So supposedly time constraints led to Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus to be more of an expansion to Abe's Oddysee than the team wanted, and Soulstorm was the chance to tell the story they initially wanted to tell. But...There's very little to the story really. Most cutscenes are just Abe moving forward while Mullock and his henchman slig talk about him, meanwhile other Glukkon's talk about using Mullock as a scapegoat for the Rupturefarms incident. I don't see how they couldn't have fit such a simple story into the original Exoddus game.

It's really in terms of game mechanics that you can see how they may have had to compensate way back then. This game takes the very limited item system from the first game (which let you throw rocks and grenades), and creates an entire crafting system. It works fine I suppose, but was that really the part of Oddworld people wanted more of? Ironically Exoddus did a better job at expanding the Oddworld mechanics by focusing on its signature mechanic - possession - increasing the amount of enemies you could take control of. In the original it was just Sligs, but Exoddus allowed taking control of Paramite's, Scrabs (both of which aren't even in this game!) and even Glukkon's, which you can't do in this game as it goes back to just being taking control of Sligs.

I guess the best new mechanic here is the ability to tie up and pickpocket Sligs. Instead of just having them automatically explode to kill them after you're done possessing them, it's nice to have a choice to instead spare them in order to gain extra resources. Even that is flawed though because tying up a Slig requires tape. You can pickpocket a Slig without tying them up if you lack tape, but for some reason if you have tape you NEED to tie them up before you steal from them. If it isn't a requirement in the first place, why not let me just pickpocket them and save my tape? I guess it's because the game realised the way to abuse easily getting the extra resources by knocking the Slig out, stealing from them, and then re-possessing them and just killing them. But if you need to do something that makes no sense in order to fix a system that you created that is broken, maybe have a look at the broken system you created instead...

And that's the weirdest part of this game to me. You'd think a game that took, what, 5 years to develop that was specifically trying to re-do a game they initially had to compensate on due to time issues, would be massive in scope. Instead it seems to strip all the improvements they had already made in Exoddus and went back to Oddysee as its base and said "The only thing we need is more items, and way more fast-paced action sequences".

They focused far too much on making the game more typical action that it lost all its charm and even a lot of its identity around stealth. To make matters worse, the aiming can make the action sequences a pain in the ass for the tight time limits you have in some sections, as you control Sligs and have to mow down other sligs before they reach Abe, who is standing in the open, but you aim with your right stick and bullets just fly everywhere because trying to steady an aim at small, moving, flying targets is hard.

Speaking of controls, I think where the game is at its worst is trying to get up and down ledges properly. Oddworld's always been a VERY timing sensitive game, and the OG games worked amazingly with it due to being on a very tight system where you could tell exactly where you'd end up after every jump, and hitting ledges is easy. Now it all feels very loose, and half the time I'd jump at a ledge, and Abe would touch it but not grab on. Or I'd want to drop down, but when I tried, Abe would instead grab a ledge and hoist himself up it - straight into view of a Slig that would kill me. The controls just constantly fought me in this game and it's the exact worst game for that kind of thing to happen.

I guess the place the team benefited the most from waiting till 2021 to unleash their "true vision" of Abe's Exoddus was the graphics. Cutscenes look fantastic, and levels contain so many dynamic camera angles (albiet sometimes at the cost of good depth perception. If I'm trying to time jumps to avoid a swinging object I'd like to look at the object straight on please, not from an awkward angle).

Abe's voice acting felt significantly worse here than ever before. I could tell in New n Tasty that things were off comparing the lines to the original, but now he just feels so monotone in everything he says.

The game does have quite a few bugs as of the time of writing. Nothing game-breaking, or even level-breaking, but I lost a few lives or was forced to reset checkpoints due to bugs, such as falling through the floor.

I found the game to vary quite a lot from being great, being terrible and being okay but flawed. The change in focus from stealth and rescuing small groups of Mudokon's at a time, to rapid action pieces that involve you trying to protect literally hundreds of Mudokon's at once was jarring. There is still a lot of the former in here, but that just causes a clash of how important, or lack thereof, a single Mudokon feels now. Also speaking of saving Mudokon's, they often lag behind you in ways that makes trying to time hiding them in lockers or smoke INCREDIBLY painful. I swear the original games had them follow Abe by just a second or less, but now you can hide in a locker and your friends will scramble about for 5 seconds until they get spotted and shot.

After getting past the initial difficulty wall, I did enjoy my time with the game overall, but damn if it didn't piss me off a lot. So many small things that added up, like why put the checkpoint BEFORE the valve that opens the next area? It just means every time I die I waste an extra 10 seconds opening the door again and again.