LogFAQs > #975012726

Oddworld: Soulstorm (PC)

The oldest game on my PC. I got it on release back in 2021 and just forgot about it after a quarter in. 2021 was a bad year for me as I focused on work and clawing my life back. One of the main reasons I didn't get back to this sooner was just the entire idea of me playing what is essentially an escort mission to get 100% So I put it off for a LONG time.

Anyways, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that I managed to live long enough to see Oddworld Inhabitants was finally able to tell the story it always wanted to tell. Abe's Exoddus being one of my all time favorite games, I enjoyed this retelling in the true spirit of things. And I also enjoy this whole idea of an uncompromising publisher who went dark, came back, and proceeded to revitalize itself via its properties. Will we see its promised lineup of games claimed all the way back in the early 2000s? I don't really know, but for me this is enough at least and it can only get better from here.

That said, I know I entered this game without expectations but I felt like it wasn't without some issues. Pacing was a problem; some easy levels nestled between some fiendishly hard ones. Locations that appeared early on in Exoddus appeared much later in Soulstorm sure storywise it made sense but the difficulty too? It made me think that the levels were intended much earlier but just shuffled around later to tell the proper story. Also those early levels showcased alot more mechanics and sights to see than the simplicity of those later ones.

I also don't know if this is my controller being mediocre but I didn't particularly like the aiming and there is so so much aiming in this game. You wouldn't think a game like this required such precision but often times I found myself lopping molotovs just slightly over a Slig's head before being gunned down because my right stick wasn't sensitive enough. I only found out late that you can lob shit whilst hanging from a ledge which trivialized certain things but the game doesn't tell you this and previous Abe games didn't let you do this either.

But by far my biggest gripe was the extra emphasis on combat in this game. Well, I primarliy saw this game as a puzzler with the occasional schadenfraude of possessing a slig and going to town with it. That's fine. What I didn't expect was entire escort missions where you had to stop a bunch of sligs from open firing at hundreds of your fellow escapees. It gets tedious especially for that sweet 80% escape rate to unlock the good ending (and that 100% rate to unlock the secret end scene). And like, it would've been fine if it was just a one off, but there were 2 levels of this. And a third where there was nothing BUT this. A level segregated into 10 waves of this. It's ridiculous.

Congruent to this, the non-combat parts of the game were either simplified puzzle-wise or just an excuse to take in the sights and do some light combat. If you weren't running around huge stretches observing the background and foreground, you were dealing with the one or two levers needed to pass the challenge. Stealth was now a bigger part of this game and thankfully was not annoying because of the dumb Mudokon AI, but because there's just so much stealth. So much gathering mats and crafting them and dealing with the same challenges over and over. It didn't bother me so much until the penultimate level where you had to go through 12 missions of the same type. What kept me going was the plot.

One other thing that bothered me was the save system. Idk if this has been patched but for awhile, the next level refused to load and I was eventually forced to hunt down a save file to save my sanity. The levels are also VERY long most of them clocking at least an hour if your intent is to save all the Mudokons. Which would be fine, if there wasn't a bug that messed with your last saved checkpoint, taking you instead to one from the previous level. There is no ingame save and only a level select. And there is no profiles so you can't start a new game without deleting your entire progress. I must say these design choices are certainly Odd.

As a retelling, it works. It actually makes alot more sense now and I hear that this was always the original intent. A bit sad that some levels got shortened or trivialized but if it was all to sacrifice for the retelling then I don't mind as much. I also like the change in characterization. Delving a bit into spoiler territory here, Abe here was not a terrorist but a ghost, and the reason why his exploits were mostly undetectable was because the Glukkons never perceived that there could be an uprising. Up until the finale. The plot was centralized more on Abe finding himself and coming into his own as the savior of his own people though I'll admit that arc was as eventful as a molehill---Abe doesn't really gather the courage he just sort of keeps chugging along doing what people have tasked of him. Truly Abe in this game felt even more flat than he was in Exoddus and that's saying something.

But yeah anyways, glad to finally knock this one out. 7/10