On display at a recent hands-on event at Nintendo Canada was Ubisoft's gorgeous Rayman Legends, which is set for launch alongside the Wii U console.
Assisting me during the play session was my 3-year old son. With the Wii U Pro Controller, which feels remarkably like the Xbox 360 controller, my son controlled Rayman, while I controlled Murfy with the Wii U Gamepad.
Rayman behaves like any other 2D platform character. Running and jumping and smashing things, moving from left to right. As Player Two,
Murfy is a support character who interacts with the environment to help Rayman's progress by slicing through ropes, pulling up or lowering platforms, stunning enemies, turning objects in the environment, or launching projectiles to knock enemies out of the sky along the lines of Super Mario 64 DS's Bomb-omb mini-game.The control for Rayman is straightforward, but controlling Murfy is done by using the touch screen on the Gamepad and manoeuvring the Gamepad to interact with the environment. After a few minutes of interacting this way, it became very obvious (and comfortable) with what needed to be done.
We got stumped toward the end of the demo because my assistant wasn't quite adept enough to land on collapsing platforms or avoid dragon breath, but I can see us spending more time with this title when it's available because it was so accessible (to a point anyway) and friendly enough that I wouldn't mind playing it with my kids.
- Aaron Simmer
