Review for Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty. Game for PlayStation Network, PC, iOS, Mac, Wii U, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Linux, the video game was released on 22/07/2014 The version for PC came out on 25/02/2015 The version for Xbox One came out on 27/03/2015
It was 1997 when a funny greenish alien named Abe denounced what was happening behind the iron doors of the factory where he worked, pointing the finger at the unbridled capitalism of a world where he was nothing but a cog, reflecting a lot of our world in the video game . Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, part of the Oddworld Inhabitants universe, was the first chapter of a pentalogy still in progress today. The last page of the story dates back to 2005: since then the project has restarted from the beginning with the remake of Abe's Oddysee in the form of Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty !, recently also arrived on Nintendo Switch.
After all these years, one question naturally arises: has the Mudokon found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time… or on the right console at the right time?
Zero to Hero
In everyday life, Abe is an attendant who cleans the floors in the Slaughterhouses Ernia, a company that produces meat in many formats. Malpagato and silenced by the incessant noises of the shredders, passes each time in the corridors where the company's advertisements stand out, considering himself lucky not to have ended up among its products: pompous banners in fact invite you to taste the tasty meat of Scrab and Paramiti, reduced to pies savory and snacks. Want some Meech jerky? Sorry, the product has ended: the Meechs have been hunted to extinction.
The wheels of the cart that Abe pushes stop, and the alien finds himself peeking and listening to a meeting between the upper floors of the company, the Glukkons. They are usually blissful in their pinstripe suits, but this time there is bad news: profits have dropped, a new idea is needed to revive the company. A change of slide in the presentation is enough to bring a smile back to the faces of dictators. A new product is ready to take charge of the turnover of the conglomerate: an ice lolly in which the main ingredient is Mudokon, a species of which the protagonist belongs!
From here begins the strange odyssey of the inoffensive Abe, who runs away, making his way through the security measures of the Hernia slaughterhouses with the intent of escaping and saving his species from the holocaust. To make the slaughterhouse even more claustrophobic are the Slig, guards armed with machine guns who do not hesitate to shoot on sight; and then mines, electric fields and all that is needed to make it impossible to escape high-end food products, two hundred ninety-nine Mudokons to save to be precise, all passive and treated like slaves until a few minutes before.
Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty! re-proposes the grotesque scenario of 1997, with the dose of black humor that distinguishes the series to soften the theme: it takes an iron stomach to overcome the areas of the Hernia slaughterhouses - not surprisingly called zulag - and eyes lined with ham to not understand that Abe is an unusual and original spokesperson for a video game that already two decades ago he shouted at the cruelty of some realities, at the anesthetization and exploitation of the environment. From this point of view, New 'n' Tasty is the journey of a hero by chance in search of the means to overcome his innate pacifism and save his race amidst the smog and the stench within the gray walls of the slaughterhouses. It will be necessary to venture out and get out of the torpor of everyday life: Abe is the only one who is aware of the plans of the Glukkon, and therefore the only one who, despite fears and doubts, can venture between desert areas and the few pseudo-forest left, thus seeing predators in their natural habitat before becoming ingredients of sodas or bars with flavor enhancers.
Wasabi
Mudokons are a harmless breed, as mentioned, and in fact Abe will rarely be able to show off his natural mind control abilities. Such a power meant that several play areas were scattered with so-called suppressors, which block the chant and language of the Mudokons; areas in which it will be necessary to rely on millimeter movements that range between stealth and sensible escape. Unfortunately, it is precisely in the gameplay that Oddworld New 'n' Tasty shows its side to an ancient system that today knows of being outdated: at the time, Abe's Oddysee was one of the forefathers of the so-called difficult games, those destined to be unique in the collection because they were created ad hoc to last hours and hours. Fortunately Just Add Water added the Quiksave functionality, or quick save, mechanical that allows you to save the game at any time simply press a button to recharge it. This edition also offers more difficulty levels, which make the title more digestible for less hardcore players.
Despite this - in the original as in the more modern attempt to exhume a former mascot like Abe - the deaths follow one another in an almost excruciating way and the main culprits are the game commands, guilty of being excessively woody or in any case not modernized as they should have been. . Just Add Water, which took care of the operation between remastered and remake, wanted to replicate the original feeling of the first Oddworld. Despite some sacrosanct tweaks here and there (such as the aforementioned and much appreciated quick rescues) the commands are confused and similarly affected by input lag, that is, a delay in the controller-game response that in a title like New 'n' Tasty tip the balance between life and death irremediably towards the latter.
The tutorial is essential and omits some fundamental mechanics such as throwing items, which is needed in the early stages of the game, or the GameSpeak feature, which is a combination of sounds with which Abe speaks to his fellows. These are shown only at the beginning, with an image that shows all the controls and which is reached in a rather difficult way in the settings - we had to consult several times a screenshot taken previously to save a few seconds - and it is a pity that the keys they are not customizable, because they often mix creating a tangle of orders, with subsequent deaths.
With the Y key, for example, it is possible not only to enter doors, but also to interact with objects and, if in doubt, bring Abe to shrug. With the A key, on the other hand, it is possible to make Abe jump but also to make him cross the portals that he himself opens with his supernatural powers. All of these actions often conflict with each other, and Abe will jump if you're not some distance from the portal or shrug because he's an inch away from an object to interact with. Instead, let's gliss on the Elum racing sessions, which require a commitment that the controller is unable to fully honor, causing Abe and his steed to end up on the bottom of a ravine dozens of times… when it suits you.
Digestive
Once over this rock, Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty! is clearly a title for old school lovers which has undergone a graphic remake operation, going from 2D to 2,5D, with much more defined backgrounds and gloriously unique side-scrolling screens, which brings the changes already seen in the editions for other platforms to the Nintendo Switch.
On the Nintendo hybrid it is obviously possible to be a masochist and bring Abe and his alien world with you, or anchor him on the TV and play it in cooperative mode, which gives the possibility to pass control of the Mudokon to a friend after his timely death. The framerate does not go higher than 30 frames per second, and in portable mode New 'n' Tasty is dirtier and less graceful, however graceful it may be considered a title in which the metallic noises of the shredders and the high pitched of the Slig are the masters, creating a decidedly not relaxing atmosphere.
In this edition of the remake of New 'n' Tasty, the lack of dubbing, buffered with rhyming subtitles, and the moral duty to save 299 Mudokon for the price of an alternate ending with simple commands like hello, follow me, stop, in this occasion capable of gathering all the Mudokons and not one at a time, as was the case back in 1997 with Abe's Oddysee.
For a grape of salt you lose the soup: Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty! it's not a game for everyone, and it's not a very fun game either. The ferocious and environmentalist story, one of a kind, is dampened by a too woody gameplay that ends up weighing on the whole apparatus making it unappetizing. Bringing Abe and his odyssey to Nintendo Switch has more historical value than anything else, and the only mitigated difficulty makes it a title for a select few, who have the ability to save the game at any moment by taking a dip in the 90s. Enter the Mudos Slaughterhouses at your own risk.
► Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty is a Platform-Puzzle-Adventure-indie game for PlayStation Network, PC, iOS, Mac, Wii U, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Linux, the video game is released on 22/07/2014 The version for PC came out on 25/02/2015 The version for Xbox One came out on 27/03/2015
