danbruno
Moderator
Registered: 07/14/08
Posts: 155
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| Posted 10/30/08 at 01:07 AM | Reply with quote #1 |
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| When you've finished this part of the game, post your thoughts in this thread. (Note that you may not play the sections in the order that they're numbered here.) |
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10rdBen
Registered: 07/15/08
Posts: 79
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 08:18 AM | Reply with quote #2 |
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Okay, so I finished the Rupture Farms section and boy were the rosy tinted glasses torn from my eyes... Or perhaps more appropriately they were pummeled by a giant corporate boot forever stamping on my face. But I digress...
This game has such an opaque idea about progress - where does one 'area' end and the next begin? If I die in this next room, where does my progress go back to? I understand that it's necessary to make the puzzles more complicated and interesting, spanning multiple screens but really... some times it's enough to make you tear chunks of hair out.
I played it through across the afternoon, pausing regularly to get frustrated and do something else. When everyone else gets to it, I'd be interested in hearing if anyone 'blitzed it' through and had no issues - I was going after a whole lot of the 'secret' Mudokons scattered across the level (I'll admit taking a few peeks at GameFaq's to refresh my memory) and if you didn't progress enough after you completed a secret area, guess what, you had to do it *all* again.
It's also made me think a lot about the idea of the ideal or 'optimal' path, in a game. The number of times I'd accidentally kill a mudokon and suicided to get their precious life back I lost track of. I've been trying recently to adopt an attitude that says "play it where it falls", after missing a lot of the more interesting content in Far Cry 2 because I was always afraid of loss. Abe's Odyssey really encourages that scrimping and saving - a legacy of the old 'high score' arcade days, perhaps? - and I think that it's probably had a large, unconscious impact on my own gaming tendencies.
If I had to nominate one game that has been the biggest impact on my gaming upbringing, it would be a dead heat between Abe's Odyssey and Final Fantasy VII (which admittedly I probably find less interesting now).
One last point, and it is related - The sound design of this game is absolutley iconic. From the first loading screen beyond the familiar strains of the PSOne symbol the sound of the world infuses the game. Again, it's enphasis on sound probably informs my current gaming today (not least of all my chosen career  )
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Ben Abraham
Read about my Thesis on music in videogames at: http://drgamelove.blogspot.com |
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megamanny
Registered: 11/02/08
Posts: 6
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 10:44 AM | Reply with quote #3 |
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Hi. I'm new here. My friend brought this forum to my attention and it sounded fun, so here I am giving it a whirl.
(I am playing this on my PSP. A tip to any who plan to do the same: You can use the joystick to map left & right joystick to L1 and L2 and the left shoulder button to R2. However, I would recommend not mapping a combo shoulder button press for chanting to up or down joystick. You have to stand still anyway, so speed isn't really essential and I can't tell you how many times I woke a sleeping slig accidentally by an errant turn of joystick.)
When I followed my friend's link to the club, I remembered right off the bat that I had played Oddysee. I remembered how much I enjoyed that the game had a unique feel and ambiance. I loved how it managed to be charming and horrific simultaneously.
Then I was struck by a vague disquiet. I knew I loved Oddworld, but hadn't I only scratched the suface of Oddysee. Yes, I was almost sure the game that I had played through the end was Exoddus.
Well my memory was right, and last night brought the point home with a vengeance. I loved Exoddus, and after NOT skipping the cheesy intro at the Oddysee title screen, I remembered that it was the Quicksave feature in Exoddus that changed the whole complexion of the game experience for me. All (well, most) of the mundane repitition became avoidable, and apparently this let me enjoy all of that art and ambiance whereas this earlier installment seemed to kill my momentum.
Anything else I have to say would mainly just be echoing 10rdBen's points about fuzziness of checkpoints and the many times I maintained composure by picturing the absurdity of my latest meatgrinder demise on the failblog.
That said, I do intend to forge ahead and finally see this game to its conclusion.
