Rayman Origins

[QUOTE="K.NARREN"] Yes, how dare they try and do something different! Everyone knows that trying new things that haven't already been done to death is a stupid idea! You're quite clearly right! It's not like Jak 2 blended 2 jarring ideas! It's not like the wind waker ever took a much more fantastical route, because obviously zelda should only be realistic! You must be a fuckin genius![/quote]Rayman 2 was radically different from the original game, and judging by the reaction of both fans and critics, this different approach seems to have worked very well. You are completely misrepresenting me by characterising my wish for the series to remain fantastical as some sort of opposition to change in general. Can change be a good thing? Yes, Rayman 2 proved that. Does this mean that the Rayman series is in need of a radical shift to make it more ‘concrete’? Perhaps you should check out Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 and see how well that worked. I have not played Jak 2 or The Wind Waker; Zelda was never my thing. Ancel stating his opinion that Rayman 3 was ‘a bit too concrete’ does not signify an opposition to change; merely that he does not think that particular direction is a good one for the Rayman series to take. A single glance at the main character should be enough to tell you all you need to know about the series’s position when it comes to realism. And let me remind you that none of us know what he meant by ‘concrete’, meaning that the web of criticisms you’ve extrapolated from his use of this word is completely vapid.

[QUOTE="K.NARREN"] My views are that the entire film lacks purpose. You can't just use over the rainbow and expect the juxtaposistion to just work straight away. It doesn't have any purpose. Likewise the ending is screwed because only the faults of humanity died and only they will make up the new human race. It's horribly flawed.[/quote]I have only watched the film once and have not given it much thought since then, so I’m not a position to discuss the finer points of its plot. Needless to say, it does not hold the same appeal for me as Rayman 2, which I have replayed more than any other game.

[QUOTE="K.NARREN"] What can I say, you just like forcing things to be epic because you can't come up with anything better :B. RO shares just as much with R1 and R3- and to make something clear, I do like some of the visuals of R2, but they don't reach very far. It was hard to care inbetween the horrible dialogue. There's a reason no-one in Mario was allowed to have a lot of speech.[/quote]I never found the epic story of Rayman 2 to be ‘forced’; it fitted perfectly well with the world and the tone of the game. Rayman 1 wasn’t an epic; it did not take itself seriously, and it worked equally well. You seem to be suggesting that I want games which are smaller in scope to be epic instead; this is not true. Are you basing this solely on the fact that I think Rayman 2 has a good story and that it fits the definition of the world? I love R2’s visuals. The dialogue is perfectly passable; at least it’s not cringle-worthy like R3’s.

[QUOTE="K.NARREN"] You ever have that annoying person who thinks they're great, and you just wish they could see themselves and how crap they really are? TBH you probably think that of me right now, but R3 is that. It doesn't let itself get too involved in its own ego and it's great that it deflates itself like that. I hate stoic stuff unless it has purpose. R2 is a waste of space because it has no purpose. Rayman learns nothing, even on a basic level, nothing is truly at stake, and the villains never ramp thier game up. Lazy, lazy, lazy.[/quote]Rayman 3 sells itself short with its crude jokes and slapstick humour. It would have been a much better game if not for its forcible ‘attitude’. You claim that Rayman 2 ‘has no purpose’; sure it does. Rayman rescues his friends, defeats the villains, saves the world and so forth. The plot is much better than that of the typical platformer of the time. I don’t like stories where the protagonists ‘learn’ things; do you think Tonic Trouble’s ham-fisted environmentalist ending was ‘meaningful’? I thought the world being at stake was enough of a reason to play the game; Razorbeard buying a gigantic robot to crush Rayman and then kidnapping his best friend seemed like he was ‘ramping his game up’ to me.

[QUOTE="K.NARREN"]Double post because I've just realised who you are

 Lijik brought you up to me a while ago[/quote]Please cut the melodramatics. ‘I’ve just realised who you are’ made me smile. It’s completely inappropriate of you to bring up something I said many moons ago in an entirely unrelated discussion, particularly for the purposes of personal criticism, but I cannot allow such accusations to pass unchallenged.

[QUOTE="K.NARREN"] Yeah, you're that guy who considers himself to be the gold standard. I'd like you to know that I remember this quote from crash mania, and I remember feeling very angry at the time. I loved Twinsanity long before CM or HP- it's how HP and I got to talking and became friends. The influence you claim he puts upon others opinions is only what I've seen you try to do here today, and I shall do it myself right now :V[/quote]I everyone whose views are aligned with the critical consensus a ‘gold standard’? I found Twinsanity to be quite a poor game. Have you ever wondered why the original Naughty Dog-developed Crash Bandicoot trilogy received glowing reviews while Twinsanity received mediocre ones? There’s a reason for that, too. As a huge fan of the series I was mystified when I played Twinsanity; all of the familiar iconography was there, but the game itself was no longer much fun and most of the gameplay elements I had grown to love in the previous titles were gone. If you’re going to take a beloved series in a radically different direction, you should at least make sure you do it damn well. I was baffled when I read HP Zoner’s review of the game, in which he declared that it had become a favourite of fans. How would you feel if you visited Pirate-Community and found that Hunch had written and published a review in which he proclaimed that Rayman Raving Rabbids was a fantastic continuation of the Rayman series? I still don’t understand why fans of the Naughty Dog allegedly like it so much; perhaps an examination of your own feelings towards Rayman 2 could also help to put this in perspective for you. Except for the critical reception, which fully supports my position in the case of both games. It’s really ridiculous that you’re attacking me for criticising a Crash game which is liked by the fanbase while you’re simultaneously criticising a Rayman game which is liked by the fanbase.

[QUOTE="K.NARREN"] Because you obviously have no taste in games, if you think wrath of cortex was a great game you're naturally love R2. WOC also failed to do anything innovative or new with anything in particular while Twinsanity attempted to show us a side of crash we had never seen before. And guess what, I used my own brain to come up with the opinion. I also used my own brain to figure out that you're a bigger douchebag than me. How did yours cope with that?[/quote]Wrath of Cortex was a bad game; basically a direct copy of Crash 3. It was quite a boring experience, filled with déjà vu. It failed to do anything new or innovative. However, I began to appreciate it more when I played Twinsanity, which barely felt like a Crash Bandicoot game at all. Whatever Twinsanity might have ‘attempted’ to do, the efforts of the developers to top Naughty Dog’s sublime formula simply did not pay off.