Rayman Rush
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 The title doesn't lie, this is a horribly rushed port of Rayman Arena, and it might describe how the development of this game happened.
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Rayman Rush is the PlayStation port of Rayman M, it was developed by Ubisoft Shanghai and released in 2002.
It has many differences from the base game, most of which are due to the technical limitations of the PlayStation. The most striking difference is the absence of Battle Mode.
Summary
Rayman's world kicks into multiplayer overdrive in this total competition crash course with the cast of Rayman 2. Smoke the competition on mind-bending competitive racecourses, catching lums, Timemode and Target Mode (Popolopoï). And with 8 characters, 12 maps and a combatant, now Rayman's got more ways to reign supreme than ever.
Bad Qualities
- For starters, this version is heavily watered down from Rayman Arena/M (due to being released on a weaker console) and had less contents, which is the main reason of why this port is that bad, not to mention that it ended up being one of the worst Rayman game ever made, which is very rare to get bad games in the Rayman franchise.
- In fact it provide almost no replay values due to how much contents it got cut, mostly because of the removed battle modes who we're mostly the strongest point of Rayman M and especially Arena, speaking of which, it remove all the charm from the 7th gen console versions.
- Also, some of the removed contents are absolutely stupid, such as for the battle mode that could easily been made into a PS1 game, although to be honest, the memory on the disc was probably full, but still.
- In fact it provide almost no replay values due to how much contents it got cut, mostly because of the removed battle modes who we're mostly the strongest point of Rayman M and especially Arena, speaking of which, it remove all the charm from the 7th gen console versions.
- It was a very bad idea to release the game on the PS1 when it was very late because the game was released in March 2002, when the PS1 started to show it's age, it was actually mean to be a demake of Rayman Arena but it fail due to every problems that we are speaking about it.
- Even worse, because of this, the game sold poorly and is one of the most obscure game of the franchise along with most of the Java games, and is also one of the lowest rated game of the franchise.
- In fact, to prove how obscure it is, it got reviewed by only 5 critics in Metacritic, and not too many peoples talk about it on websites such as YouTube or anything like that.
- Even worse, because of this, the game sold poorly and is one of the most obscure game of the franchise along with most of the Java games, and is also one of the lowest rated game of the franchise.
- The controls are made way more clunkier, even worse than the first version of Rayman M (which had slighly clunky but good controls), as now they are very stiff and unresponsive and are some of the worst controls the franchise had ever given, and while they aren't as bad as the controls from the early Rayman 3 Java ports, they are still problematic and make Rayman DS look like it controls as well as it's original Rayman 2 counterpart.
- The gameplay quickly became repetitive because the races are the only things in the entire game (which is why the game is called "Rayman Rush"), and the racing isn't as fun as the original where it was way faster, more fun and also control better.
- In fact the game is slower than it's 6th gen consoles counterpart, and this is what make this port less fun to play, and also, why did they made it slower despite that they made Rayman moving faster in the previous two games on the PS1 ? This is all a mystery.
- The graphics, while similar to Rayman 2, are very bad even for a 2002 PS1 game, as it had extremely blurry models, had terribly undetailled textures and the colors are very washed out, to the point of being one of the worst looking game of the Rayman franchise, though the graphics aren't as bad as some of the Raving Rabbids games on DS.
- The textures are especially bad because they had the worst colors out of the entire game design, had abysmal lightning and even they are also extremely pixelated, which doesn't help to make the game look better.
- It doesn't help that Rayman 2 on PS1 which had a similar problem of textures, looked better than this and that port was released in 2000, and also that port is way better than this awful port of Rayman Arena
- The characters models are somehow worse than Rayman 2 on PS1 due to being blocky and overall they show that the PS1 started to show it's age in 2002, which is a similar case to other bad 2002 PS1 games such as Shrek: Treasure Hunt (howewer that game had even worse graphics than this game).
- The colors are just as washed out as in the PS1 port of Rayman 2, if not even worse because they are extremely undetailled and look very poorly colored, even for a PS1 game, and it make it look like a late Sega Saturn game.
- The textures are especially bad because they had the worst colors out of the entire game design, had abysmal lightning and even they are also extremely pixelated, which doesn't help to make the game look better.
- The level design had been slighly changed in this port due to limitations, and honestly they are just downright boring and tedious to play because they don't capture the fun of what made Rayman Arena so awesome, and it doesn't help that the game had terrible collision detection with the platforming sections and the grabbing system.
- It is made even worse by the fact that for most of the game, they placed the platforms randomly, which make the levels very tedious to progress, and make this game even more frustrating.
- The game difficulty is very frustrating and is even harder than Rayman Arena PAL version, this is mostly because of the awful platforming collision and the fact that the opponents AI is terrible, not to mention that this game already lack polish, so why making everything difficult for no reasons ?
- The collision is the biggest offender with this, since it make the platforming sections even more frustrating and make the game harder than it supposed to be, howewer it sometime don't had anything to do with the diffuculty due to how poorly designed some levels are.
- The later levels are the most frustrating because of the horrible obstacles placements, the overly long tracks and the fact that the opponents had a big advantage over you by being faster but this depend on the character you choosen.
- The game is very short, as it can be completed in only 4 hours, when the console versions are longer and lasted for over 10 hours of gameplay.
- Long loading times, even in comparison to the PS1 port of Rayman 2, since they last more than 10 seconds, and are on par with Mega Man X7 loading times.
- The intro quality is rather poor in comparison to the console versions.
- First off, the image quality is blurry and look like it was watered down so that it could fit into the disc, even if it isn't as bad as the PS1 port of South Park cutscenes quality.
- Also, the animation is somewhat weaker, despite that the PS1 is fully capable of producing good CGI cutscenes such as in games like Pac-Man World for exemple who had a much better CGI quality in both visually and in the animation, and that game was released in 1999, 3 years before this game came out.
- The audio quality is somewhat poor, although it isn't the worst.
- Overall, this port is pointless, even back in 2002 since the much better 6th gen console versions we're already out (well not in North America due to them being made in September 2002), and nowadays this port is even more pointless because there's every other versions of Rayman Arena that can be buy for a cheap price on the internet, and even then, you can play both games on emulator easily nowadays, but still there's no reasons to play Rayman Rush nowadays with the much better 6th gen consoles versions.
Good Qualities
- While it's a pretty bad port, it is a very interesting port considering the technical issues of the PS1, and show what a Rayman Arena port looked like on the PS1.
- The intro is still the same as the other console versions.
- At time the game can still be fun to play despite being one of the worst Rayman game.
- The cover art is once again very cools to look at, even if it's slighly misleading.
- Amazing soundtrack that is extremely catchy and unforgettable and is probably the best part of this port, not to mention that it mostly had the same soundtrack as the console versions, which is a good point due to being an already awesome ost.
Reception
Rayman Rush received mixed reviews by critics but mostly negative reviews by gamers and especially fans who founded it to be one of the worst Rayman games to be released, and is considered to be even worse than the PC port of Rayman Arena.
On Metacritic it had a score of 62/100.[1] Making it one of the lowest rated game along with Hoodlum Revenge and Rayman DS.
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