Oddworld: Soulstorm Enhanced Edition

It's good. Don't let all the screaming loonies fool you. Yes it's very very unlike the original. This is NOT a remake. This is NOT an HD port. This is a REIMAGINING. A TOTAL REVAMP. IT IS NOT THE SAME GAME. QUIT WHINING THAT IT'S NOT THE SAME. I will be the first to say this game is not flawless, it's got some funky bugs every now and then and difficulty spikes that seem impossible. They're not. Use your head and you'll be fine. It's nowhere near enough to qualify this game as "bad".

It's an impressive expansion of the Oddworld lore and Soulstorm adds a load of new gameplay mechanics to keep the franchise feeling fresh. The graphics are excellent and the innovation of the 2.5D perspective brings an awesome sense of scale to the game, but I feel the developers overstretched on a number of elements, and strayed far from the surreal quirkiness of the original 90s titles. The number of additional gameplay mechanics dramatically slow the pace when not needed, and careful puzzle solving gives way to frantic trial and error. The constantly shifting perspective makes judging distance and direction unnecessarily difficult, in an already unforgivingly precise platformer. Soulstorm's greatest sin is its removal of the Quicksave function, often causing the player to retread boring collection or navigation sequences which leech the fun from playing. The large amount of new scenery, challenges, and concepts on offer should make Soulstorm worth a try from fans of Oddworld, but the game is a disappointing effort compared to the beloved originals.

As someone who doesn't have nostalgia for the original games, I really liked both New n Tasty and Soulstorm. Yes it's a bit buggy, but I found myself really enjoying the gameplay and the visuals. Definitely not perfect and could be improved heaps, but overall the fact that I enjoyed myself is enough for me for a thumbs up

Despite what steam says on my hours on this game, I tried multiple times to play it when it originally came out on Epic Games. Glitches and all. But the sheer tedium and frustration just had me abandon the 1-2 hour long levels every time. Jeebus are the levels long enough? I wanted to like this game. I really did. I adore the original 2 games. But there is so many issues. To start with the game play is frustrating. The crafting system is absolutely pointless and completely clashes with the simplicity of the original games. And I got lost multiple times and had to backtrack endlessly because of this.. where I never got lost in the original games. Everything happens so fast that I never get a moment to catch my breath with Abe. And why do I need to get an almost perfect rescuing of every single mudokon to get anything but the game's absolute worst ending? When I played the original 2 as a child, I wasn't as skilled and wasn't able to rescue more than about 50 mudokons, but I tried. And that was enough for me to earn my good ending. ButI would've been absolutely screwed playing Soulstorm as a kid. My biggest issue: where is the tonal balance? The game tries so desperately to take itself seriously with no even attempt at comedy. Even if the comedy didn't always work in the originals, at least it balanced the sheer heaviness of the original games. I love the dark tone of these games but this game just has nothing to lighten the levity. Apparently even the fart button had to be removed because it would dare bring levity to the ultra-serious story. And as much as i love Lorne Lanning's voice for Abe, holy cow these other mudokons voice acting is HORRIBLE. As much as the game wants me to, I can't take many cutscenes seriously with these raspy silly-sounding voices. Again, love the original games, but that comedy balance helped to allow me to immerse myself in often silly-sounding voices. This is such a relentlessly bleak tone that the stupid raspy voices just get annoying. How hard would it have been to instead pour that budget into making a 2D game like the original? It's just a nostalgic audience playing these games anyway so keep it those single windows rather than a scrolling game. Let me proceed at my own pace. Hire some of those incredible 90's artists from the original. Or hire 2020's artists. You seen deviantart lately? There's buckets of talent out there and they're not expensive to hire. Show me those beautiful canvases painted over 4 times like the original. Keep the controls smooth, none of this double jump crap. Make Abe feel real. Perhaps its overly-dramatic to say this, but this game broke my heart a little because I adored Odysee and Exxodus particularly. Sadly, there's basically nothing left of Oddworld Inhabitants beyond Lorne. And I'm sad to see this will likely be the last game the series goes out on. I played the original 2 games (they're a couple of bucks on Steam) and they absolutely held up. Loved re-playing them through. Go with the originals instead.

It has its flaws, but I still really enjoy this game. The added lore goes hard.

great continuation of the series, more need to play the originals and then move on to this, one of the greats of all time

An Oddworld for Oddpeeps...