Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc
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 Alright, ladies and gents! Let's roll!
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Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc is the third major platform game installment in the Rayman series and the sequel to Rayman 2: The Great Escape. A remastered HD port was later released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as Rayman 3 HD.
Note: This focus on the console versions due to the GBA version being completely different from this aside from the story, for the GBA version, click here.
Plot
It follows Rayman in his quest to stop an evil Black Lum named André from taking over the world with his army of hoodlum soldiers, which includes finding a cure for his best friend Globox after he accidentally swallows André.
Why It Rocks
- Rayman 3 features a point-based scoring system; a first for the series. The score system offers tons of replay value and tests the player's skills and knowledge of enemy encounters.
- Rayman's friend Globox is given a much bigger role and accompanies Rayman through the entire game.
- Rayman 3's levels are more straightforward and oriented towards action and combat rather than platform and exploration. And unlike many combat oriented platformers, the game is still enjoyable and still feels like a platformer thanks to the combat mechanics being well designed.
- Occasionally you go through on-rails levels with creative and beautiful 1980s visuals. You can even find the USS Enterprise from Star Trek in one of them.
- The game features sarcastic self-referential undertones and pokes fun at the platform video game genre, which differs from the light-hearted nature of its predecessors.
- Amazing graphics and detailed environments for a 2003 game and still hold up extremely well by today standards, the characters models are also really good and detailled and colorful, the graphics are even better in the Xbox 360 remaster due to having better lightning and the graphics being slighly upscaled.
- Excellent voice acting, especially for the english and the original French dub, in which the latter being an improvement on the already decent French dub for Rayman 2: The Great Escape and it's PS2 version, Rayman Revolution.
- Rather than shooting projectile orbs like in the previous game, Rayman returns to shooting his fists to attack enemies like in the first game, which is much more iconic to the character.
- Funky disco music, with the Hoodoo Sorcerer theme and the Teensie Highway music standing out.
- "Madder" by Grove Armada is a cool intro theme song.
- Tight and responsive controls that are even faster than the previous games, although it is a bit less fluid than the second game but not by much and the controls are still responsive.
- Rayman can now shoot two fists at once, which makes combat much more fluent. It also makes swinging through rings a lot easier.
- Varied gameplay and levels and the game never feel repetitive thank to that.
- Lots of secrets and unlockables including cameos from the previous game and beta content from this game.
- Instead of permanent upgrades to his abilities, Rayman can now find special "Laser Washing Powder" cans containing one of five temporary power-ups. When Rayman uses this power ups his outfit temporarily changes.
Bad Qualities
- Globox, the Teensies, and Murfy are the only characters from Rayman 2 that appear in person.
- Not helping the fact that Murfy isn't seen in the entirety of the game since he abandon early in the game and even say "See you in Rayman 4", which didn't aged well due to that game being cancelled, (unless if you thinking about the GBA version of Raving Rabbids..)
- The stronger focus on combat gameplay can be alienating to fans of the previous two games.
- The theme song was removed from the HD ports.
- There's only 9 levels comparing to Rayman 2's 21 levels.
- The animation in the in-game cutscenes is terrible, with the characters moving in a jagged, robotic way.
- The lip-syncing in the game is inconsistent in most cases in the English version, in most cases the lips stop moving but the characters keep talking, however this problem does not occur in the French, Spanish, German, and Italian version of the game as the lip-syncing is much better in those versions.
Reception
Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc received generally positive reviews from critics. On Metacritic, the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Windows versions of the game received aggregated scores of 77, 76, 75 and 74 respectively. On GameRankings, the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Windows versions received scores of 78.08%, 80.19%, 76.91% and 78.31% respectively, making it the lowest rated main series Rayman game.
The game's impressive visuals and artistic style received universal praise. Its dialogue, voice acting and humour polarised reviewers, with some praising their wit. The gameplay was generally regarded as solid, but some criticized the game for focusing on combat and timer-based puzzles rather than platform.
This game is usually considered the black sheep of the Rayman series, despite that it is still regarded as a great game. Rayman's creator Michel Ancel wasn't directly involved in the game's development and said that while he liked the game, it was "a bit too concrete for [his] tastes", and that he "would have made the game differently".
Trivia
- A sound effect from the Rayman Dictations educational game collection was reused in Rayman 3. It can be heard in the game's menus when scrolling the cursor.
- The Fairy Council was mentioned in the first pages of the Rayman 2 manual. The Heart of the World was mentioned in Rayman 2, but did not appear in it.
- Rayman 3 makes several references to the first Rayman game: Murfy 's Manual shows a reproduction of Rayman 's head when he was in 2D. An image of Livingstone is hung on the stakes where a plum must be planted . The mini-games 2D Madness and 2D Nightmare use 2D settings. Finally, one of Count Razoff's ancestors has chased Space Mama out of the City of Images.
- Rayman 3 also makes many references to Rayman 2: in the Crawdad Swamps, we again come across giant brambles. In Razoff 's Mansion, we can see sculptures representing the snake Sssssam. In the Knaaren Desert, we again face zombie chickens. In the Great Shortcut, a secret room contains a statue of the fairy Ly. Finally, in Hoodlums Headquarters, a secret room contains statues of Razorbeard and some Pirate Robots.
Game Tips
- Every five times you score points within the same combo chain, the combo points you get are doubled. Take advantage of this to score large amounts of points; for example grab five coins before killing an enemy.
- The first time you score points doesn't count towards combos so it's best to start a combo chain by scoring the lowest points available, usually grabbing a common coin.
- Combo chains last three seconds after grabbing a coin and six seconds after killing an enemy.
- Plan your attack strategy carefully when going into a combat section to maximize combo chains.
- Reading the game manual is highly recommended, as it contains information that is not given by Murfy or the tutorial (including the method of approaching the Tribelles , the presence of the Matuvus and the fact that the points collected are doubled if you use a laser detergent).
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