivion, a mysterious place filled with people dressed in black-hooded leather coats and filled with memories of places visited & people met in the past. These people seem to have some kind of plan for Sora, who only wishes to see his friends again. The story introduces some new, long-lasting characters like Axel and Namine, who have major roles in many of the future games. It also gives us our first experience of playing as Riku, who is still haunted by the darkness he succumbed to in the first game and has to redeem himself if he ever wants to see his friends again.

As a game, Chain of Memories is very divisive, which is mostly due to its gameplay & structure. The combat is done with cards and if you don't learn the ways of exploiting the system, it can get a bit annoying with enemies & bosses interrupting a lot of your moves. Basically, you have a deck of cards that you can build with the cards that you get throughout the game. Each card has a numeric value that decides its strenght against enemies' cards. If it's higher than the enemy card, you'll manage to attack. If it's lower, your attack is blocked no matter what. If you don't know how to build an effective deck of cards, you'll have to get used to tons of attacks blocked by enemies. You can also do a combo of three cards that will launch different kinds of destructive special moves depending on what attack, spell & other special cards you use in the combination. The catch is that the first of the three cards will be eliminated from your deck until the end of the battle, so you can't abuse the system too much, although certain powerful special moves make that limitation somewhat obsolete.

Another flaw of the game is that it's very much a retread of the first game when it comes to the Disney worlds, stories & bosses as well as basic enemies. That wouldn't be too bad, but it's not even a very good one in the sense that the overly simple rooms that Chain of Memories consists of are quite boring in comparison to the lively, varied worlds of the original. It feels more like a randomized dungeon crawler with Disney world skins than the kind of romp through (more or less) fun worlds with distinct locations & actual exploration.

I personally like Chain of Memories, though it's far from my favorite overall game in the franchise. The card combat isn't all that bad if you get the hang of it and aren't annoyed by the interruptions to your attacks by enemy cards, and the story is easily the strongest in the franchise. The worlds are a bit boring, but the intriquing story pushes you to go forward and collecting cards & leveling up can be quite addictive. While ultimately the things that are introduced in Chain of Memories do lead to some of the more crazy aspects in the franchise's storyline, as a self-contained story Chain of Memories is the best one in the series. Organization XIII messing with Sora's memories is an intriguing concept and it's handled surprisingly well with enough complexity to have some real surprices yet not too much so that it becomes needlessly convoluted. All the plotting, backstabbing and manipulating within the Organization XIII's ranks is entertaining to watch unfold. On the other side of things, Riku's story of redemption & learning to control his darkness starts in a well done way in Chain of Memories and it's what made him a long-lasting favorite of mine and a lot of other KH fans. 

Another prequel-sequel-interquel
The last of the "games" in this collection is the movie recapping Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days' story. Days is another interquel taking place between the first and second mainline entries in the franchise, taking place prior to, in parallel AND after the events of Chain of Memories. The main gist of the story is to tell about Roxas' time as a member of the ominous Organization XIII, showing how he got there, what he did during his time there and what eventually lead to him leaving the organization. It also gives a slightly deeper look of the other Organization XIII members, their interactions and what they were doing at the time.

Outside of ReCoded, Days is perhaps the most pointless entry into the franchise from a story perspective and not all that special from a gameplay point of view either, so it's perhaps best that a lot of people can just experience it as a 3 hour movie instead of slogging through the repetitive gameplay badly paced story of the original. It's a game/story for the Roxas & Axel fans, but its significance in the bigger picture is pretty small. It doesn't really take the story forward, but its function is merely to fill some of the blanks in the timeline of Roxas, though it does hint at some still untouched storylines such as Saix & Axel's connection and some kind of secret plans that are somewhat separate from Xemnas & Organization XIII's.

Be prepared to see a lot of sea salt ice cream eating.

It goes through the story much in the same way the original game did. You go through Roxas' days in the Organization XIII and can see the passage of time as the day counter  counts towards Roxas' inevidable last day (#358) at the Organization XIII, right before the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II. While you could say that it does a decent job at telling the story of Days, all-in-all the movie is boring because they haven't really added any action scenes into it to bring some variety to the watching experience. And since pretty much all of the action in the game was in playable form, there's not much of it in the movie. This means you will see characters standing around and talking, sitting and talking, eating sea-salt ice cream and talking, and doing all of the above and talking.

