Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc

'Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc (2003)' is the third instalment in Ubisoft's platforming series. The game sees Rayman and his friends set upon by a swarm of 'black lums', lead by the irritable André, who aim to distort the world to their own desires. The story isn't exactly pivotal, its events serving more as a way of getting to distinct locations than as a way to tell a compelling tale. It's basically a series of three 'fetch quests' and then a dash for the finish, but it works well enough for what it is. The game has a larger focus on combat than is usual with the series, as you battle your foes by throwing your fists at them. There are several power-ups you can acquire to make your journey easier, which vary from increased strength to elevated hovering. The combat isn't massively satisfying, often feeling flimsy and reliant on repetition. It features too predominantly to be considered a minor inconvenience, too. The platforming fares better but it doesn't feel quite as refined as you'd like. Still, the variety of moves at your disposal and the design of the levels do combine for some enjoyable sequences. The game has a solid aesthetic and a decent sense of humour. It's never funny but it's charming in its own way. There are a variety of collectables but most of these don't actually add up to anything concrete. The most satisfying to find are the lost teensies; freeing them seems important to the plot. The experience is fairly short, but it's a mostly entertaining time. It isn't hugely compelling, but it's decent enough. 6/10

The story was rather slow to get going and kind of vague, though the latter isn't necessarily a bad thing--I liked not having the whole history of the alternate timeline laid out early on. Don't expect a whole lot of action, though--we get one good fight in the first episode, but most of the second part centered around mastering a punching technique--interesting, but not action intensive, though things do perk up some by the end of the series. The first two games basically had two stories going on: the introduction and training of the group in France, which was pretty light hearted (though not quite comedy per se), and the story of Rayman's training, which was much more serious.

It might be mostly because I've played this more then 100 times as a kid but this is still my favorite video game :) The nice-looking levels, the amazing music... There's something about it that made me keep playing this game over and over.

For me, this is my Christmas game because of that one amazing snow level so I got an excuse to play this every year.

This is one of the few platformers that has a good combat system that it says is frying it has a punch and they go out in one hit if you do it properly and because of the high score nature of the game you get a very nice Sensation if you kill them right after another it's just so satisfying.

The level design is really all over the place which is expected because they have the excuse of going forward disco portal to different worlds padded just nice. They are so colorful and like full and has some good set pieces in every level.

The best part of the game is the atmosphere and a nice graphics and characters. It's just a relaxing kind of game because it's very easy. It is very hard to game over in it. So it's an amazing first platformer kind of game with some good humour to it.