Rayman: Hoodlum Revenge

One of the funniest running jokes in the Rayman fandom is if you take pretty much any pre-Rabbids game, you have a question - is it a new game, or is it Rayman 2? Rayman 2 has been ported so many times, with so many different little title changes, that you might be playing Rayman 2 without even realising. Hilariously, this trend seemed to continue specifically for the Game Boy Advance; you’ve got Rayman 3, which I reviewed a few years back, which was a genuinely fantastic follow-up in the vein of the original Rayman title, but now you’ve got Rayman: Hoodlum’s Revenge, which is a sequel to Rayman 3, but NOT the Rayman 3 on the GBA, but the Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc that was released on everything ELSE under the sun.

Hey, Ubisoft, I have a way to save your company; release Rayman 2 five more times, maybe mix Rayman 3 (any of them) in, I’m sure it’ll work.

But enough jokes - how *is* Hoodlum’s Revenge? Well, it’s a weird one. Rather than the side-scroller Rayman was born from, or the 3D adventures that make up the half-dozen versions of Rayman 2, Hoodlum’s Revenge takes the middle-ground that’s pretty much tailored made for the Game Boy Advance - an isometric, 3D-platformer collectathon. Look, as much as Rayman 3 was one of the best platformers I’ve played thus far, I’m glad for something a bit different. It’s not perfect, especially when it deviates from its initial premise to some dizzying lows, but overall, it’s a decent title that doesn’t overstay its welcome, especially when it stumbles. And by stumble, I mean a skull-shattering faceplant.

Rayman: Season of Ice

For a platformer on the GBA, it might as well be War & Peace with it having *actual* writing being present. The bar has officially sunk below the floor and entered deep within the earth’s crust. Taking place after the events of Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc (so NOT the Rayman 3 on the actual GBA - that’d be silly, no?) Rayman’s large, oddly shaped friend Globox accidentally eats a Dark Lum - basically an evil fairy - possessing him and causing him to charge off, leading Rayman to go hunting for his wayward friend. As someone who hasn’t played Hoodlum Havoc, I don’t really know what the Dark Lum’s plans are - something to do with prune juice, guys who look like ancient knights, and the heart of the world, but there’s enough writing here to set things up. Look, after the amount I’ve played, I’ll take anything.

Instantly upon starting a level, I was reminded of Spyro: Season of Ice. The colourful, almost fantastical level design, the isometric perspective, and as I quickly realised, the collectathon foundation of the game. As with any platformer, getting to the end of the Rayman’s basic moveset is adapted well to the isometric perspective, with the evergreen ability to punch foes from a distance, glide like a helicopter and… well, that’s really it, actually. Despite the perspective, playing as Rayman is a pretty cookie-cutter experience, but the simplicity is almost its own charm.

Unlike other collectathons, actually getting the collectibles are just gravy, unlocking bonus levels rather than locking off proper progression in the game. Personally, whilst I don’t think needing to get 90% of a game’s collectibles, i.e Spyro to reach the credits isn’t necessary, being able to feasibly skip all of them outside the bounds of 100%ing the game doesn’t super jive with me. Collectibles come in two forms - various colours of Lums, and rescuing the caged residents of the world, the Teensies. Mostly it’ll be Yellow Lums guiding your path, but you’ll also see Red and Green Lums interspaced across each level; Red’s will drastically heal your HP, and Green’s will give you a checkpoint. More off the beaten path, drawing you with their monolithic cries of ‘Help!’, are the Teensies, bizarre lil’ blue dudes who have nothing to offer you but some of the most hilarious one-liner non-sequiters I’ve seen in some time.

The basics of Rayman are good. But, much like with Spyro, the isometric perspective’s biggest issue rears its head once more - your visual perspective and depth perception. Being a platformer, there’s more than a handful of situations where you won’t be 100% sure where you meant to glide next - you’ll jump for a cliff that looks perfectly reachable, only to realise that it’s several blocks higher than you thought, inevitably dooming you to an untimely death. Thankfully, outside of a few particularly frustrating levels - which we’ll get to - the brutal deaths caused by running into a wall you thought you could climb aren’t too bad because of the game’s pretty plentiful amount of checkpoints making you only lose a few minutes here and there. It is, overall, a fairly challenging game, but it’s doled out and paced out fairly well that you’re never feeling truly stuck in a casual playthrough.

Rayman The Hedgehog

As you move through each level, you’ll have no small amount of Hoodlums to beat to death with your bare, detached fists, and combat is a weird one in this game. It works, but it really feels like Digital Eclipse could never make it feel that good. The game boasts a lock-on that’ll pretty much always hit on target, but it feels like it was a band-aid. It makes me feel like the game was designed for you to be freely aiming your punches, but they couldn’t get the hitboxes or *something* to all line-up, so they just slapped on the lock-on and it *works*. It has no *oomph* behind it - and hell, if not for the effect it had on your score, for the completionist sicko in me, I’d rather just run past them as a whole.

Rayman might run a little short for basic playthrough, but there’s plenty here for completionists, there’s also an almost speedrun-esque element to the game. As you play each level, you’ll wrack up points with every collectible earnt and every enemy bopped, but if you manage to do any of these actions in a short timeframe, you’ll earn bonus points as a combo. So, basically, each level becomes a bit of a speedrun - trying to collect everything and kill everything to keep that sexy-ass combo high. So, *that’s* the reason you’ll be trying to nab all the Lums and Teensies, rather than just gunning for the goal.

