Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
Game Title: Oddworld New N Tasty
Released: February 25, 2015
Game Length: 9 Hours
Grade: B+
History
New Team: If you read my other reviews of the series, you might have heard about how Oddworld Inhabitants brought in Just Add Water in order to work on the series. Now officially working as publishers, they made a full statement of the price, budget, and the chance of making a sequel. The new development team was offered the original source code, told to build a game from the ground up using the original designs as a blueprint without incorporating any of the assets in the final product, and offered a budget of $5 million dollars. The remake would be using 2.5D graphics with a dynamic camera that would remove the original's screen-swiping mechanic. Instead of using Unigine, the company made the swap to the Unity engine due to cheaper licensing and better adaptability on multiple platforms. With the addition of waiting for the release of the Playstation 4 engine, it took the team 16 months to develop the game with a staff of 14 instead of the 35 members with the original version in 1997. Many of the unique voices for the game were offered freely by celebrities. The original voice actor reprized his role for the remake. The title of the game was chosen when 40 respondents all made the same suggestion in a publicized competition and came from the poster that was displayed in the hallway of the introduction that promoted the new food product made entirely from mudokon workers. Between 2014 and 2017, the game was practically released for every platform - Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, Xbox One, Wii U, PC, and Mobile. It even released on Nintendo Switch in 2020.
DLC: I have a bit of a problem when it comes to the extra goodies you can buy in addition to the base game. The first thing is that the "Scrub Abe" costume costs 99 cents to buy. This is rather insulting to a game where the whole point of the game is to fight against capitalism. The other part is the totally original package of Alf's Escape for $2.99. Alf was a friend that followed Abe on his adventures and later established as the mudokon that answered fan letters on the website. While it does show some excellent features like the display monitors that were prominent in the series, Alf's SoulStorm Bar, and the introduction of the albino slig that was designed for a canceled project, the structure of the puzzles are extremely too difficult and based more on chance when compared to the original level designs. I had only wished the costume was built into the base part of the game as some fancy unlockable while the level pack was downloadable for free on PC... like it is for the Nintendo Switch!
Ad Controversy: Scattered across the entire game are giant billboards that inform you how many mudokons you need to rescue. For some stupid reason, the developers decided to incorporate advertisements on these boards to several other games. And Lorne Lanning approved this. Unfortunately, the message to support indie games was miscommunicated resulting in the removal of the ads in the PC version.
Epic Games: If a contract was written up in 2010 and the game came out for Windows in 2015, then it felt kind of strange to be hearing that Epic Games would be temporarily releasing the game for free in their Christmas Specials on December 18, 2020. This might be because they were trying to promote their new Epic-exclusive sequel Oddworld: Soulstorm. Or it could have been seen as a sort of apology when they announced that the new game would be delayed a few more months. In either case, it was a pleasant surprise.
Problems
Bugs: Considering how long it took them to develop this game, I thought they would have hammered all the bugs. I played Version 1.3 and I still experienced a ton of glitches and problems. I don't think there were any game-breaking problems or any crashes like some people experienced, but the amount of oddities (pun intended) sure ranked up pretty high. There was some sort of problem connecting the gamepad that Patch 1.06 should have fixed. I had a few sound hiccups that some experienced that were still present on the Nintendo Switch.
Additions: The game certainly has a lot of positive changes made, but there were a few things that made it clear where the new guys tried to add their own spin to the game with terrible feedback. For the most part, all the secret areas that were difficult to find are intact for its remake. However, there are two new hidden spots to find mudokons. I never did find the ones working behind the vent system, but the other one confused a lot of folk - myself included. What appeared to be the main path after taking a special train system into another district was actually a detour from the main elevator that takes you through the rest of the level. Another bonus is the fact that you can go back and rescue mudokons on previous levels that you missed. The drawback? You have to do the whole level from the beginning as if you are doing it for the first time. What's worse is how the level select only displays the total percentage of mudokons saved instead of a proper ratio of total rescued over those available in that level (which is also shown when selecting a particular saved file when booting up the game). The developer's newly-crafted instructions on their website or their official downloadable manual (with more pictures) helps explain things, but it lacks visual representation with extensive walls of text explaining much of the story over substance. So there were several moments where it took me much longer to discover what to do, like calling "Look Out" as a Slig would allow you to "shoot over" the mudokons.
