Review: New 'n' Tasty! Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee

Developer - Oddworld Inhabitants/Just Add Water

Genre - Puzzle/Platformer

Platform - PS4

Release Date - 25/07/14

Price - £17.99

This is a game I was looking forward to more than any other before release. The first two Oddworld games on the PS1 were a big part of my gaming childhood. I believe I ended up trading a Pokémon Gold cartridge with a friend for Abe's Oddysee (when game trading was a thing you did with your friends and not for in store credit. God I'm old) and it was one of the most unique and difficult platformers I had played at that time. Also, you could make Abe fart on command so it was already scoring points with me. I certainly remember the excitement building up to Christmas when I knew I had Abe's Exoddus to open on the morning of the 25th.

New 'n' Tasty is a HD remake of the original Abe's Oddysee. I should be quick to point out that the game has been remade from the ground up, rather than going the remaster route that simply increases the resolution of the existing textures and keeps the gameplay identical to the original. I don't think you'd be able to get away with up-resing PS1 textures anyway.

The game stars the titular character, Abe. Abe is a Modokon floor waxer and employee of the year at the largest meat processing plant on Oddworld; Rupture Farms. The Mudokons are a tribe of blue/green skinned humanoid aliens, and the slave labour force of the Magog Cartel. Abe is introduced hanging in a dingy, steel, cylindrical cell awaiting his fate having been captured. Why is Abe being held?

Well, working late one night, presumably to win employee of the year two years running, Abe stumbles upon a meeting between his boss, Molluck the Glukkon, and the other Glukkons on the board. Turns out profits are slipping and the board are worried. However, Molluck has a plan to put Rupture Farms back in the black, by turning Abe and his chums into the next tasty treat. Abe decides he doesn't fancy that and goes on a quest to escape Rupture Farms, discover his destiny and eventually return to Rupture Farms with the goal of shutting the oppressive factory down.

The main goal of the game is to take Abe safely through each area while saving the other 299 Mudokon workers, upped from 99 in the original, held up in the factory. This is done with the game's patented GameSpeak mechanic. Abe interacts with his fellow work mates through the power of spoken word, issuing simple commands so his people don't end up on the Glukkon menu. A typical conversation looks like so:

Abe: "Hello"

Mudokon: "Hello"

Abe: "Follow Me"

Mudokon: "Ok"

GameSpeak can be used to both help and hinder your Mudokon brethren, depending on how nice or cruel you're feeling. You can liberate the slave labour force by leading them safely to bird portals and chanting near them in order to set your people free. You could do that, or you can have them walk into a mine, grinder or bottomless pit for laughs. Workers are both on the main path and in hidden areas so rescuing all factory employees is quite a task. Your stance and number of Mudokons you save will affect the ending you receive, however, so think about whether you want to be a messiah or an asshole.

The platforming is a fairly standard affair. Navigate Abe through each environment, avoiding environmental hazards such as pitfalls, mines, meat grinders, gun toting guards known as Sligs and other interesting creatures. The thing that sets Abe apart from other platforming heroes is he is fairly defenceless. Most areas will require stealth and timing to advance through them rather than running through each area and jumping on things. Running aimlessly through areas will get you killed. Repeatedly. This isn't to say Abe doesn't have any tricks up his sleeve.

As mentioned above, Abe can chant. Chanting can be used to open bird portals, but it can also be used to possess Sligs. If Abe chants long enough while a Slig is on screen, you take control. This is fairly useful as it means you can scout the path ahead, as well as clear out any other Sligs on your path. When de-possessed, your Slig explodes into a mist of blood and body parts. Nice.

The puzzle elements really come into play once you escape from Rupture Farms and enter the wild of Oddworld. The most common puzzle involves finding a password consisting of whistles and farts, which is chirped back to a native Mudokon via the power of GameSpeak in order for Abe to continue his journey. The trials of the Scrabania and Paramonia temples feature some testing environment navigation; trying to avoid contact with the wild beasts of Oddworld while lighting temple flintlocks.

While New 'n' Tasty is its own game, it's hard not to compare it to the original. In some obvious areas, it shines above it and in others it falls flat. The environments look fantastic in comparison to the original. I know that states the fucking obvious. A PS4 game should look better than a PS1 game, however, the beauty of the wild of Oddworld in contrast to the oppressive atmosphere of the factory environments are still intact and look better than ever. The character models are full 3D rather than the 2D sprites of the original and they look gorgeous. The animations of the characters also closely match the sprite animations so it doesn't look odd.

Another major difference is the scrolling of the games environments. In the original, each area was confined to its own individual screen. New 'n' Tasty does away with that and the environment scrolls with Abe's movement. This change was a bit jarring at first. I was nervous to advance further into an area when I knew there would be Sligs lurking but this became less of an issue the more I played.

A change brought in from exoddus is the inclusion of the "All o' ya" GameSpeak command. The original game would require you to speak to each Mudokon individually, meaning a lot of back and forth to drag your friends to bird portals. Shouting "All o' ya" alerts every Mudokon on the screen at the same time, meaning you can issue one command to a group.

