Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus

The Good
Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus is a 2D static screen platformer (of the "cinematic" kind like Prince of Persia or Flashback). Story wise it is a sequel to Abe's Oddysee, and the second Oddworld game released. Although theoretically, it's not part of the planned main quintology, more like an expansion pack to A.O. It reuses many of the same assets, polishes on the gameplay mechanics, adds a few new elements, plus the amount of levels are double or triple compared. (Look, if Doom 2 could get away with it...) The plot is set on an alien planet, that looks familiar, yet Odd to us. You are playing as Abe, once a slave of a meat factory called Rupturefarms, now a celebrated Messiah of the Mudokons. He is embarking on to free up yet more of his kin from the industrialist Glukkons and their Slig guards, and to reclaim the desecrated native burial grounds. And he does so mostly without weapons or fistfight - Abe's way of doing thing are by speech, sneaky industrial sabotage, and spiritual powers.

So, what do I mean, that it makes you feel like a hero? Well, there is a lot of example in gaming where you have rescue someone, often just according to the plot, but sometimes as an active gameplay element. In old games, the characters you rescue may work like collectible items or checkpoints. In more modern games, there are the dreaded escort missions. Do you like escort missions? With dumb lemming-brained creatures that easily get themselves killed? Sounds like a recipe for an unpleasant time. While this game is basically designed around such an idea, it manages to turn it into a solid gameplay mechanic. (Okay, it helps that in 2D there are less ways to go wrong.) The creature AI can bring a lot of suprises and unexpected (funny and/or catastrophic) situations. The behaviour of the NPCs, if not exactly smart, it is deliberate in its ineptness. Just look and hear those ugly yet endearing little green schmucks (the Mudokons). Even if in a limited way, they have character. It can be a hassle to deal with them, yet you just want to keep helping and rescuing the poor sods! Otherwise they can get torture on the whim of the nearby Sligs, or even meet grizzly end.

What I told thus far, still likely could be mistaken for a Lemmings-type thing. But the main distinguishment is: you are part of the game world! This is first and foremost an action game, but can get pretty puzzling, one you have to mind getting everyone to safety, in a dangerous world of workplace hazards and unfriendly employers. Your objective is two fold: find your way to the level exit (which often has to be unlocked), while (sort of optionally) lead each green buddy a bird portal, trough which they can escape. In the second half of the game, there are countless occasions where you could just screw over your Mudokon friends by leaving them behind. Many situations where the level exit gets opened early (often with the co-operation of your Mudokon fellows) and you could just go on with your progress. But then you have go trough extra trouble to lead your fellows to a bird portal, before you leave. I think there is a lesson in there: help those, who helped you out!

Do your heroic duties badly enough - specificly save less than 50% of your comrades (or get killed that may) - and you get a bad ending of the story (even if it is not nearly as traumatizing as in Abe's Oddysee or Munch's Oddysee). This also means, that for saving more than 150 Mudokons, you get the good ending. To max out the game by saving all 300 of them, you have to look out for the secret areas. There are lots of these secret places scattered troughout the game. During the course of my several replays, I have laboriously examined every possible ledge and corner, like an OCD ridden idiot. The ending bonus may be nothing special, but I have the peace of mind to that I've rescued everyone, seen and done EVERYTHING! (Only to be told later, that the piles of Brew bottles mark the secrets, ha ha!)

On my recent re-play I was surprised to experience, that the things I discussed above still hold up, and didn't turn into a stale cliche, like it did in at the end of Stranger's Wrath. It still made an impact on me, I cared about saving the Mudokons!

What else can I highlight? Hmm... well, I have some trouble reviewing Exoddus, as it has become etched so deeply into my gaming memories, that it is hard for me to vocalize, what exactly I love in it so much. I want to call it one of the best, if not the best game ever. So there needs to be some justification to this preposterous claim. Below I go trough a few points, in no particlar order, what comes to my mind.

