Oddworld has been one of my low-key favourite video game franchises for over twenty years. My first exposure to the series was all the way back in the year 2000, when I spotted a copy of Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus in a local newsagent for the very reasonable price of £9.99 and managed to convince my mother to give me an advance on my pocket money so I could purchase it there and then. Its 2D presentation and deliberately-paced, grid-based platforming were a marked departure from Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, but the weirdly fascinating aesthetic of Oddworld and the unique GameSpeak mechanics drew me in and kept me hooked. It's been two decades since then, and while Stranger's Wrath went on to succeed it as my favourite game in the franchise, Abe's Exoddus has always held a special place in my heart as the game that introduced me to Abe, his enslaved Mudokon brethren, and their struggle against the corporate Glukkon overlords and their armies of Sligs.
It should therefore come as no surprise that I've been awaiting Oddworld: Soulstorm with bated breath ever since playing through the Abe's Oddyseeremake, New 'n' Tasty!, back in the summer of 2019. Billed as a ground-up reimagining of Abe's Exoddus, Soulstorm promised to be the game that Oddworld Inhabitants wanted to make twenty years prior, had their original vision not been compromised by publisher deadlines and hardware limitations. I've now had the privilege of playing through Soulstorm pretty much twice (one continuous playthrough of each level resulting in the "bad ending", followed by revisits to several of its levels in pursuit of the canonical "good ending"), and while that "original vision" promise does feel a bit like romanticised PR-spinning on Lorne Lanning's part, it's hard for me to deny that this is the best executed example of the original Oddworld formula to date.
Whereas New 'n' Tasty! strived to be a faithful remake of Oddysee to an almost slavish degree, Soulstorm eschews this approach by playing fast and loose with the game it's drawing inspiration from. Instead of lifting its level design wholesale from Exoddus, Soulstorm reimagines old locales like Necrum Mines and the FeeCo Depot, while introducing a handful of new ones such as Phat Station and the Old Trellis. Taking this approach allows Soulstorm to be exceedingly creative with its level design, trading the two-dimensional planes of its forebears for paths that cross and intersect in beautiful and impressive ways. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Soulstorm is the most visually impressive game built with the Unity engine that I've ever seen, and the scale and spectacle of many of its levels plays a major role in that. These levels are complemented by an overhaul of the control scheme which makes actions feel a little more immediate than Oddysee and Exoddus, while still retaining the sense of weight and purpose to each of Abe's actions that the series is famous for. The inclusion of a double jump gives Abe a little more aerial manoeuvrability too, providing a safety net in some of the game's more demanding platforming sequences.
It's not just the levels and controls that have been overhauled, either. While New 'n' Tasty! used the same character renders that have been with the series since its inception, Soulstorm's cast of Mudokons and Glukkons have been redesigned for the HD era. Abe and his brethren now have unique facial features, rather than simply being palette swaps of one another, and the same goes for the quartet of Glukkons that make up the game's panel of antagonists. While the new models are undeniably excellent, they do have the unfortunate side effect of lacking parity with Soulstorm's direct predecessor. It just seems strange to me that the redesigns weren't considered at the start of the rebooted Oddworld Quintology, but instead instigated partway through it.
Another thing about Soulstorm that struck me as "odd" (if you'll pardon the pun) was how its new crafting system served primarily to empower Abe, and by extension the player. Throughout the game, Abe will pick up various bits of trash that can be cobbled together into makeshift weapons, such as soda pop grenades and IED stun mines. This feels contradictory to the design philosophy of the original versions of Oddysee and Exoddus, which deliberately sought to render Abe and his fellow Mudokons helpless and heighten the threat posed by enemies. I've watched a number of interviews with Lorne Lanning over the years (my personal favourite being this three-hour extended cut on Ars Technica's YouTube channel), and one of the common points raised by Lanning is how adamant he was about not arming Abe with weapons in the original games, because doing so would encourage players to try and solve every puzzle in the game with violence. Out of this insistence, the possession mechanic was born. Debuted in Oddysee and expanded in Exoddus, possession allowed Abe to assume temporary control of enemy Sligs (extending to Glukkons and wild Scrabs and Paramites in Exoddus) and manipulate them to clear rooms and create paths through obstacles. Being able to craft makeshift projectiles, grenades, and (in some later levels) even a bona fide flamethrower, seems to fly directly in the face of this philosophy. GameSpeak has also been streamlined, leaving Abe with just four options to address his fellow Mudokons - a greeting, a wait command, and the ability to set followers to either an "aggro" or a "passive" state. Overcoming Soulstorm's challenges is no longer about using a creative combination of GameSpeak and possession to advance through seemingly insurmountable odds, but instead using a creative combination of Abe's hand-crafted arsenal to lay waste to Molluck's army of Sligs and carve a route through each level.