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zackman
Registered: 10/21/08
Posts: 43
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 10:57 AM | Reply with quote #4 |
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10rdBen, I can tell you what's on the other side of the scrimping-vs-blitzing decision. After my first couple of forays into optional territory ended in tears, I decided just to get out of the factory. This made the game exacting but not frustrating.
Right now Abe's Oddysee reminds me of Prince of Persia (Sands of Time, I couldn't get into the original), and that's the primary difference I've seen--there weren't a whole lot of optional things to do in Sands of Time. In a platformer with a lot of optional challenges, I try to explore the whole level and find everything--until it gets too hard, in which case I go into survival mode and just try to get to the end. It's a good indication of Oddysee's difficulty that I entered this mode 2/3 of the way through the first world instead of half-way through the third or fourth.
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sandymac
Registered: 10/25/08
Posts: 2
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 03:42 PM | Reply with quote #5 |
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| I originally intended to play this on my PS3 and I did play a minimal run though of Rupture Farms on it but I wasn't appreciating the visuals at all on my ~50 inch HDTV. I had vague memories of this game looking amazing ten years ago on a ~20 inch TV from observing my buddy megamanny (of post #3 above) playing it. Combine that with the opaque checkpointing system and the general lack of not really having an idea of what to do I decided to start again when I unknowingly exited Rupture Farms and was informed I had killed all 28 mudokons in the "level". Not a rewarding experience so far. For my second play though I spent a few days and figured out how to rip-and-package the game to run on PSPs with hacked firmwares. The PSP's 5 inch screen did wonders for the visuals of the game. Pixels are no longer the size of my pinky finger and the graphics generally look like I remember them to be. If I play any more vintage games in the future I'll try to use vintage sized displays too. So with a second play though and a better understanding of what I should do I succeeded in rescuing about six mudokons thought it felt like many more because some of the mudokons I've probably re-rescued forty times now because of checkpoint placement. The game is beating my completionist desire to explore and rescue them all out of me. I literally spent an hour just trying to figure out ways to game the checkpoint system to no avail. I'm finding the phrase 'a bird in hand is worth to in the bush' to be very true. Run too far ahead and you cannot backtrack, try to save them all and I'll never make forward progress. This wouldn't be so bad if I could come back to Rupture Farms but I don't think you can. I've been hammering on the checkpointing system but I don't blame it for all my frustration. Its accomplice is the unforgiving life/death mechanic. Price of Persia: Sands of Time that zackman mentioned has a built-in undo system, Super Mario Bros has mushrooms that let you take an occasional hit without dying. A few times I've been able to get Abe to flee the current screen so to be able to retry that screen but other times the baddies just chase you into the next screen and kill you. I really really really want to save all 28 mudokons but I don't think that will happen without gamefaqs. I don't want to pull up gamefaqs because I feel that might convert the game into a grind and it would hamper my discussion on this forum. |
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megamanny
Registered: 11/02/08
Posts: 6
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 04:26 PM | Reply with quote #6 |
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The fact that completion of secret areas is not in itself a checkpoint of its own stung me more than once already.
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indstr
Registered: 10/23/08
Posts: 20
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 04:34 PM | Reply with quote #7 |
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I'm surprised there are several others playing on PSP -- That is what I am doing as well. Played during my lunch & breaks at work today.
This game is irritating. And that's coming from a person who loves challenging games and doesn't mind dying 1000's of times over & over. In fact, N+ has been one of my favourite games recently.
I just escaped the factory and now I am at the set of screens where you first stand still (or roll) to get through the lasers. Then 2 screens to the left, there is a beast at the bottom, and it appears that you have to jump down at the exact correct millisecond, run to the left and stop running at the correct millisecond (lest you bump into the wall and fall down), and jump back up at the correct millisecond otherwise you will be stabbed by the spikey shadow creature.
I've tried it about 2 dozen times and failed miserably. And I do not find it enjoyable, especially having to replay the previous 45 seconds of screens over and over just to get to the 2 seconds where I die.
