Platform: PC
Developer: Oddworld Inhabitants
Publisher: GT Interactive
Release Date: November 1998
Genre: Platforming, Puzzle, Action/Adventure
Reviewed by Nips
It is with great fondness that I recall my younger days of playing gory, gritty games that I was not meant to play in my young age. I’m talking about games like Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus. These games were brutally violent and hard as hell, testing both the player’s skill and threshold for emotional punishment. For Nerd Bacon’s Retroary 2018, I’d like to take a little stroll back in memory lane. You can find my review for Abe’s Oddysee here. This review will focus on the second iteration in the Oddworld franchise.
The grim and grisly sequel to Abe’s Oddysee, Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus is the second installment of the Oddworld project from the late 90s and early 2000s (Munch’s Oddysee and The Stranger’s Wrath among them). Exoddus is a direct sequel to Oddysee, continuing the story of the mudokon slave Abe where it last left off. I consider this series a hidden gem from the days of the PlayStation, so I’m ready to jump right in.
In the first game, Abe managed to escape the confines of his enslavement and wreak havoc on the meat processing plant known as Rupture Farms. However, his work isn’t finished, as there are still plenty of fellow mudokon slaves still kept in servitude in the surrounding factories. With the help of his wits and psychic abilities, it is up to Abe, and Abe alone to rescue the other slaves and put an end to the tyranny of their ruthless overlords.
As Abe’s Exoddus starts proper, Abe is dumped into one of the industrial processing plants on Oddworld, surrounded by enemies and traps that want to kill him and his fellow mudokons that he intends to save. Things pretty much take off from here in the footsteps of Abe’s Oddysee, only this time, as is the routine with sequels, quite a few extra mechanics are thrown into the mix that promise to complicate things and give Abe a much wider breadth of scenarios and challenges. A lot of these changes push the series in a positive direction, but not all of them. I’ll get to each one as they come up.
The first obvious change to the format is that instead of being a homogenous form of NPC, Abe’s fellow mudokons now arrive in a few different varieties and initial states. There are mad mudokons, sad mudokons, high mudokons, and blind mudokons, each of them capable of causing trouble in their own way and forcing Abe to treat them differently in order to properly lead them to their freedom. Talk about ungrateful! On top of that, Abe can now earn the ability to psychically control just about every type of enemy there is, whereas in the first game he could only control the vicious but not-so-intelligent slig guards. This new ability makes Abe a much more deadly force to be reckoned with (though that isn’t saying much).
Look at this goofy-ass dude.
While I’m on that subject, Abe’s fragility continues to be one of the distinct characteristics of the franchise. Instead of gunning his enemies down in an all-out brawl, Abe has to hide and run away from them. Because he is small. And frail. Since he can’t fight his way through any situation that presents itself, he must instead hide in the shadows, dispatching enemies with the dangerous machinery lying around or use his psychic abilities to control their minds. Needless to say, this de-emphasis on combat is a nice breath of fresh air, showing just how ahead of its time the Oddworld series was.
Another one of the defining characteristics of Abe’s Exoddus–and Abe’s Oddysee, for that matter–is the way that Abe moves. Just like in the original Prince of Persia, every single move that you perform will put Abe on a very specific point on the map. Hopping may move you three spaces, taking a tiny step may move you one, leaping may move you as many as four spaces, etcetera. As I said in my review of Abe’s Oddysee, I’d be surprised if these mechanics weren’t even directly inspired by Prince of Persia, and this game pretty much keeps the series true to form with virtually no flaws in the way everything works. Of course, with the pre-rendered graphics featured in Abe’s Exoddus, it’s not always super easy to tell exactly where you are, but aside from that this game features some tight, precise platforming that isn’t really recreated in other games.
Part of the benefit with these precise mechanics is that the puzzle elements of Abe’s Exoddus get to shine through a bit more; since the mechanics operate as a tool that guarantees precision of movement, it takes a bit of a load off of the player’s plate. One less thing to worry about. And frankly, these puzzles are very good. Having been released in 1998, this game was on the tail end of a golden age in video game puzzle design where developers knew how to teach the player the rules and scaffold them in non-hand-holding ways.
Lasers, lasers everywhere.
Just about every puzzle in Abe’s Exoddus involves figuring out how to get Abe from one part of a room to the other without getting him killed in the most brutal fashion. These puzzles are all well and good, requiring timing, planning, and good ol’ fashioned critical thinking. But the more fun puzzles involve figuring out how to get other mudokons out of the same room without getting them killed, too. This involves strategically pulling switches, deactivating mines, taking over the minds of slig guards and other vile creatures, as well as communicating with the mudokon slaves to get them to do what you need them to do. Out of all of these mechanics, performing crowd control is perhaps the most simultaneously intriguing and infuriating new game mechanic, throwing more than a couple wrenches into the cogs of the best laid plans.
On top of that, this being the sequel, Abe’s Exoddus features a pretty impressive amount of unique contextual puzzles compared to the first game. These puzzles pit Abe against an enemy or mini-boss, if you can call it that, in a novel setup where he can’t dispatch them through his normal methods. These sections are often fast-paced and require the player to think on their feet as they weasel their way into an advantageous position. Quickly pulling switches in the midst of danger, leaping over large gaps while being chased by a pack of dogs, you name it. This game offers plenty of heart-thumping, hair-raising excitement.
