Sometimes the historical games you "need to play" aren't perfect. Sometimes classics aren't perfect, either. That last statement can be a point of contention with many who like to analyze media and art and try to, somehow, quantify their existence within the canon of their respective medium or in popular culture. Even the most staunch of critics, opposed to any sort of objectivity (a sentiment I believe in as art is inherently subjective), and opposed to the use of numbering systems to rank games usually come to some sort of quantification with regards to the use of the word "classic". Generally, classic is reserved for those works that seem to excel beyond the greatness of the medium towards something that seems nearly criticism proof, or, at the very least, aged with grace. This assessment of classic is plainly subjective, since what "grace" means in this context relies on what you are willing to put up with for the time. Super Mario Bros. 3, a bona-fide classic, can be seen by some to have aged gracefully in its iconic art style, but there are graphical glitches galore and the limited color pallet does stop short of the true wonder the Mario series could reach, as made apparent by Super Mario World. The point is, classic has subjective clearance in its margins, and to accept that is to accept that classics do not have to be perfect. To accept that classics do not have to be perfect, we should also accept that what defines a classic must be some other measure.
My measure for a classic is something that feels largely original, that feels self contained despite its influences, and that executes on its concept with an amount of grace or skill that it feels worth more than the sum of its parts. And yes, that is a subjective assessment, and I think there is no other way of measuring it. Take Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, the game that you know I'm going to talk about because of the title of this post. It is heavily flawed, with many annoyances that will turn players off early in the game (as it threatened to do with me), but with enough going for it, with a fun and unique idea that felt independent on the original Playstation (and PC) that it stands up in a crowd still as one of those gaming gems that few have played, but those who have love to talk about.
The first Oddworld game is a major component of the atmospheric platformer genre, a genre I've been playing a lot lately (and am just about sick of at this point). The idea to the genre is simple. Take the Mario gameplay and slow it way down. Let you think about your platforming, make it into a puzzle, and give the game a coat of paint that contextualizes what you're doing into something higher than what its gameplay allows. The original Prince of Persia gets often credited this way, but that game didn't have much in the way of plot importance or ambience. It's aesthetic felt like a neat excuse for platforming. Its with games like Another World that the genre feels like it had made its mark in the medium, where we had the design principles laid out for others to follow.
Abe's Oddysee contextualizes its puzzle-platforming with story, character, and world. And that's largely where the game succeeds. The world of the mudokons, the fish-like race of the titular Abe, are cute and slapstick, but they have a history. They code as (a potentially problematic rendition of) Native Americans, subjugated by a big corporation that has ravaged the world. When dopey Abe accidentally hears that they plan on using mudokons for their next food product, he sets out to escape the factory. Once away, he falls into the homeland of his people, who tell him he was destined to save his race from enslavement by the evil corporation, and must pass a series of trials and then return to the factory to set as many mudokons free. The set up here is admirable, even if it is obvious, even for 90s standards. The relatively overdone plot is executed with character, giving unique designs to every creature in the game, as well as injecting it with a healthy dose of humor. It's hard not to love the mudokons, and you even get some kind of respect for the scrags or slogs as the game progresses, realizing they are wild animals rather than monsters set to kill you. Mechanically, they are 'puzzle hazards'. The trials you are asked to perform requires you to understand the quirks of two of the different creatures, realizing that one will run away from you unless they have the number advantage while the other will come after you unless contested by another of its species. The game provides a mechanical example of these creatures' behavior.
The platforming is pretty standard from where we are today, and it wasn't exactly innovative at the time, but it still boasts some good puzzles to get your head around. Learning your movement speed doing different actions, as well as the way actions can be combined to execute certain tasks, is the general core to gameplay. You're supposed to get down timings and read your environment carefully in order to proceed. The plot sets you up rather well in contextualizing the gameplay: you must escape the factory first by getting through security measures put in place to kill mudokons trying to escape, and then you must face trials before returning to get past the enhanced security once they realized you left. It isn't any more than it needs to be, but that's fine because the contextualizing is where the heart of the game is, and that is what creates something relatively seamless out of the whole.
I say relatively because there are a handful of caveats to be had. The game is old, plainly enough. It feels old. The movement is based on an invisible grid, one you will get the hang of as you play but will lead to more deaths than you are bound to find fair. When precision jumping - often while being pursued or otherwise timed - is core to your gameplay, controls are extremely important. The muddiness of this game's controls are a sore spot. Because of the grid-based design, that means loading your jump early on the grid space you want to jump out of. Eyeballing it as you would in a modern platformer just isn't going to cut it. You learn to load your verbs early, but that adjustment will always feel awkward. More than half of my deaths during my most recent playthrough were to muddy controls, and I won't convince you this is fair play. Likewise, the checkpoint system can often be too far apart. The idea is that this game wants to not only challenge you with its puzzles and platforming, but also in your ability to maintain that over a certain sequence. This is relatively fine in practice under good conditions, but with the control issues above it can feel taxing throughout a playthrough. The save feature doesn't fair much better. You don't save your game overall, rather saving the location. This means if you are going through the Zulag 3 level, for example, the first area you are in is called Zulag 3 P14. The next area, however, is called Zulag 3 P12, meaning you have to keep track of the level name in order to load. Hitting the load button shows you the list of levels you've unlocked in alphabetical order, rather than sequence, and some of this is do to some nonlinear sections, but that obviously isn't true throughout the game. Struggling with the basic aspects of Abe's Oddysee is a test of patience, but as I started out this review saying, I think that it is a test worth pushing through.
Gaming has rarely seen a world that feels like Oddworld, and the series only managed four games of differing types before it shut its doors (although with the recent announcement of a new game, there is a chance the series could be reborn, but I have my doubts given its relatively strange appeal). It stands uniquely on its own, as well as within its rather bloated genre, and informed a lot of the games that would come after it. If you don't notice a touch of Oddworld in the likes of Little Nightmares or Inside, I'm not sure you're paying attention. It is a severely flawed experience, but one that largely comes with age rather than incompetence. Art grows through the years, and it is important to watch the rings change color because that is usually where the magic lies.
8.5
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