This is one of those logistical games where you apparently have to memorize every single little aspect (i.e. learn by dying) before you can progress. I much prefer games that allow improvisation. To whoever asked if anyone got through the first area flawlessly -- I highly doubt it. The game was not designed to be played excellently on the first try.
I will push on a few more times, but if this game doesn't get any less irritating soon, I will give up and deem it a waste of my time. 
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sandymac
Registered: 10/25/08
Posts: 2
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 06:58 PM | Reply with quote #8 |
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@indstr: If I recall correctly I think you need to try different ways of jumping up to the ledge.
While I think that is part of the stockyard area it does sort of raise an issue I have with Abe's Oddysee so far. Many games will present you with a challenge that depends on a new game play mechanic and the on the next screen have a tutorial message explaining said mechanic. More importantly you can usually backtrack to where you first needed to use that mechanic. Oddysee waits until half way though the stockyard area an then it finally explain a key part of the chant mechanic that you first needed in the second screen of the game if you are going to save everyone. But by this point you are way past having any chance of backtracking.
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sharc
Registered: 10/24/08
Posts: 81
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 07:15 PM | Reply with quote #9 |
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having just played this a little while ago, rupture farms and my thoughts on it are still pretty fresh in my mind.
i can't say the story made much of an impression on me from the get-go - whether or not there's any point to starting the story in medias res will be revealed later, i suppose - but the setting is another story altogether. there's some brilliant, hellishly oppressive world design here, and the art as a whole is genuinely impressive. the pre-rendered environment art is not used as an excuse to skimp, but another way to create lavishly detailed settings. similarly, instead of using fmv as a gimmicky toy, video is integrated into the world as seamlessly as possible. from the barrels rolling by on belts in the distant background to the impeccable transition of the elevator ride, there's nothing that garishly calls attention to itself after the novelty has worn off, unlike so many other games from this period.
in fact, at the risk of sounding like a dick i'd say the art is a bit too lavish at times. i'm thinking of abe's run cycle here; even today it's unusual to find so much attention paid to nuance of movment to the point where a character's gait is an identifiable feature of their personality. the problem here is that, having spent so much effort on fluid animations, nobody wants to see them broken up by awkward transitions if the player stops moving mid-cycle. so the workaround is that you can't stop mid-anything; every input commits you to a full series of movements with no way to stop or cancel out until it finishes. this got me killed quite a few times trying to adjust my hiding spot in some shadows and watching as the walk animation carried abe helplessly out into clear light. running was a much bigger nuisance for me, between the unavoidable stopping distance abe requires and the fact that if you hit anything in this timeframe you get knocked down (naturally the last thing you want when you're running from anything). it would all be far more tolerable in a slow-paced game, but handicapping the player's input like this in a game where the player already struggles against the game's astronomic lethality makes many deaths feel markedly unfair.
it's funny to me that the game advertises itself as having infinite lives for the player, as the game isn't any less frustrating for it. spaced out checkpoints with challenging action and puzzle sequences between them - where instant death is the normal punishment for the slightest of wrong moves - makes the threat of loosing progress even stronger than more conventional platformers. you not only have your own death as a threat, but the irreversible deaths of your equally weak and squishy workers. this can often put the player in the sickeningly unfair position of having no option but suicide if they botch a section adn want another try, as unless i'm mistaken there's not even the kindless of a quick stage restart in the menu.
making any real headway in the game is a long process of high-risk trial and error. it's sensible to some extent that abe's world is so uncompromisingly deadly, as it drives home both his unusual frailty as a hero and the bleak nature of his mission. what is not fair is how little you can do to defend yourself; every possible danger in the game runs fast and cheerfully eviscerates you, or carries guns that let them kill you the instant you're seen, or explodes the second you touch it. abe's only real recourse in most cases are skin-of-your-teeth expertly timed execution of traps, or a long chant which he can't use without already being out of harm's way.