And these puzzles are built in no small part through the expert level design. Simply put, the level design is extremely intuitive. Compared to Abe’s Oddysee, the levels in Abe’s Exoddus can be rather intricate and maze-like, often funneling the player into groups of areas that have a high degree of interconectivity, requiring the player to think of some puzzles as a larger whole that may incorporate an interplay between several smaller puzzles along the way. This is an extremely impressive feat, demanding quite a bit of critical thinking and problem solving on the part of the player.
The levels of Abe’s Exoddus are also crucial to teaching the player new abilities and tricks, harking back to that classic style of game design where developers “spoke” to the player as little as possible. Each new mechanic is taught in well thought-out ways that are built right into the level, often involving a binary scenario where Abe either succeeds or he dies. Trial by fire. Don’t know what a big open pipe does? Well, there’s a whole frame dedicated to teaching you just that, eliminating any confusion whatsoever. This lack of clutter really helps flesh out the raw gameplay, and on top of that, just about every mechanic is taught through this minimalist approach, giving the game a lot of cohesion and increasing its immersive qualities. Of course, there are some mechanics that do rely heavily on written instructions, but for the most part I do think the restraint shown here is very admirable, reminding me of the best of what classical video gaming has to offer.
When it comes to atmosphere, no one does it better than Oddworld Inhabitants. The atmosphere featured in Abe’s Exoddus is absolutely stellar. Superb sound design and masterful pre-rendered graphics all help to emphasize the loneliness of Abe’s plight, as looming and imposing metal structures are accentuated by a pulsating, almost organic guttural soundtrack that all weave together this game’s themes on industrialism. The art design’s focus on dark, muted colors highlight even more the dark and grisly subject matter, showcasing some of the most astounding pre-rendered scenery of the time, complete with amazing animations that seamlessly transition from one area to the next. You can tell that Abe’s Exoddus had a bigger budget than Abe’s Oddysee, because the developers spent a lot more time and energy on these minutiae that make the game feel that much more like a cohesive piece.
Let’s move on to the game’s story. I’ll come out and say it; I don’t really care all that much about the story, aside from understanding my general mission to save my fellow mudokons. Despite the rest of the game’s dark nature, the developers went for a high degree of goofiness with the characters, dialogue, and overall narrative. For that reason it’s a bit hard to take this portion of the game all that seriously. However, I will say that the general progression of the game feels really good with a great sense of accomplishment as you move along.
Nips’s Complaint Corner
Welcome to the fourth edition ever of of Nips’s Complaint Corner, a place where I air out all my grievances with Abe’s Exoddus, back-to-back-to back! Settle in and enjoy some unadulterated game design rants as I explore everything the developers could have done better.
Why is all this necessary?
The first and most obvious thing to talk about here is that Abe’s Exoddus does not seem like it was designed to welcome new players. Abe’s Oddysee had comparatively fewer game mechanics, as well as fewer ideas it needed to convey to the player, so these new ideas and mechanics were implemented over a longer, smoother stretch of time. Abe’s Exoddus, however, seems like it’s in a hurry to really get to the meat of the game, so the player is practically inundated with new mechanics and ideas right off the bat. I’m not even joking; the very first area features a brand new idea in practically every screen. Because of this, it’s a lot easier to pick this game up as a seasoned player of Abe’s Oddysee with a wealth of knowledge already at your disposal.
Secondly, the conversation system takes a while to get used to. Hear me out: Oddysee and Exoddus each feature a conversation system whereby you can talk to NPCs and give them orders. Holding a controller, this is done by holding down a trigger and pressing one of the face buttons (no idea how it works on a keyboard, don’t even ask me), resulting in eight different things you can say. For the life of me, I keep pressing the wrong goddamn thing every single time, and end up telling the mudokons to follow me instead of telling them to hide. Needless to say it has caused quite a few unintentional deaths, not to mention the complications presented by the body-hopping mechanic where you take control of enemies who all say different things. This could have easily been fixed with a pop-up window that shows you what you’re about to say before you say it, but that would have been too easy I guess.
As opposed to Abe’s Oddysee, which featured a checkpoint system, Abe’s Exoddus introduces a quicksave feature. At first, I found this new mechanic to be a rather welcome inclusion, but as a huge fan of Abe’s Oddysee, I do have a bit of a bone to pick. Simply put, it’s just too easy. Even though Abe’s Oddysee could be rather unforgiving and brutal at times, it’s a little too easy this time around to just quicksave if you’re in a tight spot. I would actually have been more interested to see what the game would have looked like with checkpoints, where it’s up to the developers to decide what is a reasonable amount of challenge. As it stands, I find myself abusing the hell out of the quicksave feature, which kind of diminishes the game’s impact.
And there you have it. Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus, the sequel to Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, is a platformer-puzzle game that features a grim atmosphere alongside a pretty steep difficulty and an extremely precise and refreshing mechanics system. While the first game focused on the moment-by-moment periods of strife, Abe’s Exoddus sets its sights on a much more puzzle-based experience, crafting much grander set pieces that challenge the player’s intuition.
In a lot of ways, Abe’s Exoddus rises above its predecessor; the puzzles are more complex, the scenery more impressive, and more time was spent in crafting one-off action sequences that challenge the player in new and creative ways. That said, this game does have its own pitfalls, most notably its steep learning curve that is sure to alienate fresh players. At the end of the day, I can’t bring myself to rate Abe’s Exoddus higher than Abe’s Oddysee. It is an admirable sequel by all measures, and though it offers quite a few novel mechanics, some of them seem rather unnecessary, and as a whole it still relies heavily on the successes of its predecessor. That said, if you are at all a fan of Abe’s Oddysee, this game is sure to show you a good time.
Nerd Rating: 8 out of 10
