Review #809: Oddworld Abe's Oddysee - New 'n' Tasty(Vita)

 What's old is tasty again.

 Alright, so I wasn't the biggest of Oddworld's fans when I decided to purchase Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee New 'n' Tasty!, y'see, I used to own the original version on PC and I didn't really like it. However, Limited Run Games had just started and I wasn't about to miss an opportunity to own a limited release game I was somewhat familiar with.

 Oddworld is a 2-D cinematic puzzle platformer kinda game. You play as Abe, a creature known as a Mudokon, who finds out the company he is slaved to is planning to produce a new kind of treat, a treat made out of Mudokon. As soon as he finds out, the game starts with Abe setting out to free his kind, all 300 of them. If anything, the world of Oddworld is very odd, there are all sort of ugly-cute creatures populating its world. Most of them want to hurt you. While it plays strictly in 2-D, the entire game has been remade in 3-D, for good or bad. A few details were lost in translation, but overall, it looks decent enough. I never got too far in the original, but for what little I did... it seemed quite faithful, although the screen-by-screen format of the original was traded for a camera that scrolls alongside Abe. Plus, I've read the developers admitting to changing a few of the puzzles, so it's not a 1:1 conversion, even if it feels quite similar, and, while the puzzles may have changed, the overall plot and Abe's adventure didn't really change, so it's like a slightly different take on the same game.

 Abe can sneak, run, jump and climb on to ledges in order to move through the environment. I felt like a few jumps required pixel perfect timing, but it might've been due to the framerate. That said, prepare to die quite a few times since you didn't jump at the right spot. Some stages, particularly the ones that have you riding the Enum, can be particularly bad about it, since they have a lot of jumps between checkpoints. Along the way you'll also find a few items you can throw, such as meat to distract a few aliens or grenades to, well, kill them. Grenades are a bit more interesting since you have to cook them before you shoot them, since you'll want to kill plenty of floating enemies with them, enemies that will prevent you from chanting.

 Chanting is Abe's other main ability, which he can use to open up portals for his people to escape and to open up secret areas or.... to possess enemy Sligs, the yellow aliens that carry machine guns. As a Slig you can communicate with other Sligs, to open up areas and what not, as well as to kill other Sligs. Although, if there are Mudokons nearby, you might want to order them to stand down before any shootout begins, lest they die in the crossfire.

 Another big part of the game is communication. Abe has access to four different 'words' he can use to communicate with fellow Mudokons: "Hello" and "Hello All", which will make any Mudokon on the screen pay attention to you, and "Follow me", in order to make them follow you, or "Wait" to have them wait. The game's main objective, besides getting to the end, is rescuing all 300 Mudokons, and if you want the best ending, you'll have to safely guide them into portals. Which is easier said than done, since Sligs are very trigger happy if you don't do things the right way. Holding the Triangle button will change your words into other sounds, such as whistling and, well, farting, which are mostly used to clear Simon-says puzzles.

 While I think the game as a whole is alright, I mean, these slow-paced platformers really aren't my cup of tea, at least the Vita version is a bit buggy. The game soft-locked twice when using the main elevator on the very first stage, since the assets didn't load when the elevator stopped so I had to reset the game. Another time, when I got to the Scrabanian temple, the game got semi-stuck on the loading screen, so the audio for the cutscene played while the loading screen flashed over the previous level. When the 'cutscene' 'stopped' it didn't load, so I had to reset. Oh, and the final Zulag stages? It felt like the game would get locked every two loading screens, it wasn't even funny.  At least the game autosaves very frequently, so I never lost much more than a few seconds worth of progress. Speaking of the game's performance, framerate on the Vita isn't so hot either, but it's playable.

 It's alright. I mean, I really dug the world of Oddworld, it has a lot of interesting creatures inhabiting its world. The game's premise is very interesting as well. That said, I've never been too big on these slow-paced platformers, so I know I'm not able to appreciate it as much as other people. As far as the performance of the game, I wasn't too mad at the frequent freezes because the auto save is so generous so I never lost much progress. All in all, as someone that barely scratched the surface of the original, this felt like a decent remake and a decent game.
 6.0 out of 10