The registration of two interesting Rayman Origins-related domain names have added to the mounting evidence that Ubisoft is planning a sequel to its profitable 2D platformer.
According to Fusible, the domain names "RaymanLegends.com" and "Rayman-Legends.com" have both been registered by Ubisoft.
Although Ubisoft hasn't officially announced anything yet, earlier this week a marketing survey hinted at a Rayman Origins sequel. The leaked images featured a similar art style to Rayman Origins, but according to our resident Rayman expert, David Sanchez, the level design appears "more traditional platforming."
Still, the rumors are out there. The evidence is piling. And Ubisoft is promising "big plans for the Wii U".
[Fusible]
Well… that was certainly an episode of The Walking Dead. Unfortunately, that’s about the best I can say for ‘Welcome to the Tombs,’ which totally failed as a finale to what was pretty good season for the show. As an episode it was decent enough, but the entire promise of The Walking Dead season three was that everything was building to a massive conflict between Woodbury and the Prison, with Rick even going so far as to state at one point that they were ‘going to war.’
Normally I’m all for sending things in a bold, new direction rather than going with what’s expected, but in this particular case it felt less like a daring choice and more like the breaking of a season-long promise. Not only is the Governor still running around out there with his two sidekicks, but the ‘big showdown’ between him and the prison amounted to no more than a brief shootout, which had none of the show’s usual creativity when it comes to set-pieces. A major strength of the show is it’s ability to stage a suspense sequence in new and exciting ways, and it seems to me that a siege of the prison would have lent itself very well to this. Instead we got a weird, muddled conflict that ignored most of what was built up prior to the episode.
The fakeout with Rick and the gang seeming to leave the prison only to spring their trap on the Governor was cool in concept, but limp in execution. The Woodbury Army storms in, blowing up guard towers, only to find that the place seems to be abandoned; cue Glenn and Maggie firing on them from bridges, wearing SWAT armor, until the Governor and his crew tuck their tails between their legs and run off without putting up much (or any) of a fight. It seemed out of character for the Governor to me, as well as unlikely that just the two of them could have done as much damage as they did.
The bigger development of the sequence took place off the prison grounds, when a young scared Woodburian runs into Carl and Herschel, only to get shot by Carl while trying to hand over his gun. Herschel wastes no time telling Rick what happened, even though Carl claims the guy drew on them. Rick eventually gets the truth out of his son, kind of, but Carl doesn’t seem to show even the smallest amount of remorse for what he’s done. That kid is turning into a hardened killer, which clearly terrifies Rick, as it damn well should.
We didn’t get much of anything from from Beth, Maggie, Glenn, Herschel, Daryl, or Carol this week, although we did get pleasant scene between Rick and Michonne where they cement her place within the group. I actually really liked the montage near the beginning as they prepared to leave the prison; on the whole the show has been using more music this season, which I think lends it a bit of personality.
After the raid on the prison goes suddenly wrong, the Governor struggles to gain control of his ‘army,’ opting instead to mow them all down when they tell him that they don’t want to play soldier anymore. I thought that the decision for the Governor to kill all of his own was a good one considering the direction that they seem to be taking the character in, establishing him as an unhinged psychopath running loose, but I found the scene to be riddled with weird logic problems. Tyrese’s friend, who is all gung-ho in favor of the Governor earlier on, gets shot in the head by good ol’ Phillip when he objects to his massacring the troops, which I wouldn’t have a problem with apart from the fact that it renders everything between him and Tyrese a colossal waste of time. It’s a relationship that was established with no intention of a payoff, which is pretty indicative of a lot of the problems I have with Walking Dead. The plot motivates what happens to the characters, rather than the other way around.
One of the Governor’s people survives by hiding under a corpse, but this moment doesn’t really make sense either. The governor is going around shooting the bodies in the head, only to decide when the gets to the one that she’s under that he doesn’t really feel like it. Maybe I missed his gun being empty or something like that, but it mostly just seemed like he decided ‘eh, hell with it,’ for no other reason than to have the girl meet up with Rick and guide them to Woodbury.
Over at Woodbury Tyrese and Sasha realize that something is up, and decide to stick around and guard the women and children, which also feels like it’s a decision that exists only so Rick can have a friendly face to talk to when he gets there.
Speaking of Woodbury, the primary conflict of the episode takes place not at the prison, but in the Governor’s torture chamber. He stabs Milton (when he refuses to kill Andrea and tries instead to murder the Governor), and leaves him in the room with Andrea, in the hope that he’ll turn and kill her. She attempts to use the some pliers that Milton dropped to help her out, and the scene is full of nice tension, with Andrea repeatedly dropping the pliers as Milton nods off. There are a couple fun fakeouts where he’s not quite dead yet, but all in all it feels far too thin to be the primary thread of a season finale.
When Rick and the crew get to Woodbury, they find that Andrea has dispatched the Milton zombie, but only after getting bitten. I’m going to be honest; Andrea has been such a problem character that I’m pretty glad to see her go, although I got the distinct impression that the show was trying to paint it as a tragic moment. I felt bad for Michonne, who watched her old friend die right in front of her, but I’m not going to miss having her on the show.
And that was pretty much it. The Governor is still out there, Andrea and Milton are dead, and Rick has moved all of Woodbury’s women and children to the prison, even though it seems like it would have been a smarter move to take his group over to Woodbury. Carl gets pissed at Rick’s mercy, which is crazy, because the alternative is shooting a bunch of women and kids, and Rick looks up at the prison bridge expecting to see Ghost Lori, only to find that she has isn’t there. It’s nice to see the show dabbling in a bit of optimism, and I thought the last scene was nicely shot, but apart from the death of Andrea and end of Crazy Rick, none of it felt like it amounted to much of anything. There are a lot of new faces at the prison now, who I hope get developed into interesting characters, and it seems as though the door is now open to actually showing Rick and the gang build a society, but we shall have to wait and see. Like Rick’s craziness, the Walking Dead’s third season has made it’s exit (for now.) I may not have loved (or even really liked) the destination, but the ride was plenty fun.
TWO STARS
