Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee

The best mini-saga of PS1 games!

I used to have this long time ago. I loved it, the sound atmosphere works great to get you into the world of Oddworld and the whole exposition of it is funny. The puzzles were a bit too challenging to be at the time, though and I remember being stuck with some of them for some time. I think I never finished it because of those. Would be nice to try it today, but I'm afraid this wouldn't hit me as hard anymore. Good shallow fun but expect nothing deep with this one.

I'm shocked that this game has such a high rating here. I chalk it down to nostalgia/rose tinted glasses effect because this game is painfully frustrating, borderline masochistic. I can see that there is fun to be had with this game, but it is hidden under a pile of ugliness and frustration that will make you want to throw your keyboard at the nearest wall. I will highlight a few problems that killed it for me: + The graphics didn't age well. They basically consist of a bunch of low resolution sprites and videos. Like, really low resolution. Imagine taking a 320x240 JPG and stretching it to 1920x1080 to get an idea. It just becomes an ugly, pixelated mess. I get that the game is old, but there are plenty of much older games that don't look this bad. + The game, true to its console origins, is checkpoint based, and some checkpoints are badly positioned. Messing up a jump or something like that can mean the loss of a good 5-10 minutes of progression, as you are sent back to the nearest checkpoint, 5 screens away. + The game involves too much trial and error, and to make matters worse, often the puzzle solutions are non obvious and must be done is an specific way otherwise they don't work. So you will die again and again until you figure out what you were "supposed" to do. The solution will probably surprise and dismay you. And remember, dying means going back to the checkpoint + The game has too many glitches. For example, the straw that broke the camel's back for me was that due to a glitch, I ended up not having some critical thing that I needed to be able progress further down the level. I couldn't go back to get that thing (the way was blocked), so my only option at that point was to load a much earlier saved game, and lose about an hour of progress. There are a bunch of these glitches. The game gets 2 stars because when it isn't being a tremendous pain in the neck, it is actually kinda fun and because it works ok in Linux under wine.

A classic platformer that has not aged especially well. While the puzzles and gameplay in-itself is solid enough, the game's poor UI functionality kills it. The lack of quick-saves and use of infrequent check-points *will* lead you to re-treading solved puzzles over and over again as you try to figure out the next one in-between said check points, using punishing tedium as a means of padding out the gameplay. Tedium is not difficulty nor a challenge to be overcome, and I do not choose my video games to test my patience. If it holds nostalgia value for you then it might be worth the effort, but absenting that I would strongly recommend getting the more modern re-make over this original version.

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