From the Archives: Oddworld: New ’n’ Tasty
From the Archives: Oddworld: New ’n’ Tasty
A look back at LRG’s third release.
Platform: PlayStation 4 / Vita / PlayStation 3
Genre: Stealth / Platformer
Developer: Just Add Water [PS4] Nephilm Studios [Vita]
Initial Release Date: July 22, 2014 [PS4] Jan. 19, 2016 [Vita] April 22, 2015 [PS3]
Limited Run Release Date: April 25, 2016 [PS4 / Vita] June 14, 2019 [PS3]
Limited Run Games got its start as a label for publishing Mighty Rabbit Studios games, but that relationship didn’t remain exclusive for long. After all, as a small and fairly young studio, Mighty Rabbit didn’t have a whole lot of games under its belt. Had “private label” been the extent of Limited Run’s ambitions, the company would have bowed out after shipping the Breach & Clear games and Saturday Morning RPG.
That’s not how it went. Within three months of shipping Saturday Morning RPG, Limited Run Games published its third title, a game that would help establish a pattern for the company going forward: Oddworld: New ’n’ Tasty. A high-polish remake of a classic PlayStation game that had debuted nearly two decades prior, New ’n’ Tasty established Limited Run Games as something far more significant than the video game equivalent of a vanity press. With Oddworld, Limited Run Games became a vibrant independent agent of physical distribution and games preservation, willing and able to work with other studios to help produce lasting, licensed, physical editions of great digital releases that larger labels didn’t want to take a chance on. By running a lean operation and foregoing retail distribution in favor of direct sales, Limited Run Games liberated niche titles from digital storefronts through modest print runs.
It may seem a little strange to think of Oddworld as a “niche” title. The original version of New ’n’ Tasty, 1997’s Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee for PlayStation and PC, had been a sizable hit. Oddworld spawned a franchise that earned enough mindshare and clout for Microsoft to boast about locking down the third game in the series as an exclusive for the launch of its original Xbox console. But following the fourth entry in the series, Stranger’s Wrath, developer Oddworld Inhabitants had shifted its focus to filmmaking and put its plans for the Oddworld game franchise on hold.
New ’n’ Tasty saw Oddworld Inhabitants returning to the world of video games by revisiting the company’s origins. New ’n’ Tasty treats the PS1 classic to a highly faithful yet greatly expanded recreation. The mechanics, levels, and enemies found in the older game are largely converted to high-definition consoles unchanged, but they’ve all been expanded with more—much more—to see and do. In the original game, protagonist Abe needed to rescue 99 of his fellow Mudokons from their lives of slavery in the industrial complexes of the avaricious Glukkon race. Here, there are no less than 299 Mudokons to find and save. The additional 200 primarily appear in new, hidden areas accessed by poking around in unexpected locations.
Where you needed to rescue at least 50 Mudokons to avoid a bad ending in Abe’s Oddysee, New ’n’ Tasty ups the basic stakes to 150 rescues. The original game was remarkably challenging, and the new material added to this remake was clearly designed with veteran players in mind—a reason for them to revisit a beloved classic and see just how well they understand its puzzle mechanics.
In other words, you shouldn’t feel discouraged if you don’t save enough Mudokons your first time through; New ’n’ Tasty is a game created with replay value in mind. Simply reaching the end can be taxing enough! Saving all of the Mudokons is a pro-level challenge, and the game is kind (or rather, cruel) enough to make this point clear from the very beginning. A few screens into the adventure, you’re encouraged to pull a lever… which causes a hapless Mudokon to plunge through a trap door, immediately adding a notch to your casualty rate.
That Mudokon doesn’t have to die, though. You don’t have to pull the switch. You can use “GameSpeak” commands to lure it away from the trap door. But a new player won’t have been taught GameSpeak so early in the game, and in any case, why wouldn’t you trust the tutorial interface to nudge you toward your own best interests? And so, right away, you get a sense of what Oddworld is all about: Nasty traps, deadly surprises, and the need to hit “restart from checkpoint” when a situation suddenly goes pear-shaped. Which is often.
Throughout Abe’s quest, you’ll constantly encounter vexing scenarios like this. It’s part of the appeal, and it emphasizes the sense that danger is everywhere: Armed enemies patrol constantly, skulking through the background; monsters murder innocent slaves before you even realize what’s happening; and poor Abe is practically powerless to stop them. (Practically.)
The original Abe’s Oddysee was something of a surprise hit back in 1997. At the time, video games as a whole had more or less left behind 2D graphics and gameplay in favor of polygons and 3D spaces. Sure, you had the occasional Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to buck the trends, but Oddworld was an even more resolutely traditional creation than Symphony. The game’s odd world and its inhabitants were rendered entirely with 2D sprites and hand-drawn or pre-rendered backdrops, and—while it was lovely—it was a far cry from the wild, dynamic 3D action games Sony had been pushing as the PlayStation’s bread-and-butter.