there's really no seeing this central issue as anything other than a titanic flaw for me; i can handle games that revel in killing the player, but loosing every scrap of previously hard-earned work is bullshit. i'm not even bothering with the secret areas, which as other people say not only nix all your progress within them but without as well, since they don't even give you a checkpoint when you enter. one of my favorite game writers is fond of saying "the worst thing a videogame can do is assume that you have nothing better to do than play it" and that seems exactly like what;'s going on here, where you have to repeat a section dozens of times before you even have the foreknowledge that allows you to do it "right." and, if the manual is correct, anything less than a perfect all mudokons saved playthrough gets you the bad ending! hurray!
i'll see this game through to the end, mark my words, but i will be cursing it every step of the way. EVERY STEP, YOU HEAR ME LORNE LANNING
LAAAANNNIIIINNNGGG
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brainygamer
Moderator
Registered: 07/13/08
Posts: 524
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 07:28 PM | Reply with quote #10 |
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I was just about to jump into the game when I read Sharc's post and decided to get myself another shot of courage. Looks like I'm gonna need it!
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Michael Abbott
Brainy Gamer blog and podcast |
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Karkacabra
Registered: 10/24/08
Posts: 29
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 08:52 PM | Reply with quote #11 |
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Just made it through the first area much faster than I feared it would take.
It's funny people keep talking about how unforgiving this game is. I remember when I first played it back when I was something like 8 or 10, I was shocked at the concept of having unlimited lives. I felt freed, and for the first time could just explore the game mechanics to my heart's content, and never lose more than a fourth of a level's progress, no matter how many times I died. Most other games like this that I had played had you instead going back to the beginning of the entire level each time you died, and restarting the game itself if you ran out of lives.
I also find it strange that most people didn't try to use chant before being told to. Back in the aforementioned "Young Times" the first thing I did in the game was push all the buttons and see what they did, and I thoroughly familiarized myself with the fact that Enemies dislike Chanting within the first few screens of the first level, such that at the beginning of the next area I wasn't surprised at all to see that it stunned the Scrab and allowed the Mudokon to escape in time.
One thing I would complain about is the control scheme, but as I tout Gothic 2 as one of my favorite games, I find it hard to hold something like this against Abe's Oddysee. The controls are muddy and they all do different things in different contexts, but as you get used to them you realize they fit the ebb and flow of the gameplay. I have no doubt they could be better, but they're far from broken.
All in all, I'm so far pleasantly surprised. The game is just as challenging and unforgiving and full of personality as it was back when I first played it.
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AndrewArmstrong
Moderator - Psychonauts
Registered: 07/22/08
Posts: 365
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 09:42 PM | Reply with quote #12 |
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I think from these comments I won't be grabbing the game, I'll finish Deus Ex now I have some spare time instead, but this seems like I wouldn't get past the first level based on how seasoned platform lovers are commenting rather negatively despite the positive aspects 
I loved Oddworld: Strangers Wrath, at least  so there's one Oddworld game I've played and liked.
I'll keep reading the comments, fun listening to the tales of horror, hehe.
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Karkacabra
Registered: 10/24/08
Posts: 29
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 09:54 PM | Reply with quote #13 |
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I am not at all what you'd call a seasoned platform lover, and so far this game isn't that difficult if you avoid focusing on the optional parts.
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10rdBen
Registered: 07/15/08
Posts: 79
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| Posted 11/03/08 at 10:09 PM | Reply with quote #14 |
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@AA:
Don't fret about it - most of my whingeing is about how hard the secret sections are (and deliberately so, you really shouldn't know how to beat them unless you've already mostly finished the game).
It does however raise an interesting question - planned replay value, but at the expense of the first time through. What say ye, VGC is this a good thing; Yay or nay?
@sharc
Abe's Odyssey is unlike a lot of platformers in that it's semi-isometric - there is no tiny fiddley movements nessecary to *just* find that edge of the cliff. You're either on the edge, or before it, or you're dead - no room for movement. I actually think this is one of it's strengths, because it makes the puzzles much more exact and less of the 'whoops, I accidentally beat it' variety.
