Rayman Origins is a fantastic side-scrolling platformer – one of the best of its kind, in fact. Smooth, responsive controls, clean animation with gorgeous hand-drawn sprites, and a fantastic musical score accompanied by cheerful and whacky sound effects.
This game is fantastic in pretty much every way. However, buying it on 3DS would be doing a disservice to this wonderful game. The low resolution of the Nintendo 3DS screen turns the gorgeous graphics into a pixelated mess. Okay, it's not THAT bad, but the 3DS cannot portray just how good Rayman Origins actually looks.
The world of Rayman Origins feels much too small on the 3DS screen, and often feels like a struggle to look at. The 3D effect is minimal and unnecessary, and the touchscreen is used so scarcely that it may as well not be used at all (it tells you how far through the level you are, and of course, allows you to navigate menus and the overworld).
The best combination of a portable and touchscreen Rayman Origins experience can be found on the Playstation Vita, with unique but unobtrusive touchscreen features and the beautiful look of the bigger home console counter-parts.
Of course, the best experience comes from the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, and Nintendo Wii versions of the game (particularly the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC versions, because they are in HD). Not only can you see the brilliant art style come to life on a big screen, but you can play in cooperative multiplayer, which adds to the fun of an already brilliant game.
Ultimately, the 3DS version of Rayman Origins is the weakest version of the game that is available. That does not mean, however, that it is a bad game, nor that this is a bad version of the game – far from it – but if you have access to any other platform that Rayman Origins is available on (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation Vita, PC, Nintendo Wii), you will get a better experience from any of those versions, each of which are also cheaper than the 3DS version and have been readily available for a while now.