Changes
Modern Mudokons: At first I was going to categorize what the developers did to the game in "good and bad" categories, but I realized that these changes are subjective to the player. So instead, I'm simply going to list them and have you all decide for yourself. For the modern crowd, people want things to be slick. Instead of the "grid system" that they had in the original, the developers added dynamic panning. This means that you could see what was "around the corner" and bird portals respawned without the need of going off-screen. Abe was able to run smoothly (when the frame rate held together). Although you were rescuing 300 mudokons (three times the amount from the original game), the level designs remained intact. This means that areas where you would rescue one or two were now replicated to display groups of workers within a single area. Though, this wasn't a big issue since you could use the Hello All command from Abes Exoddus for all those dudes at once. Mudokons followed you better by automatically climbing up and down edges or kneeling down whenever you used the new slow crouch mechanic. It's too bad they still aren't able to roll with you like in Oddworld Adventures 2. One other thing that I should mention - love it or hate it - is that mudokons now randomly chat in the background.
Modern Save System: If you played the old games, you would notice that the sequel had a "quicksave" system that the original game didn't contain. So if you badly wanted it in Abe's Oddysee, you can now use it. However, it is badly incorporated into the game. The PC version will allow you to press F5 & F8, but there is no option to change the button for quickloading on the gamepad. You can choose the main menu option, but you must select the load game button and then press the quickload button inside the subcategory. Outside of this, you are stuck with the clunky "tap to save" and "hold to load" feature using the same button. When you die, you revert back to your last checkpoint instead of your last quicksave (which is dumb since there is an option to choose to restart the level or revert back to the last checkpoint in the options menu). If you do decide to manually quicksave, the game doesn't have the decency to automatically exit out of the menu like it did in Abe's Exoddus.
Modern Flair: Perhaps one of the most controversial changes to the game has to be its presentation. When you compare it to the original, there is no doubt that the graphics have been drastically improved. The background, lights, and higher resolution are all splendid. The 2.5D allows them to add more functionality around you, like the sleeping pods or bottles of SoulStorm Brew that didn't make it into the original game. However, some feel these changes are "too flashy" and distract from the atmosphere cemented from the original game. These modifications can be seen inside the cutscenes as well. Instead of carefully stepping forward wherever you go, there is more of an urgency to "charge at it like an idiot until you get it right" with the new soundtrack and overall pacing of the levels.
Modern Difficulty Option: For someone who wants to just experience the story and would like to take a few more hits, they have added an "Easy" and "Normal" mode. These options will adjust the amount of damage you can take before dying and determine how quickly the Sligs will react to your presence. Their patrol sequences are supposed to be random, but sometimes the AI can get "stuck" in certain positions until you make a move. "Hard" reverts to the original concept of the game by removing the ability to Quicksave or Quickload. They have provided more checkpoints in between areas, but you will not be able to re-save passing by the most recent flag you visited in any difficulty.
Endings: The requirements to get the good ending has not changed. You still need to rescue at least half of the mudokons in the game. The sad part about this is that I received the bad ending my first time through. There were several factors from not going back to save the mudokons in the secret areas before leaving the first area, to redoing complete chapters, and not knowing there were secret portals inside non-factory levels that would sneak you into exclusive areas. Granted, my total recorded time was 5 hours. So I used the chapter select option and redid a couple of segments (along with going through the gauntlet again in the final level) in order to get the good ending.
Miscellaneous: There are a few other notes I like to include here. Co-Op makes a return with the option for players to "take turns" controlling Abe until one dies. You can throw infinite bottle caps to distract the guards. Gaining and using your super special ability is kind of unclear. I found myself absorbing and accidentally using it immediately after gaining it. Perhaps I wasn't meant to hold down the button that long? You only need to use the whistle response once during the temple areas. Returning for more power-ups doesn't require you to complete the challenge over.
Summary
Review: New N Tasty is far from a "bad" game. The graphics and scenery certainly are more brighter than the original, but it still retains the tone of the Oddworld universe. There are plenty of good changes with the dynamic panning and giving people the option to save/load from any point in the game. There are some unusual choices like adding bottle-caps to distract enemies, but they are far from harming your experience of the game. However, there is most definitely evidence that the game was produced from an inexperienced team. Although the developers spent months fixing issues after release, there are still technical hiccups in the frame rate, a series of options that are misconstrued, and mildly frustrating bugs that prevents you from immersing yourself in the story completely. Despite this, the game would definitely be something that anyone would enjoy.
11-6-2021