Oddworld: Soulstorm

PSA: you can’t even fart on command in this one

Modernising Abe’s quest to save his enslaved fellow Mudokons is quite the undertaking. The ’90s PS1 cult classics are very of their time. Rather than a simple remake, Soulstorm attempts to reimagine Abe’s Exoddus as it should have been. Sadly, it feels old-fashioned in all the wrong ways.

But surely revisiting Abe’s adventures should feel a little old-fashioned, right? You’re not wrong, but in the process of bringing the 2D puzzle platformer up to date, it seems to have got lost somewhere around the 2010s, taking on the flaws of an entirely different era.

The original games weren’t for everyone. ‘Cinematic platformers’ in the vein of the original Prince Of Persia or Another World, every movement was well-defined, tight, and predictable, every screen where Abe dodged meat saws and deadly creatures a satisfying puzzle to solve. In Soulstorm, movement has gone the other way. With a new double jump, the controls are floaty and imprecise (you can’t even use the D-pad to move Abe). Traversal is rarely a puzzle, and often asks you to use those terrible controls to jump between mines, sniper lines, unpredictable mortar fire, and even monkey bars (when it registers you grabbing them, at least). During the many times you die and retry, hazards don’t reset in a learnable way, often feeling arbitrary.

The game’s obsessed with getting you to craft things like smoke bombs, molotov cocktails, and rock candy covered in tapes that ties up patrolling enemy Sligs (the armed guards forcing the Mudokons to work). Despite that it never settles into a rhythm that allows you to be creative with those tools. Most of them require such discrete sets of resources that for safety you’re also given the items directly, often before specific sets of encounters (as Abe doesn’t carry gear between levels). By the end, enough things will be thrown your way that you’ll be able to ignore the sneaking gameplay and just throw big rocks at everyone. It’s dull, and there’s hardly any sense of impact to using them. Moments harken back to tense action sequences in the original, but here they’re lifeless.

PUT A BREW ON

Abe’s goal is ultimately to sabotage the Soulstorm brew, which is being used to keep the enslaved Mudokons in line. Along the way he must save as many Mudokons as possible by leading them to safety. Where Exoddus only had 300, Soulstorm boasts well over 1,000. But here they’re used much less effectively, and their lives feel more expendable as a result. Swathes of Mudokons can be rescued at once in terrible tower defence-style levels, and there are fewer interesting ways to interact with

Mudokons are used much less effectively, and their lives feel more expendable as a result.

the others. “Gamespeak” is now limited to telling them to either follow you or wait, with little nuance to emotion or setting them up to work.

It joins the ranks of interesting features from the original that have been cut here. Gone too are the blind Mudokons (forcibly blinded, so they couldn’t see what they were working on), and the ability to possess and control anything other than Sligs. Ostensibly crafting is the big replacement. Well, you can gear up your Mudokon followers to support you, but they’re glass cannons so often die immediately if you do that.

BUG’S LIFE

Getting the good ending and access to the two final (boring) levels, requires you to save 80% of the Mudokons in at least 12 stages. That’s extra-tricky given how buggy the game is. There are bugs making enemy AI just freeze in place or walk around in the air, while others stop individual Mudokons from following you, or make them vanish. And while the bugs could be patched out eventually, that won’t fix the wider flaws – it’s just not fun to play, or to master controlling Abe.

It’s a shame it’s often so miserable to play, as Soulstorm is visually arresting, with gorgeous environments and cinematic cutscenes. A lot of heart has gone into the way it looks, and it’s a success there. The “2.9D” perspective is a nice touch, adding a ton of depth, and a real sense of scale.

Better to look at than to play, it feels mechanically soulless. We’d rather boot up the original, which tells you something has gone wrong here. Oscar Taylor-Kent

REVIEW Some later levels show real splendour, though the more there is going on, the more the framerate will struggle to keep up.

1 Background elements add depth to the world, though dodging snipers is often quite annoying. 2 Chant to possess and control Sligs, usually to turn their weapons on their buddies. 3 Use fire to burn down blockades and sizzle enemies.