While I've always been fond of the original Rayman game, which I found to be an original, enjoyable platform game for its time, I'd never actually played the sequel... ever. Not once since its original release or any of the numerous ports; until now that is. The original Rayman 2 was praised for bringing the series into the third dimension as it surprised and delighted many by seemingly coming out of nowhere, but over ten years and many ports since then has this title been given a new lease of life on Nintendo's new 3DS? Yes and no...

Being a decade old means that many of this platformer's traits are somewhat out of date and while it is by no means unplayable it certainly feels dated when compared to more recent and accomplished efforts. Regardless, your main objective is to reach the end of level warp collecting creatures called Lums along the way by either breaking them out of cages or grabbing any that you see floating around across the level. There are fifty to obtain within each of these areas totalling a thousand overall; naturally you can keep coming back to collect any that you may have missed. If you can collect all the Lums in a level though you'll be granted access to a button-mashing bonus stage where you must race and if you win then you get a slight health extension, which is useful but not a necessity.

You'll travel across the Isle of Doors which acts as the hub, which is basically just a mini-map where you move Rayman between levels. These are varied but quite often revolve around repeated gameplay elements including locating switches, carrying explosive barrels and beating up a few baddies along the way. Bosses come up every now and then to test any new-found abilities that you may have acquired but offer very little in the way of challenge as they are more an example of spectacle than anything else.

From the start you are given only a very limited move-set, which basically lets you run, jump and fire orbs from your fist. You can also of course grab onto ledges and use your trademark helicopter-hat move fairly early on. You soon learn that these are essentially all that you need though and while you do obtain a few upgrades it's the above skills that you'll be using the most. There are certain sections that provide a unique and welcome break from the more traditional platform elements including riding a rocket, water-skiing across a swamp plus some genuinely decent - albeit slightly frustrating - underwater sections.

Controls are reasonably solid this time around thanks in large part to the circle pad, which feels pretty natural on the whole. What's not so intuitive is the camera being mapped to the d-pad meaning that if you want to tweak it at any time you'll need to stop in order to do so, which can be an annoyance at the best of times. Mostly the automatic camera does a reasonable job as it has been altered for this release, but it still manages to get stuck every now and then causing a few frustrating instances; overall though it's a vast improvement over the previous DS port.

Offering decent visuals for a portable title very little has actually changed here from the Dreamcast release - the version this release is ported from - but what they have added in the form of 3D is very nice indeed and at some times eye-popping. While it isn't the same kind of amazing 3D that you may have become used to from games that were built for the system the added depth that it brings to the world is very welcome indeed, even if the frame-rate does dip at times it's still a solid effort.

Audio has taken a slight dip in quality possibly due to compression, mostly you won't notice it and so the games sublime score remains enjoyable but the times where the audio does glitch are definitely noticeable and do slightly spoil an otherwise excellent experience. The gibberish speak that Rayman is famous for is still intact though, which is a huge plus as it adds to the overall humour of the title that this still has in spades.

Still, this is a decent platform title that's currently filling a void where a title like Mario should perhaps be and if you can't wait to get your 'fix' within this genre then you could do a lot worse than pick this up but if you're patient then better titles will surely surface. With that said there's plenty to do here with secrets to uncover along the way, not to mention some brilliantly designed enemies to battle in Razorbeard with his crew of robot pirates. Also, it'll surely take you a while to collect all one thousand Lums if you're the kind of gamer who likes a challenge.

This may not be the perfect port that fans of the original would have hoped for but if you've never played the game before then you could do a lot worse than buying this version of it and while I certainly don't recommend paying full price this it's still well worth picking up in the sales. Ubisoft could have done better but what they've managed to achieve in time for the 3DS launch-window is still reasonably impressive; though I sincerely hope that this is the last time they try to port this particular title and focus on perhaps bringing us a portable version of Rayman Origins in the near future.