....and Oddworld...

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 16 March 2005 09:26:44

Today post 2:

Onto Oddworld. Wifey picked the disc up yesterday and started to play as you do when you have a new toy.

I'd had nervous feelings about this since I saw the first character designs and heard of the games plotline.

Oddworld games are about charm and heart. The character design is genius. The games are (in a way) most closely similar to the Dark Crystal in terms of place and soulful characters and storyline. However Oddworlds last game, Munches Oddysee, was somewhat of a mixed bag. Beautiful characters as ever, but game design was patchey at best. Sales were from what I understand ok buty not awesome. Oddworld took stock and decided to go for something that had the generic patterm that would bring in a larger crowd while maintaining the Odd ethos (I assume). So now we have a first person shooter, no gamespeak, fewer characters, less dialog, so far (and I've only just started here) no necessity to rescue anyone and again so far no evil corporation.

So far it does have charm, but nowhere near the charm that Abe had or has, but in losing the total Oddworld feel it's lost something for me. The live ammo is classic, although only the chipmunk has character, the rest simply moving when activated.

Like I say, only just started but for me it's a good non-Oddworld pastiche not an Oddworld game so far, although reviews all say that the twist in the middle (haven't gotten there yet, nobody tell me) raises the game from good to great. Hope so and I'm so far aiming to stick with it for the ride. Here's to the game being a big enough success that Oddworld can create something they want without market reseacrh coming in to amputate something next time.