Well, this has all gone a bit wrong. Honestly, I don’t look at the calendar when I’m told a date for something I’ve been doing on a Thursday or the first weekday of the month for a while now, because I generally know these things. However, that all went up the pipe yesterday morning as a opened the Epic Games Store to read the date “29th – 06th.” Yes, I gave many expletives, mostly at myself, and we’ve puzzled together some pieces that aren’t too dissimilar to what we’d usually have as our Epic Games freebie article each week.

I’ve not played a Rayman game in the better half of a decade, maybe even fifteen years. I know the series as the 3D platformer that was Rayman 2: The Great Escape, and I’ll fight anyone to the death on the fact that it is one of the great 3D platformers of all time; yes, better than Jinx for the PlayStation 1. It was that bridge between Spyro in ’98, Rayman ’99, and Ratchet & Clank‘s release in 2002. Little did I know, in 1995 a company known at the time as “Ubi Studios” or “Ubi Soft” released a 2D side-scrolling platformer called Rayman.

Rayman Legends is in small part a return to the side-scrolling action of the series origins. It is not to be confused with Rayman Origins, which Legends is a sequel to. Legends is a typical Ubisoft game, minus the towers, directed at kids, and is just a bit all over the place. You play as that titular Rayman, in the usual remix of grassland, desert, forest, jungle, ice world, fire world, boss. You go into several stages in each world, save Teensies, collect Lums, and forget the absence of those Rabbits the series is known for. Something tells me, between trying to flog them as second-hand Minions, Ubisoft wanted to distance them from Rayman.

Nevertheless, our daring adventurer with no limbs and floating appendages has to fight the very evil “what’s its name,” as you are given very little set up. It is what it needs to be, fun, light, and straight to the point. The issue comes from the Ubi-fication of the game with a multiplayer component that you play a 2D game of “soccer” that’s called “Kung Foot.” After every stage, there’s a scoring section for all the Teensies and Lums you’ve collected, then if you’ve hit the midstage between silver and gold trophies there’s a scratch card for extra characters and other guff. All of which is just filler on top of what’s already there.

Rayman Legends is free on the Epic Games Store this week until next Friday. Next week’s free game will return to the usual schedule of Thursday and it will be Jotun: Valhalla Edition. Jotun is a hand-drawn viking ’em up with a twinge of a Souls-like.

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