 Final remix HD superiority
 Kingdom Hearts 1.5 is a very good remaster. It runs at 1440x1080 resolution with a decent 2xMSAA to smoothen some of the edges. It could have done with a bit better anti-aliasing, but the image quality looks really good otherwise. It runs at a smooth locked 30fps and I don't remember too many instances of it dropping below that.

The KH1 in this collection is the Final Mix version of the game. While it's not nearly as big an improvement over the version we got in the west in the first place, there are still some things that western players will have missed because it was never brought outside Japan, most notably the optional, hard-as-balls Xemnas fight and the cool extended secret ending. The recoloured enemies are a bit of a hit & miss, but even the worse ones aren't too bad, except a select few.

There is one thing that I haven't talked about at all in this review yet, and that is the music of the package. And what glorious music it is. Square Enix hasn't done the bare minimum with updating the music, no, they have orchestrated every song that wasn't orchestrated before. The new orchestral arrangements sound absolutely amazing. There are a few where it's a bit uncertain if the new one is better than the original, but most of it is a big improvement over the already great midi sounds. Some purists might have preferred an option to choose between the original and the new arrangements, but personally I don't ever want to return to the originals, the arrangements are just that good.

Verdict: GREAT. Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMix is one of the best HD remasters around. They've updated it to look & sound amazing, brought the previously unreleased version into the west and done everything to make the collection worth every penny for both people new to the franchise & returning fans who want to relive the past. While the games themselves do show their age in some aspects of gameplay and the intro to KH1 is a bit too long & boring, they can still offer plenty of enjoyment if you can get past the somewhat clumsy controls & slow start of the first game and the unorthodox card battle system of Re:Chain of Memories. Outside of completely remaking the games and/or their graphics, this is pretty much the best possible way for Square Enix to re-release these games.

INFO BOX

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer(s): Square Enix Osaka Team

Platform(s): PlayStation 3

Release Date (Europe): September 13th, 2013

Number of players: 1

DriveClub (PS4)

DriveClub was among the first PS4 games announced and after a few updates it's easily among the best games of this generation, but its road to greatness was not without a few bigger bumps. Its first trailers wowed gamers but subsequent gameplay showings failed to impress as much. The game still looked rough a couple of months prior to PS4's launch, which wasn't a good sign for what was intended to be a console-purchase-justifying showcase launch (era) title. In the end, the game was delayed by almost a year and even then the game's online features were horribly broken at launch. Luckily, if you weathered through the shit storm near the launch of the game, what emerged from the train-wreck of a launch is easily one of the finest pure racing games of all time.

These vistas just beg you to come play the game

Focus on the road

DriveClub is a fairly simple game. The focus isn't on The Crew like Ubisoft design philosophies where you repeat pointless tasks around an open world to garner some form of experience points and/or cash you can use to improve your avatar's driving skills or cars. You don't drive around a city to break stuff in the environment and there is no superficial story that gives context to the races. You don't begin as some kind of newbie racer who has to compete in beginner class races to get cash to buy faster cars to enter higher class races. The focus is on racing, pure and simple. You choose your event or track, then the car selection pops up and then you are usually already in a race after a shortish loading screen. It's a no BS racing experience where the actual racing is the focus. And what magnificent racing it has.

DriveClub is considered a simcade racer. It's not Burnout or Ridge Racer like arcade racing where the laws of physics are not just bended but blasted away with a hydrogen bomb, yet it's not Gran Turismo level racing simulation either, let alone like the truly hardcore racing simulations like iRacing. It inserts some level of realism into how different attributes of the car affects the handling somewhat realistically and the handling has somewhat realistic weight to it, but driving isn't quite as punishing as more realistic racing simulations. You won't be nailing all corners in the game without taking your foot of the gas pedal and drifting isn't as efficient way to get through corners as it is in Ridge Racers, either. You need to learn optimal driving lines and learn when to brake and then throttle again when going through corners. Shaving off seconds with skilled driving feels extremely satisfying.