This move away from GameSpeak and towards crafting mechanics may have dampened the impact of Soulstorm's puzzles, but its payoff in gameplay terms is tremendous. Making the transition from New 'n' Tasty! to Soulstorm is comparable to the leap between the original Metal Gear Solid and MGSV: The Phantom Pain. Instead of each set of screens presenting a puzzle requiring execution of a specific strategy to progress, Soulstorm provides its players with a toybox full of craftable gadgets and gizmos and encourages them to experiment in pursuit of a solution. This approach is further augmented by the inclusion of new systemic gameplay elements - wood can be burned, fire can be dowsed with bottled water or accelerated with flammable Soulstorm brew, Slig patrols' vision can be obscured with smoke grenades, and flares can be used to keep light-fearing Sleeches at bay in dark areas. Each of these systems adds a layer of complexity to dealing with the problems Soulstorm presents, and finding emergent solutions to those problems using the tools at Abe's disposal is invariably rewarding. Some of my favourite moments were born from returning to old levels with access to new gear, and using it to find more efficient solutions to the predicaments I found myself in.
The impact of these new mechanics and the impressive sense of scale and spectacle intersect in some of Soulstorm's best moments. Periodically the game will place several hundred Mudokons in Abe's care and tasks the player to protect them from waves of attacking Sligs as they make a break for freedom. These sections resemble tower defence games in their structure, and force the player to make effective use of every last gadget and ability in Abe's repertoire to keep his buddies safe. In Oddysee and Exoddus, it was rare for Abe to be in command of more than half a dozen Mudokons at a time, so this huge increase in scale will likely inspire both awe and dread in long-time Oddworld fans. Soulstorm also demands a much higher prerequisite for its good ending than any previous Oddworld game, asking the player to save at least 80% of the Mudokons in a given level to finish with good Quarma. My first time through the game I found these segments exceedingly challenging, looking on in horror as unmarked Sligs broke through my defences and laid waste to dozens of escaping Mudokons. Forewarned is definitely forearmed, though, and on my return visits to these areas I was able to formulate strategies that saw almost all of my little green buddies make it through unscathed.
Perhaps the biggest caveat I need to address with my praise of Soulstorm is that I suspect my enjoyment would have been severely hampered if I had played it at launch. Soulstorm released in April with an extensive list of bugs and glitches, including collision detection issues that affected the platforming and combat, buggy AI routines that made it impossible to bypass certain enemies, performance issues that caused the frame rate to tank, and unforeseen situations that could soft-lock the game not being accounted for. The developers, to their credit, have worked tirelessly since release and have issued a number of patches addressing almost all of these complaints, resulting in the game now working almost exactly as intended. I say "almost" because even I was unable to make it through the game in its entirety without suffering a handful of technical setbacks, the most egregious being a failure for the final cutscene to trigger when pursuing the "good ending", resulting in the final battle leading straight into the game's credits and forcing me to look up the ending on YouTube instead.
Oddworld: Soulstorm is, at least by my reckoning, the best 2D puzzle-platformer instalment of the series to date. While it's difficult for me to say for certain at this early stage, it may even pip Stranger's Wrath to the post for the title of my favourite game in the franchise. Its heightened production values and meaningful additions to the series' tried and tested gameplay formula are worthy of praise, although I do question some of the design choices made such as the oversimplification of GameSpeak and the state in which the game was launched. Ultimately, it has me feeling very positive about whatever comes next for this revitalised iteration of Lorne Lanning's Oddworld Quintology. I just hope we don't have to wait another seven years for the next step in Abe's journey to freedom.
Daniel
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