rayman 2 the great escape the fairy glade

Combine that with sublime art design, tons of gameplay variety and a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack, and you can see why Rayman 2 still pops up on the occasional Best Games Of All Time list. If the above paragraph didn't clue you in, Rayman 2 is significantly Darker and Edgier than its predecessor, but most players will agree that the tonal shift was done particularly well, resulting in a game that's more or less split evenly between fantastical whimsy and dark, spooky bits. Now Rayman is the Glade's inhabitants' only hope for defeating the Robo-Pirates, but he'll have to regain all his strength first – and to do that, he'll have to find the four magic masks that will awaken Polokus, a magic being who dreamt the Glade into existence. All hope is not lost, though, as Rayman's froglike friend Globox winds up captured too, smuggling a Silver Lum into his and Rayman's cell aboard the Pirates' prison ship, giving the two a chance to escape. The story begins when Rayman's homeworld, the Glade of Dreams, is suddenly invaded by an evil armada of Robo-Pirates from space, kidnapping the world's inhabitants en masse and using them as slave labor – including Rayman himself, who has lost all his strength after the Pirates destroyed the Heart of the World, shattering it into a thousand pieces. Rayman 2: The Great Escape, originally released in 1999, is the first 3D title in the Rayman franchise, bringing with it a fully 3D world, a wide variety of skills that the player character could do, and a much more fleshed-out and consistent backstory, to the point of (until the Arc Welding sequel Rayman Origins 12 years later) essentially being set in an Alternate Continuity from the first game altogether and setting the stage for the rest of the series to build upon.

Rayman 2 the great escape the fairy glade