If you beat a puzzle in Abe, 99% of the time you didn't do it by accident.
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Ben Abraham
Read about my Thesis on music in videogames at: http://drgamelove.blogspot.com |
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sharc
Registered: 10/24/08
Posts: 81
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| Posted 11/04/08 at 02:22 PM | Reply with quote #15 |
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my endless vitriol aside, it's really not too bad if you just play it straight and don't hold yourself to saving every last mudokon; still frustrating but i'm sure we've all sat through much worse.
ran through rupture farms a second time last night, and while i found a lot of it went much faster my problems with learning how to play the game through dying and restarting over and over still stands. i do admire the thoughtful and deliberate puzzle design of abe's oddysee, but the fact that all the puzzle pieces are living things and mistakes can't be undone makes the game far more frustrating than i feel it has any need to be.
the game deserves credit for its structure though; the way that chanting is usable long before you're "instructed' to use it is pretty great and makes for an interesting replay, as possessing a slig in the right place lets you leapfrog over huge chunks of the level. you can also get pretty creative results with cooking off a grenade's fuse; this time i finally managed to get the sleeping guard by the factory exit. and of course, despite finding several new secret areas i still missed ten mudokons somewhere in there.
it's worth saying again that the character and world design in this game is really something special. 10rdben, i don't really know what you find so endearing about the sound design, but i can't help but marvel at the art every time i touch this game. the sligs are easily one of the most iconic enemies i've seen, and they only add to an already overwhelmingly unique setting. aside from the almost comically morbid environment of a meat packing factory, they manage to pull off a convincing feeling that your enemies, however vicious and hateful they may be, are just as powerless and exploited by the glukkons as you.
warming up to it even more than i thought, but still hate this retry retry retry retry nonsense
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CrashT
Registered: 08/19/08
Posts: 327
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| Posted 11/04/08 at 06:58 PM | Reply with quote #16 |
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Question: How long are the loading times on the PSOne version of Abe's Oddysee? As I'm playing the Steam version and they are all but instantaneous Therefore even though I've died maybe a dozen times it was never frustrating and I was able to get through Rupture Farms in about quarter of an hour.
Though I did only managed to free 4 or 5 Mudokons however that was due to entering the doorway to exit the level by accident as there was nothing that told me I'd enterted a new section until I was outside.
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Justin Keverne
GamerTag: CrashT
Groping The Elephant |
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dhalgren2882
Registered: 08/26/08
Posts: 147
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| Posted 11/05/08 at 03:58 PM | Reply with quote #17 |
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Hmm, I was planning giving this a spin but these posts are reminding why I didn't spend much time playing this game when it came out. Oh well, I'd feel like I was cheating if I didn't at least give it a fair try.
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CrashT
Registered: 08/19/08
Posts: 327
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| Posted 11/05/08 at 04:13 PM | Reply with quote #18 |
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I don't think anybody should not at least attempt to play the game. Personally I'm rather enjoying it despite the die-retry cycle.
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Justin Keverne
GamerTag: CrashT
Groping The Elephant |
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megamanny
Registered: 11/02/08
Posts: 6
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| Posted 11/05/08 at 04:55 PM | Reply with quote #19 |
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I still like the game and the whole "feel" of it. I just remember Exoddus being a far more enjoyable experience with the quicksave feature. It was plenty difficult as well, mind you. It's just that IIRC it was possible to make progress without having to find the phantom checkpoint.
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dhalgren2882
Registered: 08/26/08
Posts: 147
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| Posted 11/05/08 at 04:57 PM | Reply with quote #20 |
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Someone send me the "God Mode" cheat! 
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sharc
Registered: 10/24/08
Posts: 81
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| Posted 11/05/08 at 05:43 PM | Reply with quote #21 |
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oh hell it's not that scary
start it up and get your hands dirty so you can complain properly with the rest of us
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dhalgren2882
Registered: 08/26/08
Posts: 147
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| Posted 11/05/08 at 05:50 PM | Reply with quote #22 |
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There's the encouragement I needed! Thanks, Sharc. 