Not only does the handling feel good, DriveClub really nails the sense of speed. From the visual effects to the actual speed of movement and tire screeches & engine sounds as you push the car to its limits, driving feels exciting. When you're driving at 270km/h in DriveClub, it really feels like it.  You feel like any bump in the road can send you flying towards the rails on the side of the road and ruin your perfect lap. The sense of speed makes driving through the beautiful landscapes equal amounts exciting & terrifying. Even more terrifying are the rain conditions that were introduced in the December update. Rain combined with dark night is something to behold and be experienced. DriveClub has, without a doubt, the most impressive rain & wet road effects & physics of any videogame ever.

I challenge thee!

As far as gameplay modes go, DriveClub has a basic campaign mode where you advance quite straightforwardly through a few different types of preset events, starting with slower Hot Hatch cars and working your way up to the super fast Hyper class cars. There are a few different types of events: races, time trials, drift events and multi-race cups. In races & cups you race against 9-11 AI drivers, in time trials you try to get your own time below set times and in drift challenges you'll try to get tons of points by drifting and driving as long & fast as possible. All of these have three challenges that earn you stars that are used to open up more events. The event specific challenges range from your basic "win the race" types to reaching some level of average speed or getting enough points in cornering face-offs.

You can customize your own kind of events in Single Events mode. You can freely choose the track, car, type of event, time of day, weather and other such options and drive to your heart's content. You have the same time trials, races & drift events as in the campaign mode except with total freedom over all aspects of them. Single events aren't the most exciting thing by themselves, but the challenges (which I'll talk more about later in this review) really make it a worthwhile game mode even for people who aren't necessarily interested in shaving off that 0.010 your best times. Driving some random track with whatever car and then sending that time as a challenge to another player is a really fun way to play the game, a kind of asynchronous multiplayer that helps you circumvent some of the annoyances & obstacles of the actual online multiplayer. You don't have to figure out times when all friends can play the game together and there are less problems with online lobbies dropping players or timing out.

Then there's the online multiplayer. In the online multiplayer, currently all you can do is to drive either with max five of your driveclub friends against other clubs (or individuals) or drive alone. You cannot create races yourself, but the game has a constant flow of changing multiplayer events you can join if you wish. They mix different kinds of events pretty well, so you don't feel like you're just driving the same races with the same cars constantly. All the DLC content is in rotation enough as well. Sadly, there aren't any private lobbies or ways of playing only with friends yet. Evolution has promised it will come sooner rather than later, but it's somewhat disappointing that they are still missing.

While the online multiplayer is a bit barebones still, the most interesting & perhaps best part of DriveClub's online features are the challenges. Challenges are things you can create after any race, time trial or drift challenge with the result of that event and then send them to your friends or even total strangers to see who is the best driver. These challenges are timed and once time runs out, the biggest Fame-pot goes to the best driver. You can also send challenges as a club to other clubs, which easily expands the competition in challenges beyond just a few friends.  The third way to enjoy challenges are the Community Challenges. These are completely public challenges that anyone can participate in. Community challenges are something you'll want to do because if you are an even half-decent driver, you can pretty easily earn tens of thousands of Fame points if you manage to get anywhere near the Top 100.

Another fun little distraction are the face-off challenges during any & all events. These are a type of mini-challenges where the tracks have assigned points where you might have to try to get as high a drift score as possible or try to get as fast an average speed as possible. They spice up the racing a bit but focusing on them is completely optional.

Update bonanza

As mentioned before, DriveClub didn't launch in the perfect condition. It lacked some basic features, the online was a mess for the first couple of weeks before it started getting better little by little and some of the more impressive features were still a WIP. But now, 4 months after release, DriveClub is almost like a different game. Don't get me wrong, DriveClub got the basics right from the start. It's an absolute joy to drive and the track designs are marvelous, truly some of the best in the business. But overall it felt like maybe the game should still have been delayed a bit more. I'm not sure if they could've avoided the online problems, but at least some features would've made DriveClub feel like a fuller experience.

So what, exactly, have the updates done to the game? Well, most importantly they've fixed the online problems almost completely. I have had almost zero problems this year with DriveClub's online features, which is a vast improvement over the launch period, when I could never even connect to the servers let alone play multiplayer or have working face-offs during races, and the challenges were simply turned off on the server side even long after they had made big improvements on other online features. Nowadays multiplayer rarely times out, face-offs & updating your times to leaderboards work flawlessly and while sometimes the Challenges are a bit slow to load, they actually work now instead of being greyed out for two or so months after launch.

