One particularly memorable puzzle from the Abe games (the previous two games in the Oddworld series) involves the slogs, who are dog-like creatures the game has established as being extremely aggressive towards you but being easily distracted if you throw meat at them. In this puzzle, you need to use the slogs' tendency to run towards meat (and towards you) in order to manipulate them to run over a series of pressure panels to open doors you need to progress - in effect, the game recasts you from slog food into the role of slog herder, giving you a puzzle that is interesting, challenging to figure out, and tough to execute too.
Munch's Oddysee now has two protagonists you can switch between which opens a very large design space for tag-team puzzles, but unfortunately the moments of inspiration are few and far between. Instead, the puzzles are replaced by busywork - whether its running down an obnoxiously-long gauntlet of Paramites, loading dozens upon dozens of egg containers, or shooting at seemingly-endless respawning waves of sligs, it's full of repetitive tasks that descend into tedium and only get worse the further one gets into the game.
The 3-D engine and greater focus on action also hurt Munch's Oddysee. The stiff and deliberate feel of the Abe games have been replaced with an annoyingly slippery control scheme, and combined with the shockingly bad camera angles, makes even jumping onto certain platforms a soul-crushing affair. The pathing and AI of your allies isn't great either; the short segments where you rally a unit of mudokon archers to crush your enemies are supposed to be cathartic, but it's just annoying when they just stand there or wander around while the enemies whale on them from point-blank range.
I always feel bad for giving games with this much heart a negative rating - there was obviously an attempt to go for something different as the series took its first steps into 3D, and while most of it didn't work out gameplay-wise, the art direction and quirkiness definitely stand out as strong points of the game. Oddworld Inhabitants earned a lot of goodwill with the world they crafted, and I'm still looking forward to trying out the next games in the series sometime later!
Munch's Oddysee now has two protagonists you can switch between which opens a very large design space for tag-team puzzles, but unfortunately the moments of inspiration are few and far between. Instead, the puzzles are replaced by busywork - whether its running down an obnoxiously-long gauntlet of Paramites, loading dozens upon dozens of egg containers, or shooting at seemingly-endless respawning waves of sligs, it's full of repetitive tasks that descend into tedium and only get worse the further one gets into the game.
The 3-D engine and greater focus on action also hurt Munch's Oddysee. The stiff and deliberate feel of the Abe games have been replaced with an annoyingly slippery control scheme, and combined with the shockingly bad camera angles, makes even jumping onto certain platforms a soul-crushing affair. The pathing and AI of your allies isn't great either; the short segments where you rally a unit of mudokon archers to crush your enemies are supposed to be cathartic, but it's just annoying when they just stand there or wander around while the enemies whale on them from point-blank range.
I always feel bad for giving games with this much heart a negative rating - there was obviously an attempt to go for something different as the series took its first steps into 3D, and while most of it didn't work out gameplay-wise, the art direction and quirkiness definitely stand out as strong points of the game. Oddworld Inhabitants earned a lot of goodwill with the world they crafted, and I'm still looking forward to trying out the next games in the series sometime later!
Weatherby
10 months ago
Anyway, your review at least makes me feel a little less bad that I can't play it.