Game Reviews

Game Title: Oddworld: SoulStorm Released: April 6, 2021 Game Length: 26 Hours Grade: B Marketing Release: Like its predecessor, Lanning created a voting poll for the title of the game. Although many liked Oddworld: Twice Ze Flavor , they decided to go with Oddworld: Soulstorm . The game would be a re-imagining of Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus that follows the "timeline" of Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty . The thing is that he decided to go against Valve and make it an Epic Games Exclusive . It was also going to be published with Playstation 4 and Playstation 5 on April 6, 2021. The game was available free for PS5 Plus Members . I hope you weren't expecting a cheap game since its standard price tag is set at a whopping $50. The lowest I've seen it at was 30% off during the Epic Games Store Summer Sale for $35, which wasn't too bad of a price. Merchandise: Then again, you could go all out and buy the Collector's Edition for $150. There's a real...

9:42pm 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 o...

Game Title: Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath Released: December 20, 2010 Game Length: 14 Hours Grade: B+ Development Marketing: Very similar to Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee , the creator's new game was going to be released exclusively on the Xbox . This might have been true back in 2005, but the new team Just Add Water made additional plans. They decided to release it gradually starting from 2010 for Windows , Playstation 3 , OnLive , Playstation Vita , iOS , Android , Ouya , Mac App Store , and finally Nintendo Switch in 2020. They went out of their way to add a Collector's Edition too. People interested in buying all four of the core games could buy it at a discount through The Oddboxx on Steam . EA Problems: Considering that this game was well-established and much better from the failures of its predecessor, why did it perform so poorly at launch? Lanning needed to sell 1.6 million copies , not the 600,000 copies that sold by 2012 . Well, EA happened . Details are...

Game Title: 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 infl...

Game Title: Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus Released: November 17, 1998 Game Length: 14 Hours Grade: B+ Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus Elements: When it comes to looking at Oddworld's sequel, it is hard to imagine that they managed to add so much in a game in nine months of time. They most definitely did not plan to make another one and in such a small development window. I expected a little short game where you rescue some guys in a mine, but it turned out to be much more than that. The manual shows off twice the amount of content as the previous game. You can take control and "Gamespeak" with a large variety of creatures, encounter and deal with mudokons that are under a number of different statuses, avoid the smiling greet machines that will instantly kill you, and take a wild ride in the track-system mine cart. There is a "Status" option in your menu that tells you your current rescue status of saving now 300 mudokons . The music was just as eeri...

Game Title: Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee Released: December 12, 1997 Game Length: 14 Hours Grade: B- Oddworld Inhabitants Series: Lorne Lanning pitched the idea of establishing a video game series with Sherry McKenna a long, long time ago in 1992. The company itself would take another two years of being established when Sherry finally agreed to put Lorne's world to the test. Their first game, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee , tells the story of Abe - one of 100 mudokon creatures working for the industrial glukkon creatures in a meat-processing plant called RuptureFarms and was released on the PC and Playstation in 1997. Lanning then put together a sequel in only nine months called Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus in 1998 where Abe is sent to destroy the factories producing "Soulstorm Brew" that was made from the bones of dead mudokon and rescuing 300 of his kind. Their third game goes into another direction with Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee releasing exclusively ...