Dynamic weather with rain & snowing is the second big addition and it's truly a game changer. It's just insane how well made the weather system and its effect on gameplay are. During storms, the game is close to being the best looking game in existence. And it's not just a visual gimmick, it's like the hardcore mode of DriveClub, where you have to be completely focused on what you are doing if you want to make it to the finish line without having spun out of control even once or slided outside the track a few times. The rain drops' effect makes driving feel even more exciting, when your view is somewhat obstructed by them. In the worst conditions, you really need to know the courses by heart if you want to stay on track.

Other additions include a robust photo mode with all kinds of settings to dabble with if you are even a little bit knowledgeable about photography, and of course all the new tracks & cars, which add to the already decently respectable number of tracks in the game and helps fill out the somewhat small-ish selection of cars.

Eye-meltingly beautiful

There is no doubt that DriveClub, at its best, is one of the best looking games released so far. It can have its uglier moments where the sometimes more noticeable aliasing affects the image quality, but the jaw-dropping spectacle vastly exceeds the less impressive moments. The car models are modelled in huge detail inside and out, the environments are insanely detailed, effects like motion blur aren't too overbearing, the lighting in this game is phenomenal and the added weather effects lift the visuals to a whole new level. There's some problem with visible aliasing that affect some tracks more than others, but otherwise Evolution Studios has gone to ridiculous lengths in their attention to detail with DriveClub. I don't see DriveClub necessarily being topped any time soon, as far as graphics go.

The details in this game are on a whole other level.

The sound effects aren't too far behind the visuals. The engine growls are as aggressive as need be and Evolution has gone into as much detail in their sound design as they have with their crazy-detailed graphics. They've recorded engine and other sounds of the cars in meticulous detail inside & outside the cars to give as accurate sound effects no matter what view you are driving from. It's a particularly weird experience to drive one of the (free) DLC cars, Renault DeZir, which is a completely silent electric car. It's such a funny experience after driving the typically loud cars, especially when you're not expecting it. You feel like the game has glitched when DeZir gets off to such a silent start. The DLC campaign race with nothing but DeZirs is a particularly funny event. Never has racing been so silent.

Somewhat curiously, Evolution Studios has actually turned off the BGM as a default setting to satisfy those people who prefer their racing to be all about the engine noises and tire screeches. And speaking of the music of DriveClub, perhaps the weakest aspect of DriveClub is its soundtrack, though not because of lack of quality. The tunes the Welsh band Hybrid has created for DriveClub are great for racing.The problem is more with quantity. Evolution should've either had Hybrid compose a few more songs for the game or had more bands/artists provide their material for the game. As it is, it doesn't take long for you to hear the same song again & again even during shorter sessions.



Verdict: AWESOME. It may have taken an extra year to come out and had a troubled launch and the PS+ version is still nowhere to be seen, but after all the great updates with added features, content & fixes to the online side of things, DriveClub is easily one of my all time favorite racing games, right there amongst Wipeout 3 & HD, Gran Turismo 3, Burnout 3, Need For Speed Underground, Mario Kart DS & 8 and such. While there are still a few features gamers are waiting for, it has come a really long way from its launch. It's a no BS racing game where insanely satisfying driving takes presedence over more superfluous aspects of some more recent (open world) racing games.

Pros
+ Excellent driving model
+ Truly superb sense of speed
+ Challenges are a great feature that extends the life of the game considerably (with or without friends, but even more with)
+ Free content updates (tracks & cars)
+ God tier track designs
+ Execution of dynamic weather is mindblowing in terms of both graphical prowess and the effect it has on gameplay

Cons
-barebones multiplayer features currently (private lobbies are apparently coming later on)
-soundtrack could have used more songs
-vanilla campaign mode can be a bit short, especially for experienced drivers
-still no kind of replay mode
-car selection is a bit small in comparison to the Car Pokemon Collectathon games like Gran Turismo & Forza

INFO BOX

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Evolution Studios

Platform(s): PlayStation 4

Release Date (Europe): October 8, 2014

Number of players: 1 (offline), 1-12 (online)

Rayman Legends (Vita)

Rayman Legends (Vita)

Platformers are a rare breed in the retailer space nowadays. Other than Nintendo, not many other publishers dare to enter that realm of uncertain sales. Ubisoft tried with Rayman Origins a couple of years ago to high critical acclaim, yet mediocre sales. Luckily for fans of platformers, Ubisoft didn't let that prevent them from trying again, resulting in Rayman Legends, another imaginative and fun platformer from the brilliant minds at Ubisoft Montpellier.

