catfood
AGAIN
I've recently replayed these games and have come to the conclusion that the decline of the Oddworld franchise started with the second game.
While it does bring a few new things which I appreciate the sequel does a lot more bad than good.
For one, the quicksave function. Now I know that a lot of people loved this but I thought it brought decline.. The problem is that the game is built around it. Puzzles are much harder than they were in Odyssey, requiring a lot more precision and trial and error. On the one hand you could ignore the quicksave function but then I don't know many people with enough mental fortitude to beat the game without it. On the other hand if you use it as the devs intended you to, the game becomes too easy despite the increase in difficulty of the puzzles because quicksave trivializes them.
Another problem is that the game overstays its welcome, especially in its last third or so when you're in the brewery. There are simply too many samey levels with samey puzzles. They keep repeating the same puzzles throughout a section to the point where it becomes noticeable. Odyssey did not have this problem. Its progression made perfect sense, even from a story perspective. You escape Rupture Farms, travel to the outskirts to do a quest to obtain a special power, and then you return to Rupture Farms to rescue the rest of the mudokons. It made sense.
The secrets are no longer, well, secret. They are always signaled to the player with the use of those green bottles. There's no sense of discovery anymore. In Odyssey you had to explore the level and think out of the box to be able to find them. Not only that but the way that they were signaled was pure genius. Many of them you would find by listening to the background noise. For example hearing a slig move where there were none in the vicinity meant that somewhere there was a secret. There are very, very few games who use sound as an integral part of the gameplay; 99% of games can be played without sound but Odyssey is not one of them.
The tone was also changed from the predecessor. Odyssey had humour, sure, but it was dark humour, such as those messages that you could read on the notice boards, or the poems that you read in Monsaic Lines. At the end of the day the first game was mostly a serious afair. Exoddus on the other hand went too far with it I thought; it turned into a saturday morning cartoon, with toilet humour and all (yes, I will admit possessing farts was fun but like I said it changed the tone too much).
Not to say that the game is terrible. It's still one of the classic cinematic platformers but it could have been better if they had payed more attention to what made the first one special.
While it does bring a few new things which I appreciate the sequel does a lot more bad than good.
For one, the quicksave function. Now I know that a lot of people loved this but I thought it brought decline.. The problem is that the game is built around it. Puzzles are much harder than they were in Odyssey, requiring a lot more precision and trial and error. On the one hand you could ignore the quicksave function but then I don't know many people with enough mental fortitude to beat the game without it. On the other hand if you use it as the devs intended you to, the game becomes too easy despite the increase in difficulty of the puzzles because quicksave trivializes them.
Another problem is that the game overstays its welcome, especially in its last third or so when you're in the brewery. There are simply too many samey levels with samey puzzles. They keep repeating the same puzzles throughout a section to the point where it becomes noticeable. Odyssey did not have this problem. Its progression made perfect sense, even from a story perspective. You escape Rupture Farms, travel to the outskirts to do a quest to obtain a special power, and then you return to Rupture Farms to rescue the rest of the mudokons. It made sense.
The secrets are no longer, well, secret. They are always signaled to the player with the use of those green bottles. There's no sense of discovery anymore. In Odyssey you had to explore the level and think out of the box to be able to find them. Not only that but the way that they were signaled was pure genius. Many of them you would find by listening to the background noise. For example hearing a slig move where there were none in the vicinity meant that somewhere there was a secret. There are very, very few games who use sound as an integral part of the gameplay; 99% of games can be played without sound but Odyssey is not one of them.
The tone was also changed from the predecessor. Odyssey had humour, sure, but it was dark humour, such as those messages that you could read on the notice boards, or the poems that you read in Monsaic Lines. At the end of the day the first game was mostly a serious afair. Exoddus on the other hand went too far with it I thought; it turned into a saturday morning cartoon, with toilet humour and all (yes, I will admit possessing farts was fun but like I said it changed the tone too much).
Not to say that the game is terrible. It's still one of the classic cinematic platformers but it could have been better if they had payed more attention to what made the first one special.
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