Having only played Stranger's Wrath, the rest of the Oddworld games were a mystery to me. I saw my cousin play the original Abe's Oddysey on the PS1 back in December 1996 and I quite liked the look. This game, the third in the series, did not impress me one little bit.
First released back in 2001 (and boy does it show) I purchased the PlayStation Network version, which had been 'remastered' in HD (but it still looks like crap) with a whole bunch of trophies, including a Platinum. I might have been persuaded to go for it, and get the maximum out of the game had it been programmed or designed well. But a single play-through of this bore is all that I could handle. I longed for the game to end, I really did.
You play, alternately, as Mudoken hero Abe and his frog/fish Gabbit pal Munch out to take down an evil food manufacturer. There is a nice amount of gross, macabre humor but the long, long, tedious, poorly-planned level design makes the experience extremely boring. I could barely manage slogging though one level a day. Things are not helped by Munch being a very, very s-l-o-w character to control. There is a wheelchair option, in which he can zoom about a bit faster, but why even have this? Why not just make Munch a faster character? One of the trophies in the PSN version is to never use the wheelchair, so this is especially annoying.
The physics and camera system within the game are shocking, and are almost as bad as latter-day Sonic the Hedgehog disasters. For a game that frequently relies on precision moment and platforming this is a fatal flaw, and it only makes the game drag on and on and on even longer. Even the music is dull. It's just 'there' repeating the same short clip over and over with no melody and no atmosphere.
Not smitten by this series, and I doubt I will be playing any of the others.
Graphics C Sound D Gameplay D Lasting Appeal D
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