AFTERPAD

Review: Rayman Fiesta Run

Rayman Fiesta Run is a difficult game to review. The components for a truly great game are here. The graphics are beautiful, the music and sound excellent, the levels challenging and fun, the content plentiful. Its the way these components are assembled that cause Rayman Fiesta Run to fall as flat as it does, and makes this as disappointing an experience as it is.

Unlike it’s console and computer brethren (and an earlier, now-discontinued Gameloft game release), the newer iOS Rayman games are simplified response-based platformers. Your character automatically runs from one side of the screen to the other, with your control over the action focused on correctly timing jumps, attacks, and other maneuvers.

As Rayman, you run from the beginning of the level to the end at a fixed speed. Along the way, you must must dodge enemies, collect as many collectables as possible, jump from platform to platform, and eventually perform more difficult maneuvers with the use of power ups and new abilities. While this plays well within the confines of a touch screen environment, the addition of controller support makes the game much more fun. Timing jumps becomes easier, combining multiple button presses is less frustrating, and most importantly, it is easier to see where you’re going without fingers obscuring the screen.

With that said, playing Rayman Fiesta Run with a gamepad just hammers home how far away this is from a true Rayman game, especially to those who’ve played Rayman Origins or Rayman Legends. This mobile outing simply doesn’t have anywhere near the care and heart put into it that the full games do. Whereas the full games are beautifully balanced, thoughtfully assembled experiences, this mobile game feels somewhat soulless. The world map, and most of the menus, have multiple Facebook buttons covering them, with the developers attempting to bribe players in in-game currency for spamming their friends about the game on Facebook. The console games have music tracks carefully paired with level themes, whereas this mobile game randomly pairs songs with unrelated levels. Pop-up ads, in-app currency purchasing, social spam, ads during loading/pause screens – this isn’t a game made by people who have much respect for their customers, or their own creation.

Rayman Fiesta Run is fun, but so are many other platforming games worth playing – games that that treat their players with more respect. For those who absolutely must have any platforming game, or any game with Rayman in it, this is worth a buy. For the rest of us, there are better iOS games to spend time on. The recent console and Mac Rayman Games are nothing short of platforming masterpieces – sadly, this isn’t one of those games. This is a mobile tie-in, with all that entails.