The detailed, colourful graphics really pop out on Vita's OLED screen.

Return to the legends of yore 

Legends' gameplay is an excellent proof of the fact that simplicity isn't a bad thing. The game is played with the d-pad and three buttons, which might sound simple and it can be, but you can push the simple mechanics to incredible lengths if you know what you are doing. When you are trying to shave away that final 0,5 seconds in your quest for a diamond trophy in the challenges, you'll learn all kinds of little tricks how you can increase Rayman's speed, get through certain parts faster or keep his momentum going.

There's really not much to complain about with the basic gameplay per se, other than it is perhaps a bit disappointing that Michel Ancel & his Montpellier crew didn't really come up with any new moves or abilities for Rayman. His skill set is exactly the same as it was in Origins. As it is, the game almost feels more like an expansion pack rather than a full new game, mostly offering more of the same.

Of course the depth of gameplay would be nothing without good level design and this is where Rayman Legends shines, for the most part. You can take your time searching every nook & cranny for secrets, collecting every lum and trying to free every Teensie, yet there is a lot of room for speed runs. Most of the levels can play very differently when you don't have to worry about collecting every lum and can just speed through the levels as fast as you can.

While Legends mostly feels similar to Origins, it does have some new tricks up its sleeves. One of the more fun addition are the music levels. These levels have been designed in a way that everything that happens on screen is in sync with the background music, so you are jumping, hitting enemies or bouncing on them in the rhythm of the music. The songs used in them are mostly new Rayman-fitting arrangements by Christophe Héral from more or less well known classics like Eye of the Tiger, Black Betty and Woo Hoo with a couple of original compositions from Héral. The music levels aren't too hard apart from the 8-bit versions, but they still offer fun variety to Legends' level selection.

Mini-Rayman is just one of the fun gameplay gimmicks in the game

Perhaps the best part of the offline content are the Invasion levels, especially for gamers who want a bit of challenge. These levels were originally missing from the Vita version, but after three months of waiting they were added into it for full level parity with the home console & PC versions. They are essentially time trials, where you have to go through remixed parts of the levels in the game as fast as you can to save all the Teensies. There are added enemies and dangers which mean you aren't playing the exact same thing as in the normal levels. In these levels, you really have to put your skills to the test if you want to save all Teensies. For the more experienced gamer, these aren't anything too impossible, but they do require much more skill & understanding of the gameplay mechanics if you are to get through the hardest of them.

Some legends are best forgotten...

Legends' origin as a Wii U exclusive game is most clear with the addition of new type of touch-based Murfy levels. In both the Wii U & the Vita version, you are not in control of Rayman's friend Globox, but have to rely on his AI to get around the levels while you are in control of tiny green creature called Murfy. Your job is to flip switches, move platforms, tickle enemies & cut ropes as the AI controlled Globox tries his best to die.

Unfortunately, the Murfy levels are the weakest part of Rayman Legends. You are in the mercy of Globox's AI, which can lead into incredibly annoying leaps of death that no human controlling the game would ever do. Globox seems to have no sense of self preservation, opting not to save himself even when it would be as easy as extending your leap by a couple of meters. The Murfy levels during the main campaign are passable, but frustrations will arise when you are trying to get through some of the harder parts of challenges. To give an example of how big of an issue this is, there was a daily challenge you couldn't even complete because no matter what you did, Globox would just jump into his death.

