Out of This World

The Good
The best things about this game is its super-slick presentation; beautiful graphics, haunting music and stunning cut-scenes. The way it mixed these jaw-dropping cut-scenes with its gameplay sections was the most unique thing of all. Half-Life is praised for its sublime storytelling abilities, but Another World (aka Out Of This World) made the first step in creating the first fully cinematic, but still gripping and engrossing, game. Eric Chahi should be praised for making the leap from gameplay to storytelling seem so smooth to the player. Truly a milestone in gaming history for being the first game to manage to mix story and gameplay so effortlessly.

The Bad
Sadly the gameplay sections themselves are not that much fun to play. Each section is really nothing more than a basic sub-game and are often extremely annoying and fiddly. The mid-section of the game (where the hero must navigate catacombs) is so incredibly frustrating that I imagine most players gave up or simply cheated. The worst aspects of the gameplay have you repeating the same task over and over until you manage to pull it off perfectly.

The Bottom Line
Thankfully, through its poor gameplay and level design, Another World still manages to satisfy and frustrate is just enough equal measures to keep you coming back for more. The later sections of the game are particularly satisfying. In all, Another World might not be the most fun game to play, but it's certainly one you should experience!

The Good
In the time of pixel art magic, one game made a rather unique move into the land of vectors and delivered us somewhat exotic title that felt a bit ahead of its time. With the lack of 3D graphic and special effects, this game uses math power to present a rather wonderful graphic in no more than 16 colors.

The opening cinematic is full of nice details and story keeps you intrigued as you constantly run for your life from the aliens whose culture seems a strange mix of Roman era and that of science fiction. Not so technologically advanced as simply being from Another World.

You soon befriend an alien inhabitant that shares the same fate as you, being imprisoned and all, and while not constantly accompanied by him, your paths cross every now and then. Seems like the two of you share the same goal, but go different way about it. The way it is presented gives a nice touch of player not being entirely alone, but having apart of a CPU on his side, even though it may all be pre-scripted.

Levels are versatile enough not to create the feeling of repetition, in fact, they are far from being repetitive, yet last too short. The fact this game does not feature dozens of enemy combatants on every screen makes it that much more realistic and prompts you to be cautious on each confrontation. The alien weapon you very soon come in possession of is rather useful, though sometimes annoying. It can create shields as much as fire laser beam of small or large destruction, and requires recharge every now and then... but levels where you can actually recharge it are very few. Luckily, most of the levels don't require direct confrontation as much as thinking your way out which adds a nice distraction to the genre.

The Bad
This game is certainly something unique, so one may understand why so many gamers think highly of it, but it is far from being one of the finest side-scrollers. The music, aside from intro and credits roll is non-existent. Sound effects, while fine, are very few at best, with no dialogs or even a talking text during actual gameplay. What little you can hear is from aliens that talk in their own language for which it would be nice to have some subtitles unless developers wanted us to feel as confused as our professor. And he may actually have a chance to understand them.

Many puzzles in the game can prove rather challenging, and direct confrontations are too hard. Developers didn't leave us much choice in our approach. The colosseum fight is one of the silliest things in the game and probably could've been done much better.

The Bottom Line
Was this game really something so special? I think not. Was it unique and fun experience? Certainly. And at a times with limited storage capacity and graphics it achieved something rather wonderful. If one game deserves being called a classic, this one tops it all.

Levels are very versatile and occasionally contain beautiful landscapes (and achieving that in so little colors is no small feat). You will squash fight deadly worms, run for your life from the huge beast, firefight your way our of prison, roll through the ducts, dash out of collapsing cavern, swim your way through the underground mazes, break into a girls only spa, and even fight in the colosseum, making each level an experience on its own, so using level codes is a fine approach to continue your game.

Platform games are plentiful, but very few could be called good. This one is. It's not from the same bunch and it does not feel like an arcade game.

The Good
Truly an "art house" game if there ever was one, Out of this World is one of those rare gems that make you somehow proud of being a computer gamer, I mean... geez, what a game!

Well, actually, what an odd game! Loaned to me as a "sci-fi" Prince of Persia, this game belongs to an era when the technical constraints seriously limited the creative capabilities of the designers. Thus they had to work around that, and in that way ended giving us much better content than if they had free rein. Much like in the late golden era of Hollywood, when the use of the Hays code of censorship meant that the filmmakers had to insinuate all they couldn't say out loud, and generally work out the holes of the system and "smart it out". It is a pretty general conception that the main bulk of movies made in that period where much better than the loads of crap the studios started churning once the code was removed, and in fact, people like Hitchcock made their best movies in that period... I guess for all the problems they cause challenges bring the best in each one eventually, right? And that's exactly what challenges brought to this era of gaming and particularly to this game.

Want to see how to tell a really touching story about friendship when no voice overs, pre-rendered cutscenes or award-winning script writers are around? Play this game.

Want to see how to develop an engrossing gameplay experience relying only on 6 keys, no inventory, no health indicators, no nothing? Play this game.

Want to see how one can be transported to a truly alien world using nothing but what seems to be different shades of blue, and an early generation soundtrack? Play this game.

Want to bla, bla , bla... Etc, etc, etc? Play this game. Probably no other game screams so subtly the real power behind videogames. The real power to convey emotions that never sink to cheapness, to entertain with an actual content, to be so much a masterpiece of imagination as to ignite a spark that rivals a book's literary prowess (and mind you, I am most certainly NOT one of those fools that scream how videogames can be as good as any work of literature and the only thing they have ever read are Superman comics).

The Bad
I don't think I can objectively write anything in here. Out of this World was a real shock to me when I first played it as a kid. I had pretty much no idea what I was getting into, and it was only as the years went by that I fully grasped it and replayed it several times. I am still amazed at how still at that time, expecting to end the game jumping over some monster's head 3 times, or shoot some baddie in the ass I found myself mulling over the ending and even tough I couldn't grasp it all, I still thought to myself "Damn, this is special". Out of this World is one of the games that shaped my view of the videogame world, one of the few that showed me that you could take the same thing that gave you Mario, but make it into something much, much more engrossing (mind you, I am well aware that many games before and after did this, but at the time they were pretty obscure to me, and the few that were around really crossed the line for a kid my age. I mean, sure Wasteland came out earier, and was as mature (in the content-wise meaning of it) as Out of This World is, but I didn't give a flying fuck about realistic roleplaying, text parsers, or crap like that at that age! Say what you will of it, but Out of This World really grabbed me even then. It's a part of me by now. I can't really say anything bad about it.

... Tough on retrospect Lester really had a pretty gay name.... :))

The Bottom Line
Some people have Mario, I guess I have Out of This World. It takes a special game to brand someone like that, and this game does just that, it comes to you with the promise of being just another platformer, and it leaves much, much more. Get it. Now.

Hmmm... Wait a sec. I see now as I re-read this thing that I've done what I always hate when someone else does it: I waxed poetry and touchy-feely crap and I didn't really tell you why the game rules so! Ok, sorry for that, here it is:

Superb gameplay that combines simple yet silky smooth controls with excellent visual coordination and deduction puzzles. Incredible graphics with the best animation this side of Prince of Persia (and all done without any Hollywood stuntman wearing pin-pong balls) and a striking graphic design filled with jagged edges, weird formations and all sort of cool expressionist stuff, great sound and a remarkably touching story with one of the best endings in the history of videogames.

That's about it! Now go!