Last week I downloaded the latest Rayman game, Rayman Adventures, on my iPhone. I played the original Rayman game on my Game Boy Color back in the ’90s, and after years away from the franchise, I was looking forward to trying it again.
There have been a few spinoff games in the Rayman series, but primarily these games are puzzle-platformers, a genre that has always been hit-and-miss with me. The original Rayman was a favorite of mine for its spunky music and (at the time) amazing graphics.
Ubisoft has stepped it up a bit since then.
In many ways, this new game has exceeded my expectations. It’s even fair to say that I love this game. Sure, the microtransactions are pretty tiring, but the level design is awesome. Your character (either Rayman or Barbara) is constantly moving to the left or right, which gives the game an excellent momentum. All of the bad guys and ledges and prizes are placed expertly, so that if you are able to get your timing right, you can hop skip and jump in ways that are mind-bogglingly satisfying.
But.
I’m sorry to say that I have faced so many technical problems with this game that I don’t know if I can recommend it.
Sure, you’ve got your garden-variety crashes and error warnings (yep, plenty of those). I can live with crashes. It’s a new game, I like game developers and I try to cut them some slack when I find a glitch. My favorite error is that the game seems to think that I live in France (there’s a French flag icon next to my username). So that’s kind of cool I guess?
The first serious error came when my phone wouldn’t connect to the game’s servers (despite a perfect Internet connection) and so I couldn’t move on to the next area, freezing my progress. I checked the Ubisoft forums and found that many other players had posted the exact same issue. Sure enough, a day later the problem was resolved (for me, at least—others are still reporting issues).
But it didn’t stop there. This is the real kicker, the reason I decided to write this article: Not once, but twice, I’ve lost all of my progress. Yep—100% gone. The first time, I decided to start over from the beginning. That’s how much I like this game. The second time, well, I haven’t made up my mind yet.
The first time I lost my progress, this is the warning message I got:
“You’ve been connected to another device. Tap to reconnect.”
Doesn’t even really sound like a warning. Not exactly sure what it means… My phone wasn’t plugged into anything. I hadn’t recently signed in anywhere with my Apple ID. But when I hit “Connect again,” everything was gone.
The second time, I got a notification that I needed to agree to an updated Terms and Services (I didn’t take a screenshot that time). When I agreed, I came back to find all of my save files gone again.
I really hope that Ubisoft gets their act together and cleans these problems up. I haven’t had this much fun in a side-scrolling platformer for a long time, but losing all of my hard-won progress is kind of a deal-breaker. I hope it’s not as bad on Android or Apple TV. I hope this is short-lived. In the meantime, proceed with caution.