For that matter, Abe’s Oddysee was a bit of a throwback even within its genre. Its precision platforming design (and its love for nasty, fatal surprises that require lots of do-overs) came straight from Delphine Software’s 16-bit classic Another World, a game whose visuals broke new ground by being built entirely of polygons! On top of that, Core Design had already brilliantly translated the mechanics and design of Another World and Prince of Persia into 3D spaces with 1996’s Tomb Raider. Oddworld lived up to its name: It felt downright out of place—odd, even—in the world of the 1997 PlayStation library.
Nevertheless, it proved to be a massive hit despite defying trends and conventions of the day. While its traditional visuals lacked 3D depth, the use of bitmap art allowed Oddworld Inhabitants to render environments with extravagant detail and beauty—its backgrounds looked even richer than those of contemporaries like Final Fantasy VII and Resident Evil. And while Abe’s Oddysee delighted in killing players in myriad ways, the important word here is “delight”: An anarchic sense of glee pervades the game, which causes its nastier “gotcha” moments to feel more like playful trolling than spiteful cruelty. It’s a game with a dedicated “fart” button, which causes even the murderous bad guys to chuckle when you deploy it; how mean-spirited could it actually be?
Mostly, though, Abe’s Oddysee sold well because it played well. It made a great impression in stores, in magazines, and on PlayStation Underground demo discs. It’s a politically charged game that handles its themes of environmentalism and anti-colonialism with far more grace and imagination than the Earth Day-inspired games so common in the early ’90s, and its gameplay loop is compelling enough that players who prefer not to be confronted with big issues in their games can simply focus on navigating Abe to safety.
All of this comes through in New ’n’ Tasty. Oddworld is a planet choked with dangers, both natural and man-made (or rather, Glukkon-made). Every screen of the game presents Abe (and players) with new dangers along with increasingly complex puzzles to be solved. Each failure stings, but because you have a fairly limited tool set and largely have to work your way through each scenario with whatever you happen to have on-hand, the generous checkpoint system makes it fairly painless to pick yourself up and give it another try. It’s the best kind of infuriating: The kind that drives you to win at any cost.
As in the original game, New ’n’ Tasty tells the tale of a Mudokon slave named Abe. Born in a factory and forced into hard labor his entire life, Abe serves under the boot heel of the industrialist Glukkon species, a race obsessed only with profits at any cost. The Glukkons employ an army of idiot stormtroopers called Sligs, which keep a murderous watch over their Mudokon fodder in order to ensure the Glukkon assembly lines continue to efficiently process native life forms like Paramites and Scrabs to the point of extinction. Abe stumbles across the Glukkons’ plans to begin harvesting Mudokons for food as well and makes a break for it, liberating other slaves along the way. Before too long, Abe escapes the factory and stumbles into taking a much larger role as he helps his people cast off the subjugation of the Glukkons and put an end to the exploitation of the planet’s sacred native life.
All of this plays out in the form of a precision platform action game. This is not a run-and-gun like Contra or a high-energy platformer in the vein of Mario or Sonic; Abe is a scrawny little guy with limited skills. He can run and jump, but his world demands economy of action. You won’t get far by zipping headfirst into the fray, and (even on the rare occasions you come into possession of deadly weapons) Abe lacks the agility to take on Slig guards directly before being gunned down.
No, this is a game about observation, manipulation, and plans of action. Many scenes require Abe to put himself into very real danger. While this is a stealth game, the stealth doesn’t work as in games like Metal Gear Solid. You don’t sneak up behind a guard and garrote them—you slip behind them and do your best to duck into hiding or scramble to a high ledge while the enemy gets its bearings. It’s a game of meticulous planning, a heart-pounding race to pull off the dangerous feat you’ve mapped out in your mind… and most likely another few attempts to pull off the plan correctly after you’re gunned down or stumble into a pit of spikes or explosive mine.
While much of this remake’s critical path content comes directly from the PlayStation game, the visuals have been upgraded from 2D sprites to high-definition polygons. The graphics sacrifice nothing of their detail or beauty in the transition; on the contrary, the colors and textures seem even more vivid than in the past, and everything fits together more seamlessly, with none of the aliased edges that were a trademark of the pre-rendered sprites of the ’90s. While the action remains fixed to a strictly 2D plane, the move to polygonal models allows more adventurous camera effects: It can pan to emphasize action or zoom in and out to depict different senses of scale. The camera is also better able to glide around to preset locations in order to more effectively frame a focal point of action within a larger context or more clearly define the on-screen elements that Abe can interact with.
New ’n’ Tasty isn’t a perfect game. Some puzzle and object interactions require highly specific timing or aim, which the 3D visuals tend to make more ambiguous than in the original game. It’s not uncommon to deduce a correct strategy from the outset but fail to perfectly trigger a response on your first attempt, causing you to waste time on incorrect, dead-end solutions when the actual problem was simply that the game didn’t register a rock hitting a mine or something. Most of these issues are front-loaded into the early portions of the game as you’re still learning the rules, which can present a serious stumbling block for new players. And the remake’s use of analog controls for Abe—he was maneuvered with the D-pad in the original PlayStation release—adds a small element of softness to the control scheme that doesn’t mesh well with the pin-point precision that Abe needs in his more panicked moments.
