My name is Abe and I have to save my friends.
I am locked in a two-dimensional room on several levels. In the distance, I see my companions, both of them, climbing a ladder that will lead them to safety and to where. they can reach the lock that will set me free. Suddenly, a loud noise makes me alert to the presence of an enemy. You can’t see me, but my friends can. I quickly cast a spell defeating him, but more come out. I take possession of it and use it to kill another, then another. I can’t keep up. A bar knows something is wrong with his so-called comrade and kills my avatar, breaking my control. I keep singing to take possession of another quickly, but I’m too slow. The tables see my friends. They take aim and start firing. Count 36 falling bodies.
I have seven hours in Oddworld: Soulstorm and the game is kind of fun I didn’t expect. Oddworld Inhabitants ’decision to create a new Oddworld adventure has turned what was a simplistic platform game into a rich narrative experience that hooked me into characters I’ve always liked, but now I love.
Oddworld: Storm of Souls, now available on PlayStation 4 and 5, and PC, is a 1998 new generation reinvention Oddworld: Exodus of Abe, sequel to Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee. Following Oddworld: New N Tasty, Oddworld: Storm of Souls is the second time that developer Oddworld Inhabitants has given a next-generation makeover to one of its old titles. But instead of creating a simple HD, redo the path We N Tasty was, Storm of souls is a new game with new mechanics, new levels and a new story.
Oddworld: Storm of Souls it is a “2.9D”Side-scrolling platform. Like Abe, you have to navigate treacherous terrain, avoiding traps, enemies and even local wildlife. To accompany the next generation of graphics updates, Storm of souls he also improved the way Abe moves by adding more complex actions to his repertoire than he had Exodus.
I played the first two Oddworld, the Exodus of Abe i Abe’s Oddysee games when I was little, and I remember both of them bothered me shit. The tight, dark, dirty environments created a sense of foreboding that thrilled and terrified me. In each room there was a puzzle to solve or a secret to find, and my brain enjoyed the workout. After playing and 100% complete We N Tasty, I was looking forward to Storm of souls re-experiencing the same exciting terror. Storm of souls, with all its new elements and improvements, it looked like it was going to increase the difficulty levels, and I was excited to play. But a few hours later Storm of souls, I’m still waiting to feel the same excitement I felt playing its creator.
G / O Media may receive a commission
Exodus of Abe i saving all mudokons it was difficult because the limited actions available meant you had to meticulously plan how to navigate a room full of traps with your friends safely. With all the new elements, much of this planning has been removed in favor of simply having the right amount of elements to craft the right tool for the job. In Exodus it was, “Okay, I have to go down, run for my life, jump, hope to grab the ledge, go up and pull the lever before the slab sees me and shoots me to death.” Now it’s, “I can use the smoke curtain pump or the stun pump and move to my liking.” The difficulty he made Exodus stressful but rewarding has become a kind of generic action and adventure platformer.
That said, Soulstorm still scratches me the itch of the platform game. I miss the challenge of the originals, but Soulstorm has no difficulty. Abe’s enhanced movement options and new level designs create entirely new challenges that I enjoy studying. At the beginning of the game, Abe is forced to walk through black caves with dog-like creature infestations called slogs. You only have a limited number of flares to light your way, and changes in your singing ability allow you to explore any danger in advance. However, you do not have weapons to deal with the slogans, so your best option is to stay as calm as possible. Singing, talking to other mudokons or running will wake up the slogans and they are hungry for dinner. Do you stay calm and risk falling into an invisible bottomless pit? Or do you use the Scouting ability of your singing and let go of the slogans of war?
Most of my enjoyment with Soulstorm is despite the new article offerings and not because of that. For me, the collection of items is tedious and I tend to ignore the collection if I can help it. But at Soulstorm it can’t be avoided. Abe can look for lockers, open wooden boxes, look for clay jugs, or simply pick up various items on the ground that he can use on his travels. In the first handful of levels, we present Soulstorm Brew. Throw a bottle at the nearest fire and it explodes, removing any unfortunate slab, wooden barricade, or Mudokon worker trapped in the explosion. Some of the articles are great. The tape, for example, can be used to tie a removed bow, permanently disabling it. But one of the articles, moolah, I absolutely hate. There are gates called moolah gates that forbid Abe’s progress unless he pays the amount of moolah marked on the door. I have encountered situations in which I have successfully completed a room full of traps and enemies, but I found myself unable to progress, while as I ran through my life I stopped checking all the cupboards and trash to see if there were any. moolah needs to move on. I’ve never been the type of player who obsessively checks every nook and cranny of every little object – it’s a waste of time. That this game sometimes requires this, forcing me to re-do rooms I’ve already done, is annoying.
As a New ‘n’ Tasty, I still wanted to save all my Mudokon friends, but I’ve already fucked up that dream. The Soulstorm UI will tell you how many Mudokons are at a given level, but as far as I know, they have no visual indications of where. Exodus hinted at hidden secrets of Mudokon with the presence of small piles of Storm of souls beer bottles.Storm of souls it has no equivalent, so I’ve been obsessively checking all the rocks that stand out in the foreground and I’ve always checked to see if there are any workers hiding in the steam openings. There has been more than one occasion when a wandering shoot against a wall that looks solid reveals a hidden area where the mudokons are waiting for their savior.
I like that the game rewards you for spending another moment looking for fake walls and backgrounds. There is never a time when moving away from the obvious path does not produce any collectibles or a Mudokon to save. But still, all my tricks and tips for playing the original Oddworld the games have not been enough to save everyone.
There’s a moment at the beginning of the game that made me realize that I won’t be able to save everyone. Abe is locked in a room, unable to escape until enough mudokons climb a giant ladder to press the button that will open the room. As they go up, you will have to distract the waves from blades by pulling them down. It is difficult. There are so many tables and you can only have one at a time. Even though you have control from one shot to another, a third, a fourth, and a fifth are cutting dozens of mudokons. After countless attempts to save the 200 mudokons, I had to give up the opposite, I would never see the rest of the game. It made me think that maybe this would work out the way I wanted, that this was the game that taught me that this time Abe will not be able to save everyone. I inscribed the 36 mudokons I lost in my heart and solemnly moved … to another room that made me repeat the encounter.
What I liked so much about the older Oddworld games was looking at a problem (e.g., a room designed to be nothing more than an elaborate death trap) and figuring out how to navigate you and your zero survival instinct by having security mates. This experience with the scale did a little less and reduced the challenge on your ability to plan cleverly and more on your ability to make buttons. I’m not a buttonhole, so I failed.
Another similar moment forced me to accept victims, but this time it was due to a mistake and not a puzzle design. The portals you use to send your Mudokons to freedom are made up of little birds that scatter when you get too close. Normally, when this happens, wait a moment and the birds reappear or you can go through the screens and the portal reappears. The error I found definitely left me out of a portal and nothing I did was able to recover it. I was forced to leave behind the mudokons I picked up in the area because they couldn’t follow me to the next area where I might have been waiting for another portal. I have already resigned myself to a second game later in the year, when tutorials are available.
I haven’t finished the game yet, so it’s not a complete review. I have about six or seven hours. And, despite initially feeling disappointed by the lack of a challenge, I’m enjoying it. I’ve always loved the first two Oddworld games so you have a supplemented version of Exodus it’s a kitten for my teenage self. I hope the story finds the right balance between Abe’s quest as the pick and the extravagant, brutal humor that made the opening games so charming. I also hope the later levels are built with the old ones Oddworld in mind: it depends more on your problem-solving ability than having the right number of doohickies in your backpack.