Who's the best Globox in the world

Another new addition to Rayman Legends are the daily & weekly challenges. These are randomly generated levels where gamers around the world compete for trophies. There are five types of challenge levels which can be further divided into a few different sub-types of challenges. In one type of challenge level, you might have to collect 150 lums as fast as possible while falling down a neverending pit filled with fireballs, spikes and other kinds of deadly traps. In another, you are trying to climb an infinite tower as high as possible with an increasingly challenging set of obstacles getting in your way. As mentioned before, unfortunately Murfy-levels are also a part of these challenges and they are the worst part of them as well.

While you'd think you'd get tired of repeating the few different kinds of challenges every day, the challenges are different enough to counter tedium. The set of challenge rooms in the Dojo are a fundamentally different experience from trying to make sure you are constantly moving up in the Infinite tower challenges or controlling the pace of your constant falling in the Neverending Pit.

9 seconds to go to one of my few diamond trophies.

The reward for the challenges are bronze, silver, gold and diamond trophies, each rewarding you with a certain number of points. In addition to challenges, you can get a set amount of trophies from the regular levels. The points you get are counted towards your Awesomeness level, which is a completely pointless addition to the game. Your Awesomeness level doesn't really do anything past a certain point and is mainly there to force perfectionists/trophy hunters to play the game daily. The base game only nets you around 4000 points, so to get to the final 11th level of awesomeness (6000 points), you have to go through months of daily Rayman Legends gaming. Unless you're continuously among the Top 1% who are rewarded with the 50-point Diamon Trophy, your maximum number of points per day is probably 20 or even less if you can't even reach the much more attainable Gold trophy.

As far as the more superficial side goes, Rayman Legends doesn't disappoint. The 2D art is even more beautiful than in Origins and the game looks gorgeous running on Vita's OLED screen in native resolution. The game manages to mostly keep up the respectable 60fps framerate throughout the 120 levels helping the controls feel extra responsive, but there were a few Invasion levels where, for example, the molten lava effects on the screen caused some slowdown.

The soundtrack offers the kind of catchy fun, whimsical tunes Origins did which compliment the colourful yet sometimes goofy style of Rayman perfectly. If you are not humming the themes as you play and don't get a smile on your face while listening to the happy melodies of Legends, you might just be dead inside. If only Christophe Héral composed more music for video games, the video game music world would be that much better for it.

All-in-all, I can't feel but a little disappointed in Rayman Legends. At its best, it's platforming nirvana on the palm of your hands but some things like the Murfy levels definitely bring down the package as a whole. As it stands, Legends perhaps has higher highs than Rayman Origins, but it also has the lowest lows of these two games. Legends is a no-brainer for fans of platformers, but you have to approach it with the knowledge that you aren't getting as thoroughly perfect a package from beginning to end as Origins was and the fully original content is over a bit too soon. The Vita version is a very good port - especially with the now-returned Invasion levels - but the lack of online multiplayer is a bit disappointing, considering there are likely a lot of people who don't have real-life friends with a Vita and interest in Rayman. Of course Rayman works perfectly well as a single player game as well, so us Rayman-loners of the world can still experience the platforming bliss. Alone.

Pros

* super-tight controls & simple yet deep gameplay
* imaginative & well designed levels
* Invasion levels offer challenge to those who want it
* daily & weekly challenges are a great way to get more out of the game and its mechanics
* the graphics are as gorgeous as ever
* Christophe Héral's OST perfectly compliments the visuals and shenanigans of Rayman

Cons

* doesn't really noticeably improve or add anything on top of what Origins already did, gameplay-wise

* the whole Awesomeness-thing is completely pointless and requires way too much grinding with the game being as it is

* Murfy levels are, frankly, passable at best, shit at worst

* there are too many Murfy levels vs. normal ones

* the ghost/closest challengers features in the Daily & Weekly challenges are a bit broken & often don't work

Verdict: GREAT. While Legends is a somewhat disappointing sequel because of the numerous mediocre Murfy levels and slight lack of wholly original content, at its best it's a masterfully crafted platformer that puts a lot of others in the genre to shame and even puts up a fight with Nintendo's best ones.

INFO BOX

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier

Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 (upcoming), PlayStation Vita (tested), Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One (upcoming)

Release Date (Europe): August 30th 2013 (PC, PS3, Wii U, Xbox 360), September 13th 2013 (Vita) & February 27th 2014 (PS4, Xbox One)

Number of players: 1 (offline), 1-4 (online)