Unlike them, however, the second adventure starring the likable limbless hero does not execute a very deep transformation on the genre, because while the tasks and – especially – worlds faced by the plumber and the bear would – in a lot of cases – simply not be able to exist inside the confines of a 2-D plane, the levels encountered in The Great Escape would be most of the times perfectly executable in the Super Nintendo provided that some changes be made. And like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie, it devotes much of its efforts in the translation of traditional platforming gameplay to a new type of environment. Its 1999 release, coming slightly over three years after the arrival of the Nintendo 64, makes the title stand as one of its development studio’s – in its case, Ubisoft – first forays into the recently discovered 3-D realm. Rayman 2: The Great Escape is among the gems of that time period. And so, they promptly took advantage of that technological gift to abandon the linear progression from left to right of the days of 2-D gaming in order to see what shiny gameplay possibilities could be found in the newly added axis. The fad was, by all means, understandable after all, following many years spent solely dedicated to the creation of quests that took place in a flat environment, developers finally had in their hands hardware powerful enough to let them give life to tridimensional worlds. In the case of Nintendo’s console, it was a movement that started with Super Mario 64 and that would go on to be seen in different formats, levels of quality, and magnitudes of ambition in the likes of Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Jet Force Gemini, and even the two The Legend of Zelda games that would be produced for the system. The most notable adventure and platforming games of the Nintendo 64 days shared one core characteristic: their expansive worlds, which often put players in the middle of wide explorable areas and tasked them with figuring out what to do, sometimes even going as far as giving gamers the freedom to choose the order in which they would deal with the available challenges.
During a time when most of the best platformers and adventure games had their sights deeply set on taking advantage of grand environments, The Great Escape stands out from them for using the full extent of its energy towards being straightforward and fun
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