Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee® Reviews

a great port from the old 97 title, you play as the goofball of the floor waxer nobody called Abe, a worker for the Meat grinding Corperation known as "Rupture Farms" discovering the new but alarming new product that is upcoming our frightful hero desides to escape. unknown to him he will become something more with a up coming destiny! a interesting take on a 2d puzzle action side scroller with fantastic FMV cutscenes of the time telling the story. beautiful background environments. action controlled music giving the sense of danger or wonder. save them or take out the fellow workers in random grim but hilarious ways. dealing with threats or dangers in more than one way. if a retro gamer then highly recommend this fantastic legend of a game!

Port has fucked controller support, not worth until there's native XB1 controller support

Cinematics are stuttering and no wide screen.

An idea that's been lost in modern game design is that obtuse controls are the key to the success of certain games. The obvious example is the once beelined tank controls of survival horror games. The balance of agency between player and enemy has never been more tense than Resident Evil. When the series abandoned tank controls it immediately led to a more action focused approach because the limitations in movement were integral to the fear. Beyond explicit horror games, some early sidescrollers like Castlevania are criticized for their stiffness and limitations. Paradoxically these limitations are what makes older games so compelling to me. As long as they're consistent, a strict set of rules can narrow the focus of a title to its core essence. Games like Castlevania proved early on that making progression feel more like a puzzle than strictly a test of twitch reflexes could yield interesting results. It's like a closed system, when options are limited mastery is feasible. I think this principle is best seen in the niche Cinematic Platformer genre that followed in Castlevania’s cinematic ambitions. In these games stiff deliberate controls build character. Not only in how they narrow the focus of gameplay to its core elements, but also in how they present more detailed animations. A good example is a character like Abe from Abe's Odyssey. The deliberate nature of Abe's movement characterizes him as gentle. He requires a certain finesse and careful planning to make it through the screens. While Abe’s basic movement is limited to running, grabbing ledges, and jumping, he has 8 different communication abilities that can be used at any time using the number keys. Despite the limited movement options this sound bar brings its own unique sense of player expression, the game’s manual even encourages such creativity. In turn the player deduces that Abe is skilled at communicating, but physically sluggish and mostly defenseless. You could even tie this to the throughline of Abe being an unlikely hero. He brings the Mudokons together, but is no mightier than the creatures he saves. The richness of unwieldy controls is part of why I gravitate towards older less polished titles. More control is not explicitly a positive trait, not every game needs to be Super Mario Bros. Instead of standardizing controls and conveniences between games I think developers should whittle down what the heart of their design actually is and evaluate how controls should feel accordingly. Oddworld was in the right place at the right time. If we go back 5 years earlier games couldn't have look like this. The rich immersive details accomplished with pre-rendering had not yet developed, only now being perfected with the PS1 generation. If we travel 5 years later, besides the Resident Evil remake pre-rendering was discarded in pursue of real time effects. Games in general were striving to escape the trial and error approach of old school game design. Unfortunately the core traits which made Oddworld so special were on the way out. Fortunately this mix of 2D design principals, and 3D ambition makes Oddworld worth playing to this day. The game is a masterpiece.

Still one of my favorite games, the game ran okay for me but there were times where the game did crashed on me. Also compared to the ps1 version I had to press the gamespeak commands longer for the game to register my inputs so it kinda messed with my muscle memory. I didn’t use the relive mod but I’ll probably use that for my next playthrough when revisiting this game. Still highly recommend this game for a challenging experience.

If you need to scratch that 1997 itch, or at the least experience it, or if you just don't want to spend the money on New & Tasty, then get this game. Although it says otherwise, game will work with a controller. (Logitech) Highly recommend New & Tasty as well.

I like the dark environment and the comedic scenes. That's what made the game good in the first place.

Will always love a classic like Oddworld. Grew up with this game the mechanics, difficulty, animations, secrets and art style blew me away and still do. Back in a time where developers weren't afraid to have really nice challenging game. 9/10 only because you're limited to controlling Sligs this game. (I really loved being able to control all the different creatures in the sequel, that and being able to escort more than One Mudoken at a time)

Releasing a classic like this which was originally on Playstation 1 with such poor controller support is criminal.