Engage's Fell Xenologue DLC feels like the complete opposite of the base game and not in a good way.

It has worse maps, a completely broken difficulty curve and being forced to always repeat the side story on future playthroughs for the additional characters is a terrible and questionable decision.

The new characters are fun though and provide atleast some incentive to play through this mess, but I would not recommend it.

I am in awe at how much they fucked it. Lorne must have taken a bump to the head or something.

Abe was good because of its precise controls. The humour. The feeling of absolutely nailing a difficult section through timing and figuring out the puzzle set before you. It wasn't crafting, looting bins, or watching a gut-shot Mudokon fuckin' bleed out as Abe stares at his dead eyes.

I cannot believe this is by the same folk who made the originals. It reeks of a beloved IP handed to a new company years down the line. At one point I entered an area that sealed me in and I had to engage in some kind of battle arena shit possessing Sligs and trying to dispatch them as waves of Mudokons got mown down. It feels antithetical to everything Abe was about.

Sloppy controls, loose platforming, and dogshit AI. Lost count of the amount of times I had to kill myself because a Slig just stopped its patrol and stayed facing the locker I was hiding in. God, I really wanted to give the game a fair shake. Even though I knew in my heart what it would be from that initial presentation Lorne did showing the plans for it. I wanted to believe there might be something here for me. But all that was waiting was a character I love reduced to a crafting bastard rummaging through bins and missing jumps. Flaccid attempts at set pieces and weird overly long conversation cutscenes of static characters shouting at each other across level geometry.

I got six levels in, and near the end of the sixth one the game let me accidentally loop back through a previous area with no way to get back without just restarting the level again. Oh aye, there's no "Are you sure?" choice when you select Restart Checkpoint/Level or Quit. Careful you don't hit those by accident. Would be a shame if you had to stop playing like I did.

Cunt game.