Those small control and interface quirks aside, New ’n’ Tasty does much to highlight the inherent excellence of the core game. As an escaped slave with no worldly possessions to speak of besides his loincloth, Abe doesn’t have many tools at his command. Survival comes down to making the most of what you’re handed in a given situation. Sometimes that may involve weapons ranging from rocks to grenades, but often you need to out-think the bad guys, too. The move to a dual-analog control scheme has definite benefits here. Abe can aim projectiles with the right stick, distracting foes or affecting objects like mines and beehives.
Ultimately, Abe’s greatest advantage is his ability to chant. Although chanting renders him vulnerable to environmental hazards, and it can be actively prevented by machines that electrocute Abe whenever he chants, it helps unlock the uncanny powers possessed by his race. Chanting is the key to freeing Mudokons—you use chants to open the bird portals that they escape through—and it can affect mystical objects like temple bells. Chanting taps into Abe’s darker side, too, allowing him to possess the idiotic Slig guards he encounters along the way.
Abe can’t exactly go toe-to-toe with Sligs, as they fire at him the moment he enters their line of sight. But, by chanting while safely hidden to the side as a Slig patrols the screen, in either the foreground or background, Abe can take control of the Slig. This doesn’t simply allow him to maneuver safely amidst other enemies; it also opens up new capabilities—including rifle-butt melee strikes and deadly machine gun fire. A possessed Slig can gun down its companions, activate dangerous switches, and clear away mines and other hazards. This invariably proves fatal to the Slig in question; even the simple act of relinquishing possession causes your target’s head to explode messily. Abe’s got a mean streak, it seems. But, in fairness, those Sligs were jerks and absolutely had it coming to begin with.
Abe’s other key ability is even more modest: GameSpeak. By pressing the D-pad (or the R2 button and the D-pad), Abe can vocalize one of eight different ways. (Well, seven different ways, plus a fart.) This plays a crucial role with the real-time escort mission element that comes into play when you help guide your fellow Mudokons; in order to pull them away from their forced toils, you need to greet them and tell them to follow you. You can also issue orders to an entire group, beckoning them to follow you to wait in place. This also works for the Elum, a loyal horse-like beast that Abe needs to ride along the way to the temple in the Paramonian region.
Your other GameSpeak commands—singing, laughing, and farting—come into play when you encounter free Mudokons outside the Glukkon-controlled factory lands. They challenge Abe to simple password recitations, which you need to mimic back to them in order to advance, activate lifts, etc. It’s not rocket science, but it adds a certain charm to the world.
There’s a great flow to the game, as each of the different areas you end up exploring has its own distinct personality and vibe. The factories are loaded with mechanical traps and dense with Mudokons to rescue. Meanwhile, the wilds outside the factory spaces tend to be more open and plagued with passive hazards ranging from motion sensors to deadly pits. Abe’s main quest takes him through regions thick with Paramites and Scrabs, deadly creatures that must be evaded in order to harness their power. Ultimately, Abe needs to put a stop to the Glukkons’ plans, but for that to happen he needs to harness the mystic energies of the Scrabs and Paramites and gain the ability to manifest himself as the Mudokon demigod, Shrykull.
Even after gaining the power to transform into Shrykull, Abe’s quest is far from simple—especially if you intend to rescue all 299 Mudokons. Again, the 200 Mudokons newly added to New ’n’ Tasty have been tucked away in hidden spaces, each of which is designed to test the skills and puzzle-solving brains of expert players. Some of the most devious bonus areas in the game can be found right at the start, long before players have been taught to use most of Abe’s skills in their initial play through. And, while there are three difficulty modes here ranging from “easy” to “hard,” even easy mode demands true mental agility along with deft finger skills.
Limited Run Games released New ’n’ Tasty for both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in April 2016 as standard physical editions. A far more elaborate reissue would ship more than three years later, in June 2019, with a PlayStation 3 release of New ’n’ Tasty in both standard and deluxe limited editions. As with Saturday Morning RPG on Switch, New ’n’ Tasty for PS3 demonstrated just how ambitious Limited Run’s approach to releases had grown since the early days, coming in a box designed to resemble a shipping crate and packed with tattoos, a soundtrack CD, and a keychain in addition to the base release.
Limited Run’s releases of New ’n’ Tasty on all platforms also helped codify one of the company’s key mission statements: completeness. One of Limited Run’s key goals is to enshrine digital releases on physical media in their entirety if possible, and that began here. New ’n’ Tasty’s physical versions incorporate all update patches available at the time they were mastered for disc, as well as Oddworld Inhabitants’ first-ever DLC add-on: The Alf’s Escape expansion, an ultra-expert mode bonus that sees Abe not only navigating the most diabolical puzzles in the entire game but doing it while being shadowed by a fez-wearing Mudokon beverage vendor named Alf. Following New ’n’ Tasty, Limited Run would always strive to release final, comprehensive versions of games whenever possible.
All told, it’s a fantastic remake of a classic game. Any minor flaws introduced by the new visuals and tech are more than made up for by the cleverness of its puzzle design. A classic puzzle platformer given new life, and a fresh start for a venerable series.
