Oddworld: New โ€˜nโ€™ Tasty! review for PS4

Platform: PS4
Publisher: Oddworld Inhabitants
Developer: Just Add Water
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
ESRB: T

The more I play of Oddworld: New โ€˜nโ€™ Tasty, the more I get the sense that itโ€™s a whole lot better if youโ€™re looking at it through nostalgia goggles. After all, I missed the original Oddworld: Abeโ€™s Oddysee (I was too busy being a Nintendo-only gamer at the time), which means Iโ€™m going into this recrafted version without any prior experience with the game. Andโ€ฆwell, I canโ€™t say Iโ€™m a huge fan of it.

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Before I say anything else, I should emphasize that I donโ€™t think itโ€™s a bad game. Weโ€™re not talking about some RBI Baseball-level atrocity, wherein the corpse of a once-great game has been revived just to be desecrated. No, much like the last few Oddworld remasters, New โ€˜nโ€™ Tasty was developed by Just Add Water and published by series creators Oddworld Inhabitants, which means that it was created every bit as lovingly as youโ€™d hope. This is most apparent in its looks, which are utterly fantastic; if you didnโ€™t know that it was a recreated game from 20 years ago, you wouldnโ€™t be able to guess.

Unfortunately, the same level of care doesnโ€™t seem to have been put into the controls. Now, some of this may just be my bitterness talking. Oddworld: New โ€˜nโ€™ Tasty is mind-bogglingly hard, even on the easiest difficulty settings, and it challenges you right from the get-go. Youโ€™ll die frequently and in incredibly gory ways if youโ€™re not playing with the utmost care, and Iโ€™ll freely admit that my style of playing games tends to be a little reckless (to put it mildly).

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Having said that, however, the controls donโ€™t seem to do you any favours. The formerly-titular Abe is perhaps a little too sensitive, prone to running at full speed into things or off ledges the moment you even nudge a thumbstick โ€” which, obviously, is a pretty big deal in a game that relies heavily on stealth and finesse. Again, Iโ€™ll admit my lacklustre abilities have at least a little to do with my ineptitude, but at the same time, for such a demanding game, it doesnโ€™t seem like much to demand a little help in return.

Then again, maybe thatโ€™s intentional. Speaking of both the gory deaths and the love that Oddworld/Just Add Water have put into the game, nowhere is this clearer than in the death animations. I lost track of the number of times my head went flying off and my guts were splattered everywhere, but I always noted that said head and guts were way, way more detailed than anything Iโ€™ve seen in most other games. (I should add that this level of detail is also found in the environments and other characters โ€” itโ€™s just most noticeable when your on-screen character is being ripped apart by spinning blades.)

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Still, lovingly designed or not, itโ€™s hard to really get into a game where you die constantly and feel like youโ€™ve got no chance โ€” which is where the nostalgia goggles come in. I suspect that if I had fond memories of Oddworld: Abeโ€™s Odyssee from my childhood, then it would be a lot easier to look past all those deaths and see a game Iโ€™d once loved looking fresh and shiny and new (and, perhaps, tasty). As it is, to my more critical/less nostalgic eyes, Oddworld: New โ€˜nโ€™ Tasty just ends up looking like yet another hard-as-nails platformer without the precise controls to match.

Grade: B
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