Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee
Released: December 20, 2010
Game Length: 14 Hours
Grade: D+
History
Development Nightmare: You would think after the critical success of Oddworld Inhabitants in establishing the first two games, the third one would be just as successful. What they got was something that all programmers fear. GT Interactive, the company that was backing the Oddworld series, lost $90 million dollars in 1999 due to restructuring costs. Infogrames Entertainment (not a typo) bought 70% of GT Interactive for $135 million and decided to do their own restructuring by first making extreme budget cuts. During this process, the developers were having a hard time adapting to Sony's new hardware on the Playstation 2. With the added benefits of creating code that has more in relation to personal computers and the perks of signing up with Microsoft, they made the choice to switch over to the Xbox. The problem is that with Microsoft comes some heavy influence. The company created some "bone-rattling turbulence" to the point where they wanted the game to cater to a casual crowd and pitching the name Abe & Munch’s Fun Adventures. Through all of this, they were quickly running out of time and had to hire a band of coders to learn how to transform the world from 2D to 3D. What resulted was the release of a poorly-developed game in 2001.
Ports: Like the other mobile ports of the series, the Game Boy Advance version breaks up the main game in a more reduced form and streamlines its content in 2003. The difference here is that it is now a top-down perspective. I'm not going to review the game but there are a bunch of differences from the main game. It would take seven more years in 2010 until Oddworld Inhabitants signed a contract with Just Add Water to develop and redevelop their saga. Unfortunately, their High-Definition re-release of Munch's Oddysee on the Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita barely made an impact. Six years after that, they would add multi-language support. Other than a few minor adjustments, the poor aspects of the core game still proved to be too cumbersome to repair.
Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee
Starting Issues: I realize that this is an odd
old game, and I braced myself for some problems. The first thing I was
immediately greeted with was how the game didn't crop to my resolution.
This wasn't too terrible to find a solution since it was related to compatibility. I had assumed they had fixed their saving issue,
but I guess the issue still persisted. After playing the first level or
two, my game kept prompting me with an error and my controls kept
resetting. Of course, this problem was easily solved by running the game as administrator.
Introduction: For the next 3 hours, I kept hoping for the game to get better. The cinematic videos introducing the characters, their predicament, and the setting were horrendous. The premise for Munch is pretty decent, but the music and overall tone felt out-of-place in the video. The slapstick comedy with our new villains was too silly to take the situation seriously. It reminded me of that Crazy Frog Music Video where you will probably laugh while watching it but regret it later on. Instead of providing us with Big Face or anything else in the previous games, Abe is suddenly thrown in some exposition from Almighty Raisin whose background we know nothing about. When the two characters finally meet, there really isn't any sort of connection made or at the least not shown to the audience. It just sort of turns into this wacky adventure where they have to do something because the developers needed a reason to progress the story.
Gameplay: I don't know who came up with the ideas for this game, but they are very bad. You need to collect these green "spooce" lying on the ground to open gates, transform figures, chant, and a few other things. The number isn't shared between your characters so you have to make sure Abe is the one that collects them since he is the one with most of the abilities. To prevent people from soft-locking themselves out of a puzzle, they allow Abe to "regrow" any you might find on the ground. If one of your characters die, they turn into an egg and must be rescued at certain spawn points. Clearly these things I mentioned make no sense to the story and are included as a list of dumb things to collect and do in the game. Your encounters with enemies include long slap-fights or shooting lasers. You must pick-up and throw mudokons over obstacles (which requires them to not be following you). In fact, much of the game is filled with busy work where you run-through areas carrying one mudokon at a time, herding creatures into pens, or dropping a series of objects down with a giant claw. I could keep going with the problems, but I gave up playing the game half-way through.
Too Much Information: The game is filled with tutorials that show you how to do various activities. There are "Info" poles, rune stones, guides that pop up and explain the situation, and giant boards that update you on what all is still moving in the level. You will alternate between Munch freeing these little fuzzballs that are reminiscent to something from The Dark Crystal and Abe rescuing mudokons from their form of slavery in the factories. Ironically, the ones you don't have to "free" are the standard ones we've seen in the previous games. They are mere pawns that fight off foes. If you fail to advance through the enemy line, you can regrow spooce to access a respawn point that summons those that were lost.
Lack of Information: Despite the game doing its best explaining all these elements to you, there are a lot more that it doesn't explain. You have no idea how many times I sat there in the middle of the level trying to figure out what it was asking of me to do. Mudokon Pens had a ton of these. Since Munch can't jump very high, you have to get Abe in order to pick him up and throw him over a wall. But later when Munch gets a wheelchair, he can somehow jump a hundred times higher than before. The board tells you about picking up objects with the claw, but it didn't give you a clue about picking up Abe and dropping him onto the platform above. In that same level, there comes a point where you have to lure enemies twice (since the first explosion doesn't kill them) into a set of mines that respawn after a few seconds. It's ironic that I didn't quit the game when trying to push about 25 sheep into a pen in Meep Herder Village. No, the last straw was how badly the camera was while jumping over a bunch of simple platforms in the following level.
Summary
Review: Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee was supposed to be the second pivotal game of a series that ties-in the creature from a product poster shown in the first game with the word "extinct" written over it. What we received was an utter failure from the lack of development funds, different hardware, new story, pressure from their supporters, and heavy time restraints. Components that were probably borrowed from their canceled real-time strategy game helped mold an interesting setting through what a typical village might look like, but the lack of variety in puzzles, enemies, and environment marred what could have been an engaging experience. Other things like terrible mechanics, bad attempts of light-hearted humor, poor choice of music, lack of proper sound effects, and repetitive gameplay only cemented the frustration of playing such a game. Worst of it all, the game is only single player despite having two characters you can swap between. I highly suggest everyone to avoid this game.
11-10-2021