In the Glade of Dreams, a world created by the mysterious Bubble Dreamer, Rayman, his best friend Globox, and some Teensy friends are chilling out at the Bubble Dreamer's resting grounds, the Snoring Tree. However, their snoring disturbs an old granny from the Land of the Livid Dead, who retaliates by sending an evil army of horrendous creatures and the Darktoons across the world, capturing the Electoons that inhabit the world, imprisoning Betilla the Nymph and her sisters, and plunging the Glade into chaos.

Story
First of all, the story in this game is pretty bad, because it is badly executed throughout the game and there's also a lot of moments where it doesn't make any sense at all, an example is that there's a plot twist that you didn't see it coming not because it was cleverly hidden and hinted, but because it felt like it was just put there just to get it over with, and the reason for this plot twist to happen doesn't make any sense ! and the only way to find out about the plot of this game is to look it up online, and even so, it still doesn't make any sense... thankfully, the game focuses a lot more on the gameplay, and there are some good moments in there as well, but sadly, I didn't enjoyed this story whatsoever...

Gameplay
Rayman Origins is a 2D platformer that uses the Wii remote sideways, the Wii remote and nunchuck and the Classic controller/Pro. The game is presented with a level select screen to choose which level to pick, reminiscent to the old level select screens of some of the old 2D games, and once you begin the game, you will start out with no moves, no attacks, etc. but as you progress through the game you will gain them by rescuing these fairies called the Nymphs in each respective world, and each of them give you a new abilities such as running up walls, gliding in midair, swimming and shrinking in size which all of them can help you reach certain and new areas. In each world your objective is to reach the end of the level, but there is also another objective which is to rescue these imprisoned creatures named Electoons, in which you must find them through a lot of secret areas, but you must also collect these other creatures called Lums in which they're spreaded throughout the whole levels since at the end of each level you are graded to how many amount of lums you've collected and you must need a certain amount of them in order to get two electoons each in their order of amounts of lums collected, and there are also some boosts to double the amount of collecting these lums by collecting a Lum King in which it will double the value of lums you can collect in a few seconds and by collecting these Skull Coins which are also hidden or put in dangerous areas that are worth 25 Lums each if you manage to catch it and wait for a while or move away to collect it all while not being hurt, since it will return to its place if you get hurt. And you must collect these electoons in order to progress through the levels in which they require a certain amount of electoons.

If I want to voice my opinion on this game's gameplay, there is one thing I want to mention the most, and that is this game is really difficult ! the game can be brutal and be very challenging as well ! I mean sure, there are some levels that are from fairly easy to decent, but for the most part this game is pretty challenging ! even though this game has unlimited lives ! and the problem is that the challenge can even be unfair at times ! because this game requires you to have a precise control skill in order to progress, but since the controls can be slippery at times and it might be a pain as well ! since there are also some levels where you will be riding a mosquito and one these segments you can shoot enemies or suck them up and fire them, but the thing is, there is no rapid fire option meaning you must repeatedly press the button in order to repeatedly fire, while it is not bad as it is, when you want to collect a lot of lums for the medals (more on that later on...), you might get your hand hurt, especially on the later levels, since my hand got hurt during these segments... and it didn't felt very good...

The game also includes a drop-in drop-out coop multiplayer similar to New Super Mario Bros. Wii, it can even reduce the difficulty fairly, but you can still hit your partner to the point where he might lose a life if you're not careful...

As a whole, this game can be brutally difficult and for unfair reasons, to the point that it becomes annoyingly torturous, like for example there was a level where I thought I was doing something wrong and that I wasn't skilled enough to pass it, and as it turns out, it was some sort of glitch/bug that the game has that didn't let me finish it ! even though the level was optional and not part of the main game, it was almost as bad as that game breaking bug from Metroid: Other M and Zelda: Skyward Sword ! and as I've found out, I wasn't the only one who had a problem about this... But I've managed to beat it somehow...

Graphics
But let's put aside all of that torture and look at the positive, this game looks really beautiful ! this is also one of the first games to use an in-house graphics engine called the "UbiArt Framework" which allows artists to easily create content and then use it in an interactive environment, and from the way the game looks, it is really good ! the animation is flawless and the lightning does really set the tone and atmospheric environment, everything looks colorful, cartoony and over the top, yet it looks beautiful, detailed and even atmospheric ! while I did feel like it needed something more and a few glaring problems, this game is another example as a game that doesn't need realistic graphics in order to look really good !

Music and Sound
The soundtrack in this game is really good ! there are some good song here and there and there are even some memorable ones ! they do set the tone of the game even though it looks like it doesn't sound like it ! truly it shows the great amount of effort they put in this game when it comes to music !

The sounds, for the most part, are ok, the sounds of punching someone are really good and so do the sounds when you collect a lum, they're not too frequent though in some parts but when they're not, the sounds can be annoying when repeated constantly, the game however doesn't have any voices in it... just grumbles, but they do sound very good, and the game also supports a variety of languages depending of what you speak.

Presentation
As for the whole presentation of this game, the level select screen is pretty simple, but the levels are what makes this game feel really good, some levels look wonderful, deep and atmospheric, while some fell simple but great at the same time, however, the game might be too atmospheric since the character you are playing can be pretty small and you might not see it from a distance, but you can set the Wii to some settings (primarily changing the display setting to 16:9), in order for the game to look just like how it should be.

But the thing is... I’m very disappointed about this game, because if you look at the E3 trailers and stage demos you can see that the game looked even better, the environments had more tone and style, the story looked better because it had more meaning to the title "origins" since this was supposed to be the prequel to the first game of this franchise, and even the difficulty looked fairly decent ! but sadly... this is what I got instead, and while it doesn't look bad, I was hoping for this game to look more or even better than the one showed at E3...

As for the replayability, this game does have a fair amount of content to it, as I've said before, you can earn medals in each level by collecting a huge amount of lums, a time trail when you finished that respective level and there are also some optional levels in which are the treasure chest levels, in which you must chase a runaway treasure chest across a dangerous course, and while the early ones may be fun, the later ones however are, you guessed it, brutally difficult ! in fact, these levels are the worst when it comes to the difficulty ! since it requires you to be calm and very quick at the same time ! in which to some people that can be really stressful to do ! but anyway if you finish all the 10 treasure chest levels, you will get unlock a secret level called the Land of the Livid Dead and in this level... if you thought that this game wasn't hard enough, then this one seals the deal... and as you can see, these contents might give you a rough time in order to complete them all, and you might be thinking "man, what is going to be my reward if I managed to complete them all ?" can you guess what it is ?... NOTHING ! you get nothing ! well, you can unlock some alternate costume when you collect enough electoons, but if you manage to collect all the medals, trophies and complete a very challenging level... you won't get anything as a reward... only the credits...

Overall
I’m very disappointed at this game, sure the game has some beautiful graphics, a great soundtrack and a great style and environment, but the really bad story and stressful gameplay just worn me off and the lack of any rewards for completing this game in 100% just made me look like a waste... so if you REALLY love challenging games, then get this, if you're interested about this game or if you're worried about the problems I've mentioned in this review, then give it a rent and see if you can enjoy it or not, but if you don't like challenging games and feel like you should be rewarded because you've completed one, then AVOID THIS GAME AT ALL COSTS !!! as for me this game gets...


a 7/10

7- Good This game may have a few flaws or may have somewhat shoddy controls, or minor sound/graphics flaws, but the game itself should be fun if you like the genre, and can overlook the potential flaws!