Although there has been a lot of anti-French sentiment over the past few months, you shouldn't let that hold yourself back from UbiSoft's Rayman 3.
Rayman has been on a variety of platforms over the past few years, and yet this is only the game's third edition. Between the Dreamcast, PS1, PS2, Game Boy Advance and GameCube, the game seems as though it should be on the 15th iteration.
The game has many of the original characters from the first game as well as the traditional collecting of lums. The game would probably be classified as an 'action platformer' has you're running around, collecting stuff and beating up things.
Rayman 3 is not only a fun game, but a funny one as well. The humor in game is well done thanks to new voice acting from John Leguizamo playing the role of Globox. There are plenty of comments in game that will make you burst out laughing. Let's just say if you hang around the same area, you're going to hear about it.
As far as the graphics go, they are very nice. The 3D worlds are indeed captivating and are very colorful. While not an "ohh ahh you've got to see this" type of game, they suit the environments well and add to the atmosphere.
Control in the game is pretty easy, although you'll have to get down some timing issues, especially when throwing 'curved fists' around stationary objects in the game. There is a mild tutorial at the beginning of the game to help you out with this, however it still takes some time to lock on your targets.
Gameplay itself is a lot of fun but the game is very quick – the approximately 10 hours of gameplay leaves you wanting more, but still it works out to about $4 an hour of gameplay – not too shabby vs the $9.50 movie ticket.
There are a few minigames as well which add to the fun – they aren't mind blowing but still decent enough to enjoy.
As always with these sort of platform type games, you'll have to enjoy jumping. Lots and lots of jumping is in this game, but for some reason I'm not as annoyed as I usually am with these sort of levels. The puzzles are done in such a way that are fun and don't have you thinking , 'oh great, more jumping.' Kudos to the Ubi team for making such an enjoyable game.
Overall Rayman 3 is a fun, albeit short diversion that you might even come back and play again because of the fun factor. I'm giving it a thumbs up.
-Dan