-The unique alien beings. Each have their purpose and quirky design. There are the Mudokon natives/slaves versus the evil industrial faction (Sligs, Slogs, Glukkons), plus the sacred wild creatures (Paramites and Scrabs). While most of the species make a return from Abe's Oddysee (minus the Elum), there are some new ones or variations that Exoddus introduced. Such as the Sloggies (tiny Slog puppies), the flying Sligs (complete with a ridiculous helicopter backpack, and a grenade launcher instead of a gun), the "pantless" Sligs (can turn into a walking or flying slig), the fleeches (double headed worms that can eat you whole), the Greeters (smiling guard robots that only see with a motion detector). Even the Glukkons turn up in the gameplay occasionally. Blind or moody Mudokons are a new thing too.

-Gamespeak. One word voice commands that you use to interact with other creatures, and make the do your bidding (if the're willing to listen to you). This has improved a lot since Abe's Oddysee: you can now handle multiple, or even all Mudokons, also command them to do errands for you by activating swiches. Blind Mudokons are especially dependent on your vocal guidance, and it is a nerve wracking job to prevent them to walk into a trap or accidentally alert the Sligs.

-Possession. More games should have this awesome feature, seriously! Chanting until your soul leaves your body, takes over the nearest on-screen foe or wild creature, so you get to command their abilities and weapons. Suddenly going from being a unarmed Mudokon on the bottom of the food chain, to being a dangerous killing machine that can clear out the level from the rest of the foes, oh yeah! Better yet, become a Glukkon, and boss around clueless Sligs with your word. The paramites are also pretty social among themselves. The Slighs however have become more cautious since Abe's Oddysee, they are quick to shoot their suspicious fellows. The possession feature could easily break the challenge of the game, but that is taken care of. Strategically placed chant supressor orbs prevent Abe from being able to do this everywhere (altough the use of grenades can change the situation). The possessable creatures get into a state of panic when they hear your chanting and can run away. Also they are limited in their movement (e.g. Sligs can't climb ledges).

-There is an element of stealth. Hiding in the shadows, sneaking around behind the backs of Slig guards, trying to be as silent as possible, while you are doing your activities of industrial sabotage. The music changes according to the situation, and you will hear that creepy musical cue a lot when idle enemies are nearby.

-Even just walking around feels good. The walkable surfaces are divided into an invisible grid, so it is not hard to plan your movement, even in the middle of hurry business. And Abe's dopey walking cycle is fun to watch.

-Abe can now punch. You can give nearby Sligs and other Mudokons a good slap (you can even cause a row of Mudokons go fistfight each other). Granted, this will usually not accomplish anything useful or good. But is is funny to pull off, and a bit of sign that Abe's is not so helpless as he used to be in Oddysee. It's not purely just a gimmick either, there are things like the ghost traps and wired Mudokons that have to be beaten up.

-Farting by the press of a button... aside from the comedic novelty, Abe's farts can become a deadly weapon too! Drinking Soulstorm Brew from the vending machines turns Abe's fart into a explosive cloud of a time bomb (that count back with smaller farts). Possessing your fart clouds makes them controllable. So rude and bizzare, I love it, ha ha!

-Minecart riding. The "mine carts" are tank-like vehicles that can crush everything in the way, and follow the tracks that sometimes go up on the walls and ceilings.

-The gameplay mechanics are actually pretty complex, but it doesn't feel like it. That is because the game does a very good job at explaining itself, and gives adequate training situations as it goes on. The tutorial instructions are embedded into the world in the form of billboards and info terminals, instead of obligatory message boxes interrupting you (like modern games normally do). So the "tutorial levels" are not an inconvenient drag when you re-play the game next time.

-The game is firmly commited to a HUD-less design. What indication you need to know, is most often marked with subtle differences in the behaviour + sounds of the objects/creatures concerned. For example, the working Mudokons like to make it known how they feel - they often stand up and make a whimper when sad (and flash blue when doing so) or groan when angry (and flash red), so you know beforehand what to deal with. Another example, your inventory of throwable objects is shown by a little floating number above your head, but only while aiming or taking a stock. Prehaps the least subtle is the "Mudokon head" icon popping up when loading, reaching a hard-set checkpoint, or quicksaving, but you oughta notice that!

