Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty is a 2.5D platform adventure game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4, PS3 and PS Vita. The game is the much anticipated remake of the classic Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee from the era of the original PlayStation in 1997 with the remake finally arriving seventeen years and three generations later; the question is simply if Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty can live up to the expectations of what has went before it in the Oddworld universe.

The story revolves around Abe and his tribe of Mudokon who are working as slaves at Oddworld’s largest meat processing plant when Abe makes a stark, life-changing discovery regarding how Rupture Farms are planning to increase their profits and reverse their fortunes following the decline in sales of their other products, such as Scrab Cakes. During a company meeting, a door opens marginally just enough for Abe to peak in on the presentation as he is innocently walking by doing his floor waxing job only to find that they plan on putting Abe and his entire tribe of Mudokon through the meat grinder to source the protein for Rupture Farms’ latest product being a line of novelty meat snacks called Tasty Treats. Upon seeing this, Abe knows that he has to save himself and the rest of the Mudokon by fleeing from Rupture Farms as quickly as possible, although they do have numerous patrols in their way between escaping and being a product of the company’s plans. .

The level design is as imaginative as you would anticipate any game set within the Oddworld universe to be as there are plenty of puzzles, precision jumping and hazards, which provides a brand new challenge to overcome most often every few seconds. The puzzles are related to exploration and finding the appropriate lever to pull to make an area of the level accessible that was previously inaccessible with puzzles also provided in most cases regarding how to navigate around an enemy without it seeing you or being able to attack you, while the precision jumping is to not just jump up to ledges or from one ledge across a chasm to another ledge, but to also evade hazards, such as planted mines and hovering mines.

If you have ever played the original Oddworld, then you pretty much know the character design as it is effectively a modern day upgrade of the character designs from the much loved innovative game with Abe, fellow Mudokons, the tribal chanting Mudokons in the holy caves and enemies, such as patrolling Sligs that are all looking far more detailed with more fluent animations.

Abe can rescue members of the Mudokons tribe from certain death from patrolling Sligs by introducing himself to Mudokons, then asking them to follow him and carefully guiding them to a flock of birds followed by chanting to activate a circular portal for the Mudokons to jump through to safety from the flock of birds. There are 299 Mudokons to save in New ‘n’ Tasty, which is a massive increase of 200 in the amount you need to attempt to save in comparison to the original Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, which had 99 Mudokons to save from the patrolling Sligs. It must be said that the increase is a very important addition to the gameplay that helps to separate the new game from the old, despite it being a remake and is therefore an excellent design choice as it provides a significant in gameplay and makes you want to search around the environments for any secret areas to guarantee that you are rescuing as many Mudokons as possible.

You will learn some new abilities as you progress through the game, but particularly during the holy caves, such as how to mind manipulate Sligs for a patrolling Slig to shoot as many of Abe’s enemies as possible to clear the path, although you can also manipulate your way into a Slig’s mind and then make them explode, so you can keep on mind manipulating them, regardless of how many Sligs kill each other until there are no more Sligs left in your immediate vicinity. There are other abilities to learn too besides mind manipulating Sligs, such as creating a portal for Abe to leap through to morph around the other side of a wall and much more besides that you must learn along the way as you progress through the story.

Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty is humorous a charming from a number of separate angles, such as the ability for Abe to fart accompanied with the emanation of a green gas followed by giggling by Abe and any of the surrounding Mudokons, while the patrolling enemies when they hear loud farting noises during scenarios were Sligs are attempting to sleep at night after a hard day of patrolling or during patrols when Abe is not within view of them results in responses, such as “Maybe I should have laid off the Scrab Cakes!” It is rather humorous that farting is used almost to signify a sign off at the end of the tribal whistling to be allowed to pass by a Mudokon tribal guard in the holy caves, while patrolling Sligs have symbols to represent swearing from Sligs after they have found and killed Abe.

The extras menu includes access to online leaderboards, a movie player and credits with more videos being unlocked for the movie player as you progress through the story, which allows you to catch up on the story by revisiting videos that chart the path of the story, alongside the inclusion of the credits, although I would have liked to see a statistics feature within the extras menu to provide a range of statistical analysis of what you need to focus on to better your performance.

Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty supports the share feature that allows you to upload a video clip to Facebook or Twitter; upload a screen shot to Facebook or Twitter; and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as you are experiencing the game with a simple tap of the share button and selecting the option of your choice. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores your most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so you still have the chance to decide if you would like to share something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that has only improved with the further customisation provided by the Share Factory app that allows commentary, music, themes, stickers, effects, text, picture-in-picture video between your game footage and your reaction from the PlayStation Camera and much more besides, which will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation in the future.

Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty supports cross-buy and cross-save between the PS4, PS3 and Vita. Cross-buy presents a superb amount of value as it means that you will be purchasing the PS4, PS3 and Vita versions of the game with just a single purchase. The cross-save functionality allows you to sync the progression of your save file from your Vita to your PS3 or PS4 and vice versa, so you can start playing the game on your Vita on the way to and from work, sync your save game when you return home and then resume were you left off by loading the save game and continuing via the PS3 or PS4 version. The cross-save feature is made possible by uploading your save file to the cloud on one console and downloading it from the other console.

The controls are easy to master and well mapped to the DualShock 4 controller, despite a lot of important elements to the control scheme. The control scheme consists of pressing X to jump; pressing square to perform an action, such as pulling a lever or jumping into a cave; pressing O to crouch or pressing O while changing the direction of the left analogue stick to roll; pressing triangle to show the status of Abe’s health; pressing L1 to sneak while changing the direction of the left analogue stick; pressing R1 to throw or drop an object; pressing up, left, right or down on the d-pad for Abe to speak to other Mudokons or holding R2 for an alternative set of speech, such as R2 and up or down on the d-pad for whistling, R2 and left on the d-pad for laughing or R2 and right on the d-pad for farting; holding L2 and R2 to chant to open a portal for fellow Mudokons to jump through to safety or manipulating the minds of nearby patrolling Sligs when you have learned the ability in the holy caves; changing the direction of the left analogue stick for Abe to move; changing the direction of the right analogue stick for Abe to aim his throw; pressing the share button takes you to the share feature menu; and pressing the options button to display the pause menu.

The touch pad implementation allows you to quickly tap the touch pad to activate a quick save function, which is perfect in the scenario that you need to exit out of the game quickly before you are able to reach the next checkpoint, while holding the touch pad will load the game for you to continue from the area you last saved your progress. The DualShock 4 controller will vibrate when Abe has been shot by a Slig, has accidentally stepped on a mine, ran into a wall or during chanting, while there is no light bar implementation despite the potential applications of being able to display Abe’s health ranging from green when being unharmed through the colour wheel through light green, yellow, orange to flashing red when near death after being shot by the patrolling Sligs and a dark tone of red upon Abe’s death.

Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty is graphically stunning with amazing lighting, shadows, particle effects and backgrounds, alongside fluent animations and character models, which collectively brings the original Oddworld game into a far superior level of graphical fidelity. The game is mostly presented from a side-scrolling perspective, but tends to switch perspectives for instance when Abe accesses a prophecy in the holy caves, which is a positive design choice as it provides a feeling of depth to the world around you by incorporating a 2.5D perspective, rather than being a permanent side scrolling perspective as it encompasses an element of variety.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main menu, game speak menu, settings menu, extras menu, online leaderboards, movie player and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the right analogue stick and touch pad, although that is not an issue considering the other methods of navigation that are available. The background of the menu screens revolves around Abe’s face seemingly nodding in approval of you playing the game, alongside blinking quite often and talking whenever you make a selection from the menu screens as some particle effects appear from the bottom of the screen and randomly fly around, while not pressing anything during the main menu will produce a gameplay demonstration with a brief glimpse of what you can anticipate from your journey through Oddworld.

The audio consists of voice-overs, sound effects and music with the voice-overs providing an element of comedy from Abe and his Mudokon tribe laughing after he has farted to Abe saying hello, telling them to follow him or wait here, while the patrolling Sligs react to any noises they may hear and proclaim that they have to capture someone as they have got to get paid with their most funny moment being when Abe dies as they laugh and project sounds as though they are swearing in their own native language. The sound effects are varied ranging from Abe throwing rocks or coins to walking, running or sneaking as sneaking sounds as though a floor board is creaking, while Abe produces sounds as he is jumping and a rather funny screech when he runs into a wall with explosions from tripped mines and bullets being sprayed by the patrolling Sligs, alongside unique atmospheric music that sets the tone for each environment. There is no DualShock 4 speaker implementation, which is surprising as it could have produced any layer of the audio, such as the voice-overs, sound effects or music.

