Oddworld: Soulstorm Enhanced Edition Reviews

An Oddworld for Oddpeeps...

Started as a janitor, ended up with a pouch full of soap grenades. Accidentally led 300 Mudokons into freedom… and about 50 into traps. Oops. Beautiful, weird, and full of accidental screams. Like a Pixar movie on very questionable mushrooms.

If you think Abe Exoddus is amongst the best game you've ever played, and believe this to be a good remake, then you'd be wrong. The determinism of a puzzle plateformer is over. Instead, you get floaty movements, unresponsive grabs onto ledges, mudokons that should be helping you by throwing stuff not working half the time, dumb checkpoints that can softlock you and also forces you to loot again, areas where possession is prevented is sometimes not obvious as the flying orb is outside the screen view, an inventory and crafting system that resets after every level which also means there is too much loot that takes too much time to gather. I am so incredibly disappointed, because it does look and sound pretty alright to me, and the story intrigues me, but not enough to go through the ordeal of the gameplay that I cannot tolerate any longer.

I bought this game when it was on offer for about £11.99. I would be so annoyed if I paid full price £29.99 for it. I played the first level and initially quite liked the puzzle element, trying to evade the sligs, doing things in the right order to get past each scene, etc. But the instant joy-kill for me was the horrifically lame arcade style end of level Mudoken save or kill spree, where you have to try stop sligs from massacring 150 Mudokens all at once, then get scored on how many survived. That is so far removed from the original 1990's Abes Odyssey experience, where you had to take a few Mudokens at a time and navigate them through puzzles to try save them, that I instantly was not interested anymore and quit playing. It felt more like you had a connection with your fellow Mudokens when you are there with them walking side by side to a bird portal. This is just a crowd of people being butchered and if you're lucky you might save 80% of them. If you want an arcade game with good art (that part is actually good) then give it a go. If you want to reconnect with the orignal Oddworld franchise, then steer well clear.

Despite what steam says on my hours on this game, I tried multiple times to play it when it originally came out on Epic Games. Glitches and all. But the sheer tedium and frustration just had me abandon the 1-2 hour long levels every time. Jeebus are the levels long enough? I wanted to like this game. I really did. I adore the original 2 games. But there is so many issues. To start with the game play is frustrating. The crafting system is absolutely pointless and completely clashes with the simplicity of the original games. And I got lost multiple times and had to backtrack endlessly because of this.. where I never got lost in the original games. Everything happens so fast that I never get a moment to catch my breath with Abe. And why do I need to get an almost perfect rescuing of every single mudokon to get anything but the game's absolute worst ending? When I played the original 2 as a child, I wasn't as skilled and wasn't able to rescue more than about 50 mudokons, but I tried. And that was enough for me to earn my good ending. ButI would've been absolutely screwed playing Soulstorm as a kid. My biggest issue: where is the tonal balance? The game tries so desperately to take itself seriously with no even attempt at comedy. Even if the comedy didn't always work in the originals, at least it balanced the sheer heaviness of the original games. I love the dark tone of these games but this game just has nothing to lighten the levity. Apparently even the fart button had to be removed because it would dare bring levity to the ultra-serious story. And as much as i love Lorne Lanning's voice for Abe, holy cow these other mudokons voice acting is HORRIBLE. As much as the game wants me to, I can't take many cutscenes seriously with these raspy silly-sounding voices. Again, love the original games, but that comedy balance helped to allow me to immerse myself in often silly-sounding voices. This is such a relentlessly bleak tone that the stupid raspy voices just get annoying. How hard would it have been to instead pour that budget into making a 2D game like the original? It's just a nostalgic audience playing these games anyway so keep it those single windows rather than a scrolling game. Let me proceed at my own pace. Hire some of those incredible 90's artists from the original. Or hire 2020's artists. You seen deviantart lately? There's buckets of talent out there and they're not expensive to hire. Show me those beautiful canvases painted over 4 times like the original. Keep the controls smooth, none of this double jump crap. Make Abe feel real. Perhaps its overly-dramatic to say this, but this game broke my heart a little because I adored Odysee and Exxodus particularly. Sadly, there's basically nothing left of Oddworld Inhabitants beyond Lorne. And I'm sad to see this will likely be the last game the series goes out on. I played the original 2 games (they're a couple of bucks on Steam) and they absolutely held up. Loved re-playing them through. Go with the originals instead.