-Save, Quicksave, Restart Path. The worst part of Abe's Oddysee was the checkpoint system, and saving the game only preserved the state how things stood when you hit the latest checkpoint. Here in Exoddus, this was massively improved! When you save the game to the hard drive, it saves the current state of gameplay. Beside permanent save, there is now a Quicksave feature. Which means, hitting F5 on the keyboard lets you setting your own soft checkpoints anytime and anywhere, and hitting F6 lets you reload that. It's a lot like savestates in an emulator. The game can afford this, because it has more than enough challenge and content to offer. If you messed something up with your quicksave, the Restart Path option puts you back to the last hard-set checkpoint instead.

-The audio-visuals have that late '90s alien aesthetic. They were designed with great consideration, and are everything they need to be. They both serve the game's purpose well, and are pieces of art in themselves. Oddworld originally started out as an animation/art company I believe, and this is some of the best computer generated graphics of its time, in pre-rendered 2D form. On a The graphics may have aged (as the resolution is not so sharp anymore on modern displays), but the artistry behind it still holds up. Each screen background suggests a world of industry or lush nature you could get lost in. The music actively accentuates the action happening in the game. The music is made of short loops. The normal level theme plays out when no danger is nearby. Ominous tunes play if idle dangerous creatures are nearby. It switches to action music if you are spotted by them. The sound effects are very functional and memorable too. So much, that a blind gamer can play trough the whole game, purely just by the sounds. (You may have heard of that, the story was widely publicized years ago.)

-There are lots FMV cutscenes troughout the game. They are so well rendered that I didn't think about them being CGI (it was synonymous with crappy movies) until it was pointed out to me later (duh, what else they would be?). Some advance the story, others are just transitions of travelling from one place to another. I loved seeing the story cutscenes back in the day. Nowadays I don't care so much about them, they're too childish compared the oppressingly serious mood of the gameplay. However, the transition cutscenes, when they are detailed and show off the scenery in motion. They still get me intrigued, kind of in the same way Star Wars used to. Like, when I see the techy innards of the Death Star, and it makes me wonder what all that stuff does, or where is it situated to the rest of what we have seen. Also, I only realize now one of the shortcomings of the later Munch's Oddysee - the world scenery feels so much bigger in scope, than what MO ever managed to portray.

-The differences between the PlayStation original and the PC port? The backgrounds are in much higher resolution on the PC, while the sounds do not have that strong echo effect that permeates the PSX version. The keyboard controls are quite comfy on the PC. Also, the PC version lacks the two player mode.

The Bad
The game can drop inputs. Why it happes is because Abe's sprite has detailed animation which has to play out before we can do other things. For one example, you cannot move and talk at the same time, you need to stand still for that. This is usually not a problem, but sometimes it can become one, in cases when you have to act quickly. Add in that the creatures have randomized reaction times, and the game can give you a hard time unpredictably. For a specific example in my recent playtrough, I had to fuss about a lot at a screen, where drills descent onto two unsuspecting Mudokons as soon as you enter it, and they have to be called away just in time. The only entry to that room is descenting on a hand operated elevator, which only can be stopped at a walkable platform. I have spammed the Hello key about a million times when the animation of the elevator stopping played out, and it just got swallowed up. Neither did help that the dumb Mudokons reacted very slowly. I tought I am just slow to issue my gamespeak commands. But no, the next day loading from an earlier save, the Mudokons on the same sceen had quicker response time assigned to them.

The game may be perfectly playable for the ones with low vision, as I mentioned. On the opposite though, it has no accessibility features for the hearing impaired. Now, the gameplay still can be figured out without sound... until you reach the parts with the voice locks! To which, as a Slig or Glukkon, you have to repeat certain speech patterns, to open up doorways. Why this matters to me, is that back in the day, I played this game on the lame old family PC, that had no sound capabilities at all. Because it came from an age when PCs had no built-in sound chips yet, so sound cards had to be bought separately. But those things were hard to find by the time we had that PC. So it was frustrating for 14 year old me to get hung up on the darn voice locks, argh!

The Bottom Line
A gaming masterpiece, with original ideas and thoughtful execution, that are still unmatched to this day. It hold up just as much as when I first saw it.

Finally, I was able to finish this review-y thing! Best game ever! My most favourite game ever! 100 out of 10! The remakes? Who cares! Exoddus should be in all lists of best games of all times. Simple as that. Good night. faints and falls under the desk