The trophy list includes thirty-seven trophies with twenty-two bronze trophies, nine silver trophies, five gold trophies and one platinum trophy. The trophies are not particularly easy due to the complexity of some of the puzzles, precision jumps and evading enemies, although that is to be expected of the game, so you will technically stand a good chance of earning the majority of the trophies on your first playthrough. While there are plenty of easier story related trophies; there are also harder trophies, such as the New ‘n’ Hasty gold trophy for rescuing every Mudokon with an overall best time of three hours or less, alongside the Prophet of Odd silver trophy, Saviour of Odd gold trophy and Odd Messiah gold trophy for rescuing every Mudokon while finishing New ‘n’ Tasty in easy, normal and hard difficulty levels, respectively. Depending upon skill in regards to rescuing the Mudokons and a good trophy guide to help in your quest to find the secret areas and provide some helpful tips to navigate your way through some of the difficult puzzles that it would take around fifteen hours to platinum the trophy list.

Co-op mode provides a multiplayer component in which you pass the controller after Abe has been killed and after each time Abe has been killed the player passes the controller over to the other player, which is an effective way of engaging two players with only one DualShock 4 controller, which is actually a positive in itself. It would have been great to see some form of split-screen or simultaneous co-operative multiplayer with two Mudokons or even a split-screen competitive multiplayer mode in which a patrol of Sligs with their weapons would take on the tribe of Mudokons with Abe as their leader and his mind manipulation to lead the Mudokons to victory by outsmarting the patrol of Sligs. However, just having two players playing with a single DualShock 4 controller and working together to figure out their way beyond a number of enemies and puzzles is thoroughly entertaining and increases the challenge socially to see which player can make their way past the next hurdle before being able to progress onto the next area of the level and the following chapter of the story.

The online leaderboards focuses on global rankings, your friends’ scores and your personal score, while also covering nineteen separate categories including the amount of Mudokons rescued and the best times for completing each level or the overall game, alongside three separate sets of all nineteen online leaderboards to represent each of the three difficulty levels to add a greater variety to the online leaderboards as there are with each leaderboard containing each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); the amount of Mudokons rescued; and the amount of time you have taken to complete the entire game with the positioning of each player based upon the amount of Mudokons rescued or their overall best time for completing the entire game depending upon the category being viewed. The online leaderboards are quite extensive with a total of fifty-seven online leaderboards, although it might have been more conducive to the game as a whole if the target audience could see a clear distinction between the solo and co-operative multiplayer online leaderboards to effectively double the amount of online leaderboards from 57 to 114.

There are three difficulty levels including easy, normal and hard with the major difference between the easiest and hardest difficulty levels being that the hard difficulty level is the only difficulty to include the same level of difficulty as the original Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee with instant death guaranteed if any of the Sligs notice Abe. If anything, this is a positive design choice as it allows Oddworld to appeal to new audiences as the original Oddworld was notoriously tough to beat, so you can head straight into that degree of challenge or start out on the much easier easy or normal difficulty levels and gradually build yourself up in preparation for the challenge that lies ahead for the hard difficulty level.

The replayability stems from many areas, such as the huge amount of 299 Mudokons to rescue, while there are plenty of new abilities to learn as you progress through the story with three difficulty levels to challenge you and a co-op mode to alternate between two players on the same controller after Abe has met his demise. The most important area of replayability is certainly the soul of the original Oddworld has remained intact with such great gameplay, charm and humour that will appeal to veterans of the Oddworld universe and newcomers that have never played an Oddworld game before.

Overall, everyone thought that the original Oddworld would never be bettered, but New ‘n’ Tasty actually achieves that quite easily by building upon the solid foundations from the original game, therefore providing a great opportunity to relive the nostalgia of the original Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee with modern graphics and even improved gameplay! Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty is exceptional value at a £17.99 triple cross-buy purchase as there is certainly enough content for this to be a full priced retail release and there is plenty of content to appeal to the fans of the original game and newcomers alike, resulting in Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty being highly recommended to platform and adventure fans, regardless of how familiar you are with the original game as New ‘n’ Tasty is full of charm and humour that will make it a challenge for you to stop playing it.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty
• Developer: Oddworld Inhabitants/Just Add Water
• Publisher: Oddworld Inhabitants/Just Add Water
• System: PS4
• Format: PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: Yes (PS4, PS3 and PS Vita)
• Cross-Play: Yes (Cross-Save)
• Multiplayer: Yes (2 Players Local Co-Operative/Online Leaderboards)
• Hard Drive Space Required: 4.8GB (Version 1.05)