Tuesday, 2 May 2017

Oddworld Adventures - Game Boy - Review




I’ll never forget my first experience with an Oddworld game. Soon after the release of Abe’s Oddysee in 1997, I found myself sat, huddled around an old PC monitor with a friend as we watched the opening cut-scene, open-mouthed. FMV cutscenes in video games were still fairly new at the time (at least to a console gamer like myself) and I was completely transfixed by the richly, detailed world and cinematic quality storytelling. 

As the lovable and reluctant, Abe clumsily escapes the brutal industrial, factory environments of Rupture Farms and makes his way through the beautiful but deadly wilds of the Oddworld I was constantly in awe of the incredible art design. As we played through the game the locations and characters filled me with a sense intrigue and wonder only previously matched by the Donkey Kong Country trilogy. Furthermore, the 13 year old me was blown away by the fact that there was dedicated fart button; truly gaming had reached a new peak. Soon after I picked up the game for my Playstation and my love the series has never waned since.

The Oddworld series is undoubtably best known for its Playstation and Xbox titles, so it may come as a surprise to some to learn that there have also been three lesser known titles released onto Nintendo handhelds over the years. 

The first of these was simply titled; Oddworld Adventures. Released in 1998, Oddworld Adventures aimed to bring a loose port of Abe’s Oddysee to the Gameboy, much like the Donkey Kong Land games had done for the Donkey Kong Country trilogy a few years earlier. However unlike Donkey Kong Land, Oddworld Adventures was drastically reduced to contain only a small section of the original game; namely the Paramonian Temple.

Here Abe must prove himself through a series of dangerous and puzzling trials in order to the reach the mysterious ‘big face’ who can bestow him with the power to take down the greedy Glukkon Empire that has been ruthlessly turning the once sacred animals of the Oddworld into junk food.
The game begins with a short, hands-on, tutorial where the player can learn the basics of the game. Abe controls very similarly to his 32-bit counterpart, as he can jump across gaps, climb up and down ledges, roll through narrow gaps, and sneak past sleeping enemies. 

Due to the game taking place outside of Rupture Farms (where in Abe’s Oddysee, Abe could interact with and instruct his fellow Mudokons to safety) the ‘game speak’ is mostly absent with only the ability to recite passwords with high and low whistles remaining. And of course the fart button; they couldn’t exactly leave that out.

After completing the tutorial stage, Abe is presented with six open doors, and one larger locked door. This area serves as the central hub with each of the six doors leading to a separate stage. The stages can be tackled in any order and the objective is the same in each; to find and light the flintlock and escape through the exit. 

It sounds simple enough but within each stage Abe must overcome treacherous leaps, falling rocks, explosive mines, angry bees, killer bats, machine gun wielding sligs, and the creepy spider-like creatures known as Paramites.

Being a somewhat hapless and fragile fellow, Abe is unable to defend himself directly and so must use his limited wits and agility (and a large amount of lot of trial and error) to make it past the various dangers that stand before him. 

Mines, can detonated with rocks or disarmed with careful timing. Sligs can be possessed and forced to commit suicide or even kill other sligs. Paramites can be distracted by tossing meat, or led into traps. Nevertheless, even with careful progress deaths are a common occurrence throughout the game, with Abe suffering from a variety of terrible fates.  Somewhat mercifully, Abe can respawn infinitely with the only consequence being to have to start the current stage again from scratch.

Although they share many similar obstacles, each stage feels like its own unique puzzle to solve.  Some involve careful planning and slow and steady progress, whereas others involve fast reactions and perfectly timed button presses. The latter type of stage can certainly prove the more frustrating of the two as the limitations of the Gameboy’s button layout can prove awkward when having to execute several commands one after the other. The cinematic platformer style of the game also means that the controls don’t feel as responsive as a more traditional platformer, with each command resulting in an uncancellable animation (try saying that fast, five times in a row). This means that each button press has to be very deliberate for Abe to make progress, which can make levels where you are forced to act quickly a particular challenge.

The most noteworthy example of this is found after lighting all the flintlocks in the first six stages. At this point Abe can enter the previously locked large door which leads to an all-out mad dash of a stage through a Paramite nest. Here your timing has to be perfect with any mistake almost certainly leading to instant death; it’s punishingly difficult and at times leaves you with a feeling of battling the controls rather than the game itself. Nevertheless, despite these few moments the game for most part does feels fair, with every death serving as a valuable lesson to be learnt from. It also makes the eventual perfect run incredibly satisfying to pull off when it finally does happen.

The graphics are fairly basic, even for a Game Boy game with very little in the way of detail in the environments. The empty backgrounds and boring rock faces are certainly a far cry from the gorgeously detailed environments seen in Abe’s Oddysee. The characters haven’t fared much better either, though Abe does at least animate well which helps retain the some of the slapstick charm of the original. 

Unlike Abe’s Oddysee which had a mostly ambient soundtrack, Oddworld Adventures does have music throughout. It fits the action well enough but there’s certainly nothing that will keep you humming along after turning off the game. The sound effects are decent enough though with some digitized speech thrown in every now and then.

Overall Oddworld Adventures is difficult game to definitively review. When viewed from the perspective of a port of Abe’s Oddysee the 8-bit game was always going to fall a long way short. When viewed in isolation however the gameplay is definitely solid and enjoyable throughout with a great blend of puzzle solving and platforming to enjoy. If nothing else it proves that Abe’s Oddysee was always more than just a pretty face.

Even so, the game left me with a feeling that it had been released unfinished rather than the developers having reached any kind of technical limitations. Taking the majority of the puzzles directly from Abe’s Oddysee feels like a strange approach for the developer to have taken and at times it led to some noticeable oddities (pun intended). For instance the entire gamespeak mechanic is only used in one instance in the entire game. This feels particularly strange as I can’t think of another game that has an entire mechanic dedicated to such a brief one off situation.

As such the game can feel more like a tech demo than anything. It’s almost as if it was presented at some point as a proof of concept to show that a somewhat faithful port of Abe’s Oddysee for the Game Boy was technically possible but then instead of being put into further development it was released as it was.

All in all, I think Oddworld Adventures is best recommended as an interesting novelty for fans of the series. Ultimately I feel that the game would have been better if it had contained more new, unique puzzles specifically designed for it, rather than them having been lifted from the home console game. Earlier I referred to the Donkey Kong Land games as a perfect example of a portable companion game; the levels are different enough to keep fans who have played the original entertained whilst the overall experience and gameplay is close enough to satisfy those that haven’t. Oddworld Adventures sadly doesn’t quite do either of these things and as a result, I’d have to recommend skipping it and playing the superb Abe’s Oddysee instead. 

Nevetheless, if you like what you’ve heard, why not seek out a copy of Oddworld Adventures for the Game Boy and guide Abe through the Paramonian Trials to save the sacred creatures of the Oddworld from certain extinction.

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