The exoddus inspired QuikSave feature is also a great addition. The original game was unforgiving and certain environments required exploration and trial and error in order to get to the next checkpoint. Death resulted in you starting a section all over again and could become quite frustrating. QuikSave creates a temporary checkpoint wherever you are at that particular time. If you die, you can load that QuikSave and solve that particular puzzle from that point, rather than doing everything all over again.

Possession is also easier. Once a Slig is on your screen, it is locked into the visible area while Abe chants, unlike the original in which Sligs could move freely from screen to screen if it could navigate across multiple screens. I don't know how I feel about this change. I feel certain possessions I managed wouldn't have been possible in the original and made a particular section easier for me.

I am fairly certain the soundtrack is exactly the same as the original and I feel that this was the right choice. The audio and the environments just go together like hand in glove and having it completely redone or remixed wouldn't have felt right. In fact, I'm listening to the soundtrack as I write the review. As soon as the game started and I heard the music for Rupture Farms, it brought a gargantuan grin to my face. Additional idle dialogue has been added for the Mudokon workers and Slig guards which bring added personality and humour to the game.

However, there have been audio changes I am not too happy with, namely the change to the way both Scrabs and Paramites now sound. The howls of Scrabs and screeches of Paramites have been replaced and they sound neutered, less powerful creatures, especially Scrabs. The original sounds put fear into me and, to me, were iconic and instantly recognisable. Had they been played to me without any context, my mind would instantly think "Scrab" or "Paramite". Although they are still to be feared if you encounter them, they feel less intimidating and that's a real shame to me.

I do unfortunately have a few gripes with this remake over the original, the main gripe being the control scheme. Abe's default movement is now running rather than walking. In order to get Abe to walk, you have to half tilt the analogue stick. I have always found this a massive pain in the arse in games and have never liked it. I don't understand why they couldn't have kept it at holding a shoulder button to run and have Abe walk by default.

Movement also feels less precise than the original. I feel this is more down to me being used to the old way Abe moved, i.e the position Abe finished in would be down to where he was on a grid, in comparison to him now being to stop in any position in the world. This change led to me being splattered by meat grinders more often than I would like as I wouldn't know where Abe would finish when I centred the analogue stick. I also presume this change is down to the environment scrolling. This imprecision also means you won't know if you're too far to the left or right of a ledge to hoist up to it.

Jumping has also been changed and I feel this is for the worse. The original had a jump button that would advance you 3 spots on the floor grid. The up button on the d-pad was used to hoist up to higher ledges. The jump button now defaults to hoisting. Pressing the button and then nudging the analogue stick to the left or right quickly after now results in a hop. This change also resulted in a few unnecessary deaths. Considering you can hoist using up on the analogue stick, I really don't understand this change. And again, because of the imprecision of positioning in comparison to the original, hitting buttons in the wrong order could result in unnecessary death.

For example, there is a section towards the end of the game where the floor pattern is mine, mine, meat grinder above, mine, mine, meat grinder above, mine mine. To clear this section, you have to hop 3 times between the mines and time it so you don't get ground up. To make things worse, there is a timer in the background that, if it hits zero, will blow everything up and instakill you. Now, because of the imprecision of the positioning, I died many times because Abe's head clipped the grinder while it was fully up. This situational death would never have happened in the original game which displeased me no end.

UXB mines are also incredibly frustrating now. UXB mines involve Abe having to sit next to them and slap the button on top of it when it's green to deactivate it. If it's red while Abe slaps it, he's turned into puree. While the original had differing patterns between its green and red states, all UXB mines in New 'n' Tasty follow the same pattern. Despite this, they are incredibly easy to fuck up and probably resulted in half my deaths. Now, this isn't due to my "lack of skill". There were plenty of times where the light on top of the mine was still green at the point it was slapped and I'd still die. Not to say there weren't times when I mistimed it. But it felt like more often than not, I'd have timed it correctly only to be blown up.

I also encountered 2 strange bugs through my playthrough. One involved Elum literally falling through the floor on a pulley elevator while it was moving up. Killing myself didn't bring Elum back so I had to start the large section all over again. This only happened once. Another involved me not being able to hoist myself up a clearly "hoistable" ledge. I had to use a run and jump onto the ledge to pull myself up. I then jumped back down from that platform only to be able to hoist onto that ledge properly again. I know that New 'n' Tasty has been patched since but I don't know if these issues have been reported, never mind fixed.

Overall, despite the gripes I had with the game, I still enjoyed the experience and have played it more than twice. The second playthrough felt better but this is more an account of the first time. The game is beautiful, the cutscenes are great and despite the issues with controls, I feel this is more because I was so used to the original control scheme. If you have not played the original games, these may not be issues to you and you can enjoy it for what it is. At £17.99, it's well worth the purchase for a classic made new.