The reason for all that is at the end of each level, Murfy the horrifying-looking fairy will rank you score, giving you a number of stamps as a reward; these stamps can be used to unlock a few bonus levels for the completionist sickos out there. Getting three stamps in a pretty decent chunk of the levels is kind of brutal, but getting two stamps is pretty simple if you’re collecting everything in a level, so by the end of the game you’ll probably have enough to unlock every bonus level.

So, overall, Rayman: Hoodlum’s Revenge is a pretty decent experience. It’s got some jank to it, most in the depth perception and the combat, but it’s still a functional, pretty, actually engaging platformer. It’s not setting the world on fire, but much like with Digital Eclipse’s work with Spyro, it's a pretty decent way of experiencing Rayman in a new dimension. Hoodlum’s Revenge… not bad. Well… that’s true, for the first four levels or so.

Metal Gear Globox

Variety may be the spice of life, but sometimes there are benefits to a more consistent - if somewhat less exciting - design ethic. After a solid set of levels platforming, collecting, and getting myself drowned, our perspective shifts to Rayman’s wayward friend, Globox. Gloxbox, half- possessed by the Dark Lum, Andre, Globox’s levels, whilst inherently easier due to the pretty much total lack of ways he can die, are intensely annoying because they’re weird, pseudo-stealth levels. Throughout his sections, he’ll need to sneak past a variety of Hoodlum foes. But if they as much as *sniff* in your direction, Globox has a panic attack and will literally automatically sprint back to the start of the section.

Games don’t need to be hard to be annoying, and the fact you can’t die makes the stealth sections rather easy, but there’s seemingly no rhyme nor reason as to when Globox will run in terror from the Hoodlums. Nearby, but back turned? You’re all good. Ages away, still back turned? Time to run like hell! None of these segments are longer than a minute or two, but they were so ingrained in me that I can’t help but bitch about it. At the very least, most of these segments have a juice barrel Globox can chug to power up Andre and beat up the Hoodlums, but I still had to stealth through.

Later on, Gloxbox joins Rayman in his core levels, giving you the ability to switch between the two so they can help each other progress through the levels, and these are a bit better - mostly because Rayman’s stuff is inherently pretty fun, and there’s less of the garbage ‘stealth’ sections for Globox. So it mildly improves. Mildly, mildly. Basically, the more time I put into Rayman, the more holes I found in it. The big one is, as with the Gloxbox levels and sections, anytime they introduced a new element or style into the game, I just found myself wishing I was doing more basic platforming. The handful of boss fights are unimpressive, being just gimmick fights where you need to wait for your foe to mess up and capitalize - not difficult, just annoying.

But nothing tops the atrocious levels that make up much of the game’s middle section where you get into the age-old hobby of boating. Not because the boating feels bad - it doesn’t feed bad, but it’s just the way these levels are set up that grinds my gears to hell and back.

So, Rayman: Hoodlum’s Revenge is a collectathon; In a game focussed on collecting the Lums and Teensies, trying to get them in these boating levels is an exercise in extreme frustration. In nearly every level, you can backtrack to grab anything you missed - maybe it’ll be a bit tricky, but with the way these boating levels work - full of river currents that force you in a direction - makes even attempting backtracking impossible. Plus, there’ll normally be a line of lums down these river currents, so if you don’t line things up just correctly - a task in itself, due to the perspective issues - you might as well just reset if you’re trying to collect everything. Plus, when you add in that Rayman will die from touching the water twice, thrice at most, these levels are just awful, awful, awful to play.

No More Teensies

But the issues I have with this game are tempered by a very simple, ultimately very small part of the game; it is really, really, *really* funny. As I said, there’s very little narrative, but there’s plenty of dialogue to be found when you rescue the horde of Teensies trapped in each level. Upon freeing them, you will be assailed by a variety of non-sequiter zingers that embody the ‘lol random’ era of the internet that was still half a decade away. Rescuing a teensie to only hear they have to leave because they “need to go to their modern jazz class”, “I have to go blow a fuse” or most hilariously, “I need to contact Elvis”. Hell, there’s a Teensie who rewards you for rescuing enough Teensies by giving you a “Teeny Weenie” trophy. Talk about kicking Rayman while he’s down, huh? Even the sparse story segments, normally with Rayman interacting with the Dark Lum-corrupted Globox, are hysterical because Rayman just doesn’t realise what’s going on. Globox is just raving about doing some brutal-ass stuff, and Rayman’s just ‘Yeah, sounds good man’. Look, I think the game’s writing just hits me in my funny bone, it’s fantastic stuff.

I also think, as I said earlier, that the game’s relatively short length - somewhere between three and five hours, depending on your skill - keeps me from being too mad at its shortcomings. What works here, works very, very well. It’s pretty, the pure Rayman sections are solid, if a little flawed, and as awful as the bad is - screw you, boats of all kind - they don’t overstay their welcome *too* much.

Rayman: Hoodlums’ Revenge is a weird one. When it’s good, it’s good! It’s charming to look at, frequently very, very funny and the platforming style is good, if a little unexciting at times. When you’re just playing as Rayman - you’re good. But every time it tries to do something different, it ranges from half-baked, like the boss fights, to outright horrendous, like Globox’s solo levels and the boating stages. As an entire game? It’s fine. It’s short enough to not drive you insane, and when it’s good? It’s a fun enough time. But if you’re looking for a proper Rayman experience on the GBA? You’re probably better off just playing Rayman 3 - Hoodlum’s Revenge is a fun enough diversion, but it’s not true-blue Rayman.

Thank you so much for reading my review of Rayman: Hoodlum’s Revenge! Nothing crazy to report - I will have a little less time to write reviews in the coming months, as I’m getting a promotion at work, but things shouldn’t change that much. As always, you can find me around the internet under GameboyAbyss, or email me at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com if you have any questions or requests. Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you next time!