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StolenName
Registered: 08/26/08
Posts: 34
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| Posted 11/05/08 at 07:08 PM | Reply with quote #23 |
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To me, Abe's Oddysee is first and foremost a puzzle game more so than it is a platformer, and as such I don't see the frequent deaths as too much of an issue, except that as everyone has already mentioned, it is also crippled by poorly spaced checkpoints and the inability to quicksave (which Exoddus did very well to correct).
When playing Abe's Oddysee, you're conceding to play by the game's logic and over time, you learn how the various mechanics work and the patterns of the puzzles and the way puzzles are combined. As Corvus put it earlier, Abe's Oddysee is much like Braid (except I like Abe's Oddysee).
As you make it through the first level, you learn how to position Mudokons correctly, the proximity in which they follow Abe, how to sneak, how to jump and how to make use of items like Grenades and such. The second area teaches you how to react to mines and combine sneaking with gun-ho evasion tactics.
In the later levels, you learn to put all these tools together. Say, for instance, there is a Slig sitting in a guard tower in the scenery with some rocks in the foreground and mines blocking a direct running route. You learn to roll between cover, to wait for the slig to turn, then tap the mine and piss-bolt to the safety of the next screen.
Also, pay attention to the sound effects. You'll often be able to hear what's going on in a secret area accessible from the current screen or the next game screen to come. If you hear the snoring of a sleeping slig, for instance, maybe creep into the next room. If you can hear a mudokon scrubbing away yet there are none present on your current screen, look for a secret area.
The game gives you visual and audio clues as to hidden areas and new paths, such as falling rocks or drips from hidden ledges that you can drop down to or jump to.
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Daniel Purvis
http://graffitigamer.com/
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brainygamer
Moderator
Registered: 07/13/08
Posts: 524
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| Posted 11/05/08 at 09:17 PM | Reply with quote #24 |
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Daniel puts it beautifully when he notes that by playing Abe's Oddysee "you're conceding to play by the game's logic." This is true of every game, to some degree, but it's especially applicable here, I think. Abe requires you to surrender to its die/retry gameplay and platforming/puzzle mechanics. If you resist this or insist the game be something other than it is, Abe's Oddysee won't be very much fun. But if you embrace it (if you can), the game rewards you with a genuine sense of achievement. I've made that adjustment after a bit of early frustration, and now I feel like I'm settling in and having real fun.
My first engagement with the game was overwhelmingly devoted to its visual aesthetics. I'm a big fan of games like Odin Sphere, so when artists strike that difficult balance between 2-D side-scrolling gameplay and 3-D (or 3-D-esque) environments, I'm drawn in like a kid in a candy store.
I also find myself tracking the way the game tries to marry its play with its storytelling framework. At this point, I'm assuming this is all mostly window-dressing, but I'd love to find out I'm wrong as we go along.
Thanks for all the terrific comments on the game so far! I enjoy this so much more when I'm not by myself.
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Michael Abbott
Brainy Gamer blog and podcast |
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StolenName
Registered: 08/26/08
Posts: 34
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| Posted 11/06/08 at 12:01 AM | Reply with quote #25 |
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Regarding the story, as I've noted in the Stockyard / Monsaic post; the game tries to connect the cinematics to your interactions so that what you've last done leads directly into the story.
However, I believe there's quite a disparity between what the player is doing and the way the narrative progresses -- although there are times when the two collide but they're rare. I'm interested to know exactly what you're referring too!
If I remember correctly, Abe's Exoddus blends narrative and gameplay much better, specifically in the way you finally tackle the Glukkons towards the end of the game.
Anyway, I hope to read your thoughts on the narrative / play divide when this meet concludes.
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Daniel Purvis
http://graffitigamer.com/
http://gamingsa.com/ |
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