{"id":123387,"date":"2022-02-01T10:42:50","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T08:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=123387"},"modified":"2022-02-01T14:03:59","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T12:03:59","slug":"rayman-2-the-great-escape-a-nostalgic-retrospective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/reviews\/123387-rayman-2-the-great-escape-a-nostalgic-retrospective","title":{"rendered":"Rayman 2 The Great Escape: A nostalgic retrospective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hazy memories of being up past the 7:30 pm news and sitting in front of the family computer, playing the 1999 Ubisoft childhood classic Rayman 2: The Great Escape by looking over my older brothers shoulder or having the keyboard to myself, come to mind often.<\/p>\n

Rayman 2: The Great Escape is undeniably the game I loved the most as a kid.<\/p>\n

The unique 3D platforming paired with sinister undertones and quirky characters kept me engaged constantly.<\/p>\n

Looking back on older games, it’s easy to have a rose-tinted view of the game and for nostalgia to cloud your judgment but Rayman 2 is excellent even to this day.<\/p>\n

Unique gameplay
\n<\/a><\/h3>\n

The story starts with Rayman trying to escape Admiral Razorbeard, the evil pirate overlord and main antagonist,\u00a0 who has enslaved the people of Glade of Dreams.<\/p>\n

You play as Rayman trying to eradicate the evil that has possessed your homeland and release the clutches of the violent pirate scum.<\/p>\n

Rayman 2 is best played by taking advantage of the smooth movement mechanics. Platforming in The Great Escape feels soo good.<\/p>\n

Rayman has weight and is not just floating in the air.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Rayman dodging incoming pirate fire.<\/p><\/div>\n

The double jumps, strafe and swinging, feel like you are being pulled by gravity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Admiral Razorbeard onboard the pirate ship Rayman just escaped from.<\/p><\/div>\n

The variations between levels are something to behold for a game from 1999.<\/p>\n

Between levels, you can find yourself bouncing from lily pad to lily pad, making sure you don’t get munched by piranhas; sliding down a course from the point of view of inside the mouth of a monster or swinging from purple floating interactive orbs called lums to get to hard to reach places.<\/p>\n

Murky landscapes<\/h3>\n

Whilst bouncing or swinging your way through levels; the player is offered the opportunity to stop and admire the gloomy aesthetic of The Great Escape.<\/p>\n

The darkness of Rayman’s fantastical landscapes and the evil presence of the pirates is felt within every frame of the game.<\/p>\n

The murky environment is ideal for fairies; big teethed flying toads and mushrooms to litter each corner of a room.<\/p>\n

The unique character design brings unsettling moments like in the “Cave of Bad Dreams”, where a dark hole with glowing eyes and a skinny arm reaches out to grab Rayman.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you get caught, you witness Rayman get slowly strangled and pulled back into the dark abyss.<\/p>\n

It’s moments like this that captured my imagination, putting me on the edge of my set as a kid.<\/p>\n

Quirky characters<\/h3>\n

The game’s dark tone is contrasted by the bright and quirky friends you make along the way.<\/p>\n

Globox, your pea-brained best friend and sidekick, provides countless laughs as well as the Teensies, a group of big-snouted somethings that can’t seem to figure out who is the king among them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Globox and Rayman finally reunite.<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s never a chore to sit through dialogue even though the characters in the PC edition speak gibberish.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed all the characters you interact with so much that I saved up for Rayman M that let me play as all of them in multiplayer racing and battles.<\/p>\n

The Rayman series has a special place in my heart, and it was Rayman 2: The Great Escape introduced me to Ubisoft’s fantastical world.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Read: The video game I like most.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Admiral Razorbeard has a big case of small man syndrome and Rayman is here to intervene<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":247,"featured_media":123392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[21,731],"class_list":["post-123387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-reviews","tag-headline","tag-rayman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123415,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123387\/revisions\/123415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}